The Performance Garage presents Megan Mazarick’s soapbox

Deconstructing the personal platform

Soapbox deconstructs what Mazarick calls “personal platforming” to uncover the tension between the performative self and the genuine one. A graduate of Temple’s MFA program in dance, Mazarick is a forward-thinking contemporary dance artist, teacher, and choreographer. She created soapbox in collaboration with dancers Danielle Currica, Alonzo Magsino, and Tyler Rivera. Rivera handled costumes, and Jordan McCree provided music. The creative synergy was palpable immediately. Mazarick was onstage and mid-monologue as the audience took their seats, with McCree at a DJ table downstage left. “This is a lecture,” Mazarick pronounced, then seemed to sputter out related, similar-sounding words: “electorate,” “electrify,” “defy.” Her tan suit, robotic gestures, and verbal wordplay evoked Laurie Anderson and David Byrne.

Like these artists and their work, soapbox is experimental and provocative without taking itself too seriously. The piece comments on the world around us while defying genre and convention in creative, exciting ways. Mazarick’s introductory lecture continued on a loop, as if she were a glitchy recording instead of a live performer. Tensions between real and virtual increased as soapbox unfolded, raising questions about meaning, belonging, selfhood, and whether technology imitates life (and art), or the other way around.

Every move, every word

Currica, Magsino, and Rivera joined Mazarick for a dance of the daily grind. Their hands and fingers mimicked touchscreen gestures, like zooming in and swiping slides or profiles. With their feet planted, they mimed quotidian gestures like pouring coffee and checking the time, as if stuck in place despite their movement. Rivera’s costumes contributed to the effect, resembling deconstructed office wear that stitched together fabrics belonging to discrete environments. Meanwhile, McCree created layered soundscapes of music, tones, vocals, and whistling from a table overlaid with folds of fabric and button-down shirts.

These creative elements united to further the work’s themes of deconstruction and fragmentation, though some of the lighting cues seemed off. A school of thought suspicious of the certainty of truth and meaning, deconstructionism rejects the frameworks and systems that support them, such as language. These ideas are important to 21st-century life and art, but it is rare to encounter them outside a graduate seminar featuring dense readings. Yet Mazarick’s incorporation of collaboration and humor made deconstructionism fascinating and fun. The dancers showed good range in solos and group sequences with demanding lifts, balances, and tempo changes. They were good actors, too, capably taking on various speaking roles and personas.

Dance rarely involves speaking or dialogue; movement is the point. Generally, I prefer it to stay that way because it’s hard to hear un-mic’d, winded athletes. But I wanted to hear every word issued from this soapbox. Mazarick made clever points and got laughs with quips like, “Science, religion, matter. Does it matter? It’s electric, boogie, woogie, woogie.” Adding to her verbal riffs were recordings of political speeches and press conferences, live dialogue about low batteries and TikTok challenges, and the stories dancers told during their solos.

Magsino shared an experience of immigration and the long journey to naturalized citizenship, then expertly played a blustering politician posturing for applause. Currica’s solo portrayed a bureaucratic nightmare of calendars, templates, emails, and to-do lists. Rivera took on toxic masculinity and fear-based consumer culture. They shifted between overbearing bro shilling an “easy three-step program” and insecure consumer triggered by shame-based advertising. Mazarick’s witty writing, comic timing, stage presence, physical control, and strength produced the most well-rounded performance.

A memorable work

soapbox gave all members of the ensemble opportunities to shine. And they worked well together, especially during a sequence incorporating contact improvisation, a form of partnered improv dance involving touch and weight sharing. As the dancers moved across the stage while leaning on and lifting each other, their bodies suggested images of connection, interdependence, and wholeness. In this way, soapbox challenged the isolation, doom, and overwhelm that often accompany fragmentation and loss of meaning.

This sense of hope combined with the playfulness and compelling performances into a memorable work. Infused with Mazarick’s vision and style, soapbox synthesized various elements into a cohesive and entertaining whole. I look forward to seeing more from Mazarick and the next DanceVisions resident artist.