‘Eterniday’ Celebrates the Inexplicable

Witness Relocation’s collage dance-theater has been compared to Richard Foreman, the Wooster Group, and John Cage: a list that follows the evolution of the experimental avant garde across the past century. Yet no matter what century you’re in, one person’s “experimental” has always been another person’s “incomprehensible.” The beauty of Charles Mee’s latest work, “Eterniday,” is how it rejoices in that ambiguity, revealing with a wink how its own randomness pales in comparison to the unpredictable way in which we all live.
“Eterniday” puts two disparate timespans on top of each other. The entirety of human history is condensed down to the course of one day: morning, afternoon, night, and dawn. Director-choreographer Dan Safer turns the abstract march of time into something tangible; he assigns each of these four periods a shape, mapping them onto the stage with tape and restricting all action within that area. As the day progresses we feel the playing space expand and contract, moving to the rhythms of time.
Besides making time physical, “Eterniday” also makes it personal. In an uncharacteristically straightforward plot, we see two players