A car crash and the Oresteia helped shape A Crack in Everything, the hour-long quintet with which Zoe | Juniper make their Chicago debut. In an interview, choreographer Zoe Scofield discussed an accident she and her father had when she was 16, which they remember very differently. For her, the scene was well lit and silent; for him, it was dark and noisy. A Crack in Everything speaks to such pivotal, highly subjective “before-and-after moments,” Scofield said—to the “space between cause and effect.” Aeschylus’s Oresteia, a trilogy detailing generations of revenge, likewise follows the thread of irretrievable moments. Appropriately, Scofield’s movement often has a ritualistic quality, a friezelike formality that’s enhanced by Erik Andor’s striking costumes: helmet-style headdresses-cum-laurel wreaths, tunics, gold-flecked unitards.
The other half of Zoe | Juniper, visual designer Juniper Shuey, essentially paints with light in this phantasmagoria. Reflective surfaces are everywhere. Even the floor of the performance space will be coated in glossy plastic. Scrims and Robert Aguilar’s stark lighting transform the stage picture in an instant, while Shuey’s videos add ghostly doppelgangers and otherworldly studies in smoke. Matt Starrit’s sound design reinforces the piece’s mix of menace and fateful beauty.