AUDIENCE REVIEW: Review of Amina Kolenc's "Pop!"
Performance Date:
April 25th, 2026
Freeform Review:
“Pop!” by Amina Kolenc was premiered at Triskelion Arts in Brooklyn on Saturday, April 25th, 2026, featuring dancers Alyssia Farias, Cece Mitchell, Anne Mohan, and Syd Thiebaut. Amina collaborated with Aj Kolenc to create an original music score supporting the evening-length work. The work ran about 40 minutes with no intermission and a talk-back with the choreographer and performers. The audience had the pleasure to share their interpretations, thoughts, and questions after the performance, as well as gain insight to Amina’s playful process of chance dance. Even composer Aj Kolenc expressed that he used cards and other modes of random choicemaking to develop the soundscore that supported Amina’s work.
The most notable part of Kolenc’s work is how she successfully directed her dancers to have such a responsive nature to the music and atmosphere. There is a sense of awareness of circumstance and how the dancers choose to relate to it. The performers all wore matching plaid shirts with different vibrant-colored pants, offering a sense of juxtaposition between structure and play.
From the start, the work indicates a level of play and curiosity; Dancers are rarely seen still and there is a sense of picture-building and flux between movers on stage. One of the first moments we see is a duet between two dancers Alyssia Farias and Syd Thiebaut. The relationship feels whimsical, as the two tease each other, intertwine with one another, and partake in quirky engagement. There are moments of aimless floating through space and exploration around each other’s bodies, with exaggerated fingers and toes as well as gestures indicating freedom in play, like “binocular eyes” and “party arms” on the head. The audience felt blips of joy and surprise throughout this section, especially in moments when the dancers would audibly say “pop”, referencing the title of the work as well as some semblance of childhood unpredictability. The lights dimmed to a dark yellow hue as the dancers orbited into a trio, now including dancer Anne Mohan.
The second section of the work bursts into a musical groove, as we are introduced to more of these gestures, such as Mohan’s “door-knocking” wrist and Farias’s “come here” finger. We also see recurring images of a backward run, head-nodding, slashing of the arms in Limón-fashion, biting a sandwich, opening the mouth, wiggling shoulders, and hip-swaying left and right. These gestures act as motifs for the rest of the piece, leaving the audience to sit and question the intention of said gestures and their relation to this word “pop”.
The performers in this trio offer a visual that feels like follow-the-leader, and there is a general waxing/waning of movement paired with the vibrant music score. As the music crescendos, the dancers fall out of order and into a sequence of organized chaos; Likewise, when the music score neutralizes, the dancers find settlement in repetition or simple stillness. When the music offers electronic ‘popping’ sounds, the dancers honor it through their own popcorn movements, like taking flight in an exciting jump or finding movement in canon. Thiebaut is seen near the end of this trio falling off their center, wandering about the stage in a freeform body movement. The trio resolves with all dancers in unison “popping” different body parts at a heightened energetic state, almost tantrum-like. Alyssia is stuck on Syd like glue, which is just the first of many times we relish in this motif.
The piece takes an interesting, dynamic shift when Cece appears upstage, accompanied by exciting music felt in beats of 5. Seemingly separating from the others, Mitchell’s solo is lively and orbiting atmospherically. They fulfill this image of “getting stuck” on themself until the other dancers reenter, where they explore the concept of adhesion onto one another. While the dancers obviously feel one another's presence and interaction in the space, there are few moments of physically seeing each other, making it feel like solo play in the company of others. Soon after, the ensemble is seen all together, giving the audience a sense of satisfaction and thrill. The space erupts in partnering, lifts, and weight dependency that heighten the energy and overall feeling of freedom. In partnership with the energetic music score, the dancers yell in sharp and audible signals together, acting as both an audio cue as well as a natural tandem to one another. Mohan and Mitchell explore negative space within each other’s bodies as if they are constantly wrapping; They stay in connection as they glide across the stage, ending in a soft lay together.
