Yoga Sass

Tripsichore bends the rules.

by Dana Henry

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Edward Clark and his London-based troupe, Tripsichore, spent years perfecting their ballet, punk and neoclassical steps before scrapping it all for yoga. But their asanas-centered performances are more twisted humor than inward bliss. In their latest show, The Insects, an aging hippie attempts a meditative practice and is transported to another realm where he is hunted by giant wasps and impregnated by an insect queen. It's not your typical yoga, and Clark insists that it's not dance. Whatever it is, this cultlike oddity has been finding audiences around the world.

City Paper: Has yoga given you any special powers of the mind?

Edward Clark: No, it just seems to make me increasingly incompetent with anything mechanical — cards don't work in ATM machines and watches stop.

CP: But at least yoga helps with dance, right?

EC: We don't call what we do dance, we call it theater, but that's just a matter of semantics. Way back in the '70s you had dance theater; this is yoga theater.

CP: So how do you transform personal practice into theatrics?

EC: People are rather confused — blame the Californians — on what constitutes personal practice. Because so much yoga practice had been couched on becoming a better person or relieving personal stress, it's missed out on the upper limbs of asanas. In the seventh limb, your conscience can expand to fill a theater.

CP: Your performances have titles like Out of the Void, Beyond Death and Tripsichore Trips to Ecstasy. Do you ever come back to Earth?

EC: In conventional theater you get people to feel certain emotions. In Tripsichore, we want them to feel a spiritual beauty. They have a real trip, man. We don't really come down to Earth.

CP: Literally a trip?

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EC: The yoga itself isn't very funny, but the practitioners are pretty humorous — people who take their own pieties and dogmas too seriously. So it is a bit of fun at their expense.

CP: You're holding workshops before the performance. What can we expect from a Tripsichore class?

EC: A few laughs. And of course profound insight into the nature of reality along with the ability to obtain sustained enlightenment. [Laughs]

CP: And a way out of The Void.

EC: Exactly.

Tripsichore Yoga Theatre: The InsectsSun., June 29, 7:30 p.m., $20-$25 ($50-$65 with 2-4 p.m. workshop), Studio 34, 4522 Baltimore Ave., 215-387-3434, studio34yoga.com