09/09/2020
😍🤩🥰🤩😍😃😘😂😙🤔⛱️🤭😜🙃🤫🤗👁️🌹😄💯When she was 14, as a ballet student in Wenatchee, Wash., Clare Barron was unexpectedly promoted to a senior role in “The Nutcracker.” It wasn’t because of her strengths as a dancer — as she recalled in a Skype interview, laughing so hard she seemed to be verging on tears — but because a group of older students at her ballet school had suddenly quit. That left Ms. Barron’s less promising cohort, what she called “the black sheep of the studio,” to fill their shoes.
🤩🥰😍🤪😍🥳🥳😃🤔😄💯🤫🤔😛🤭🤗🔥🤗“We were truly out of our element,” she said. “I remember people in the audience suppressing laughter, because they all knew how it was supposed to go. I didn’t last much longer after that experience.”
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There’s no scene quite like that in Ms. Barron’s play “Dance Nation,” which has been enjoying critical acclaim and a sold-out run at Playwrights Horizons. (It has been extended through July 1.) But in this comedy about a dance team of 13-year-olds striving to compete in nationals — and learning about themselves in the process — not all goes smoothly onstage or in the studio. Jealousy, injury and menstruation complicate their journeys of self-discovery and s*xual awakening. So does the pressure imposed by their hard-to-please instructor, Dance Teacher Pat, to heal the world through dance in a lyrical number inspired by Gandhi.
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It would be easy to rehash stereotypes about competitive dance as purely cutthroat and female adolescence (there’s just one boy on the team) as purely harrowing. But Ms. Barron exaggerates and undercuts those notions, revealing their gray areas. While acknowledging the stress of participating in competitive dance at a formative age, “Dance Nation” also highlights the surreal and exploratory dynamics of teen girlhood, as they play out in dressing rooms and daydreams.
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