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GQ’s ‘50 most powerful in Washington’ listReview: Alight Dance Theater’s reality TV satire falls flat 
Dianamaria Adams/Courtesy of Dance Place - Alight Dance Theater performed “Truth Be Told” at Dance Place on Saturday.
Text SizePrintE-mailReprints By Rebecca J. Ritzel, Alight Dance Theater needs to lighten up. The ambitious local company put on an oppressively serious program at Dance Place on Saturday that began with an allegory about white-gloved hands and repression and ended with a painfully misguided attempt to satirize reality TV. Say this much for these ladies: They’ve got guts and great ideas. But conceptual brilliance only goes so far, even in cerebral art forms such as modern dance.
Both works are bogged down by a host of problems, including blasé choreography executed by dancers with limited technique. But the big-picture question the company needs to grapple with is: How do you make social satire that’s funny and still makes a point?
Loading...CommentsWeigh InCorrections?“Truth Be Told,” Angella Foster’s hour-long reality-TV rumination, starts with a promising premise: What if the producers of “So You Think You Can Dance?” and “The Real World” combined resources and created a show about five competitive female dancers living in one Ikea-furnished house?
Foster is interested in exploring the wounded psyches of the sort of women who would enter such a contest. There’s a good bit of dialogue but little wit in the script. Wayles Haynes is cringe-inducing as the diva-esque hostess who deems the dancers’ personalities “boring” or “annoying” and casts them offstage one by one. If only Haynes had played the role for camp. Instead, viewers are supposed to feel sincerely sorry for the rejected amateur dancers as they writhe on the floor to Debussy’s “Claire de Lune” or Rachmaninoff’s “Vocalise.” We do, but for all the wrong reasons.
Ritzel is a freelance writer.
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