"Standard Time"

This year, I am the Special Events Chair of the Honors College Student Association at Millersville University (wow that's a mouthful!). One of the events I planned for this month was a trip to the Fulton Theater (an opera house) in Lancaster to see the dance musical "Standard Time." IT WAS PHENOMENAL.

The production is all of these professional dancers and singers (who have incredible Broadway experience) coming together for a show choreographed by Mark Stuart. There's no lines in it at all...it's just dance and music, but it was so incredibly moving.

The first movement was set in the 1938s and focused on a guy who shined shoes for a living and followed his experiences of trying to get a job, working in a hotel, and falling for one of the rich heiresses living there. The music was GREAT cause it was all stuff taken from that era, and the dancing was really old-fashioned as well. It was entertaining, comedic, and also thought-provoking with the issue of class difference being examined. Another cool aspect of it was the two main characters, the guy shining shoes and the heiress he falls far, were the only ones wearing red. All the other dancers/singers involved were in some variation of black. So those two really stood.

The next movement took place in the 1968 and followed the story of an interracial couple trying to be together though their friends tore them apart. It took place in a jazz club (THE MUSIC WAS ROCKING!) and was very West Side Story-esque. Two groups...one a mix of African-American/Latino/Asian (representing different races) and the other all Caucasians. They had dance-offs, singers competed to show off who was better, and then it all led up to this ballad where the lights dimmed, and the only focus was on a white girl and a black guy (both dressed in red...see the trend?) who had been noticing each other all night. They danced together, BUT WITHOUT TOUCHING. It was absolutely beautiful to watch, really emotionally effective choreography. After a few minutes, they finally held hands...something so incredibly simple but holding so much meaning after dancing for so long with no physical contact, but then the music went nuts and the lights went nuts and the friends from each side started fighting each other and pulling hair and throwing punches and one of the white guys got out a knife and through all the ruckus, the featured girl got stabbed. And then the curtain went down. That was the end. We were all sitting there with our jaws dropped. So much emotional build up and such an abrupt ending...ridiculously powerful.

The third movement took place in 2008, and it was my absolute favorite one. The music was all modern (there were songs by Adele, One Republic, Sara Bareilles, etc.) but all done in new styles...ah! So good! It opened with a guy in a red tank top surrounded by the rest of the cast, all in black hoodies and black pants, and it was just madness and chaos. And at the end of his feature, another guy in a red tank top walked across the stage...which piqued everyone's curiosity because in each movement, the ones in red always ended up as being the couple. Then there was a transition and a girl in a red dress came on stage and she danced a BEAUTIFUL solo with a man dressed in black to the song "Gravity" (Sara Bareilles)...but at the end of it, the girl was alone and you got the message that her love had passed away. The next scene was at a bar and a big dance scene with all sorts of couples...lesbians...interracial...and then the girl in red showed up but she was with a different man. Their dance was all about being in an abusive relationship...it was so moving and powerful. Ridiculously fast choreography...her being tugged and thrown all across the stage...it ended with the man throwing her down on the ground and leaving her. The music stopped and all you could hear was her sobbing. Then the man from the beginning with the red tank top helped pick her up, showed her a new way to dance/be in a relationship, and they got married. After the next transition, he was still in his red tank top but she had changed into black shorts, a black sports bra, and a cardigan and the scene was them living together at home. We saw their daily routine of going to bed together, waking up and brushing teeth, eating breakfast, then going to work. It went through that pattern three or four times, and each time you could tell the man wasn't as happy as he was before. At one point, the second man in the red tank (from the first scene) came into the house and the two of them danced and the wife came in and saw them, then she ran out crying. Then it was all this craziness of the stage being split and the two men dancing together and figuring out their relationship while the girl worked through her pain...but by the end, they all found peace. She accepted her husband's sexual orientation and let him go be with the other man, and the husband finally was in a fulfilling relationship. I cried so hard, because that's pretty much the storyline of my parents. And I absolutely LOVED how they conveyed the story...neither of them was a bad guy. It was clear the man wasn't happy and not with who he was supposed to be with. But it was also clear the woman was torn up and struggled to be okay, but she eventually found acceptance. I was sobbing. Thinking of my mom...my dad...the struggle for both of them and the amazing resolution that now my family is completely at peace with everything that happened and I couldn't imagine life any other way.

The dance musical ended with an awesome feel good song with joyful dancing (there's no other way to describe it) and celebration, and then a short feature at the end with all the three couples that had been the focus from the different time periods. It was amazing. When it came to the curtain call, I stood up the fastest I ever have for any performance.

What the choreographer and those dancers/singers did was astounding. It was so thought-provoking and emotionally powerful...without one word ever being spoken.

Short clip from one of the musical's workshops: http://www.thefulton.org/standard-time/