In Latin, limen means a threshold or doorway: literally, the line between the inside and the outside worlds. The most well-known derivation is, of course, the word “subliminal,” onto which we’re used to tacking an sinister motive: subliminal advertising infects our psyche without us knowing, or being able to do anything about it. Straight-up liminality — i.e., the border between the inner psychological realm and the outward physical plane — is a little less subtle, though no less persuasive. At the Oakland Metro this Saturday night, it’s the name and the game, as Liminal Dance Theatre (not related to the West Oakland warehouse gallery) revives its collaboration with Berkeley-based chamber orchestra Rosin Coven and SF-based “avant-cabaret” group the Vau de Vire Society.
The East Bay reprise of a show that premiered at the Great American Music Hall in June, the evening will be all you might expect from a veritable throng of multitalented, variously personaed and costumed taboo-shunning performers fresh from Burning Man. But it’s not just your basic nouveau-burlesque routine with some kinky fire art tossed in for good measure. To wit: the show’s centerpiece, “The Flower in the Forge: A Trilogy,” choreographed by LDT founder Maya Culbertson-Lane and composed by Rosin Coven’s Carrie Katz. The two psychotherapists — Katz is practicing, and Culbertson-Lane is interning — say the piece is about transformation. That’s a process they both know well; Katz and her husband Justin, Rosin Coven’s bassist, recently had a baby, and Culbertson-Lane is nine months pregnant. Katz notes that the work, which has been in the making for about seven years, is not just about literal childbirth, but personal and creative catharsis, “a part of you dying and giving birth to a new part.” As for Culbertson-Lane, she says she’s “always been interested in displaying the realm of the unconscious, the nonlinear, the watery terrain of liminal imagination in my choreography.”
Liminal Dance Theatre, Rosin Coven, and the Vau de Vire Society perform together at the Oakland Metro (201 Broadway at 2nd St.) this Saturday at 8 p.m. $12-$15; Paradox-Media.com/liminal/showcase