In the section that follows, we experience more mystery and try to understand the silly nature of these gestures and relationships between performers. Supported by an atmospheric and mesmerizing sound score, the dancers move about in slow rolling motions, creating a sense that they are at the bottom of an ocean. We hear a piano come in, offering a dooming chord that makes the audience feel unsure of this clear tonal shift. New gestures that feel both familiar, yet random are performed, such as an eyebrow wipe with the index fingers. Different pairings of dancers break out in supportive, fast, and dynamic phrases, as they occasionally interrupt the others with audible ‘pops’ and slaps. Mohan is seen exhausting herself in a repetition of gestures; This is not an uncommon image for the work, as we see recurring themes of renewal vs exhaustion and repetition until interruption in Kolenc’s choreography.
In the progression of “Pop!”, we are gifted with a party element, where it feels as though Anne Mohan sees the audience and is directing this “party” action to us. She is soon after joined by the other dancers, where they feel celebratory in their unity until they are again interrupted in thought by a division of duets. We see a pattern of duets where two are low to the ground and moving at a slower pace, while the other two dancers are moving energetically at a high level. There is a hyper-memorable moment where all the dancers are in a tight formation and dipping their upper body in a circular action, where everytime they ‘peak’ at the top of the circle, they demonstrate the gesture motifs, illustrating them in a flipbook-manner. Autonomously, the dancers make music on their own bodies near the end of the piece…It feels like an ode to the musical ‘pops’ as well as this childlike play the audience feels throughout the work. Just like the indication of spontaneity in the word “pop” itself, the choreography reflects this pattern of random explosions and interruptions of new thoughts.
At the conclusion of the piece, Kolenc came out to facilitate a talk-back with audience members and the performers. She gave insight to her process, intention, and experience making “Pop!”. Amina explained more about her piece: “The concept of apophenia was the seed for this project, leading to reflection on the ways that we as humans perceive the world around us, and how we connect to art”. She also gave us a peek into her process, explaining how material was generated through random devices, much like Cunningham’s efforts. The dancers created the bulk of the work through drawing randomized scribbles, rolling dice, and picking out of a hat. As Farias describes, the piece was built “like a collage”, offering complete freedom in interpretation for audiences. Kolenc orchestrated a viewing experience with no meaning, allowing the audience to curate their own experience in coloring in the meaning on a blank canvas. “Whatever it means to you is what the piece means” (Kolenc). The evening was a sort of experiment conducted to see how people draw meaning from shapes, colors, sounds, and feelings. One audience member noted that it seemed as though the piece was “about control and freedom”. One viewer thought the piece was about “magnetic connections where they wanted to pull away but couldn’t”, while another interpreted the piece as “working together in this celestial being…like stars racing past each other, but still in orbit”. Audience members discussed balance amongst randomness, the organic human experience, and how they were “able to just enjoy the patterns knowing it didn’t mean anything in particular”. Viewer Nicole Pellegrin even questioned “when personal emotion is taken out of it, how are we still drawn to one another?”.
Hearing the audience’s mixed interpretations on a virtually intentionless piece was inspiring in regards to the human craving for community and universal experience. “Pop!” supports the idea that art engagement is important in how it allows people to connect to their own experiences and feelings as to better understand themselves through the artwork’s vessel. Kolenc’s experiment is an ode to art-making; It is important now more than ever that we are advocating for the individual and accessibility to dance for all audience types. What do we personally take away from something nondescriptive or ambiguous? Why do we seek such meaning in something that can just be abstract? In what ways do we as humans overlap, even when it’s unstructured or unplanned?
The piece did not feel random to audience members because the dancers shared the same world and vocabulary; They played together, and crafted under the same direction, creating some unity in the process. The dancers took clear ownership of their own choices, adjusting sonically as well as physically to the circumstances Kolenc offered to them. Amina noted a primary goal of the work was to “surrender to chance in process and push out of habit”; “Pop!” successfully demonstrated the beauty of a serendipitous artistic practice.
Author:
Kierstyn Edore
