Cab Legs

Cab Legs infuses a classic love story with frantic choreography from Indian movie musicals and Betty Boop cartoons, set to Cumbia music from Columbia. The show is an early attempt by ERS to mount a conventional play. After choosing the work of a familiar and well-renowned 20th Century American playwright, the company utterly failed to find a satisfying way to perform the work as written. Instead, the actors, having memorized the lines, were instructed to paraphrase the text anew with each performance. This increasingly challenging task created a tone of awkward intensity and managed to capture the essence of the strained communication between the play’s two romantic leads.

Before discovering the idea of paraphrasing a well-known play, the ensemble had concentrated on creating dances from both Indian musicals and 1930s cartoons. In an early work-in-progress, this dance material was interspersed with periods of prolonged silence during which the actors would occasionally mutter under their breath to each other. This early structural idea was inspired by the daily routine of firefighters, as they waited to leap into action. The play (modified and paraphrased) was then dropped in to this existing dramatic structure.

Performed only in intimate spaces, much of the dialogue was spoken at a volume just above a whisper. This was ERS’s first piece to be performed outside of New York City and was the first ERS piece to tour Europe, premiering at The Belluard-Bolwerk Festival in Swtizerland in July 1997.