Hopping, bending, throwing, scooping, skipping, pulling, crouching and grabbing, repetitive actions imbued with playfulness fill the stage. A performer mimics the other performer’s movements and imitates the gestures of mundane daily life over and over again. The arms stretched out in the air emit a subtle sense of amusement and the feet glide on the floor. The performers speak the primary language of human—imitation, like a young child copying the actions of others to navigate the world one lives in. 

The actions are reminiscent of the quotidian—resembling the act of washing, singing and greeting, yet dodges to be a ‘representation’ of the daily life. The performance presents to be familiar and simultaneously unfamiliar. ‘Mirror Not a Mirror’ mirrors the real but through a broken mirror, fragmented, warped and morphed. A piece of the real is reflected on a shard as a partial utterance hinting at the reality. A dancer bends over, briskly sweeps the floor, trembles, lifts the arm to shoulders, turns his body and pauses. While moments of repeated motion imitates the daily routine such as cleaning, it presents an uncanny form of machinery in operation. Dillen’s shattered reflections entice you to anchor the motions to mundane acts that you execute and the space you occupy, however, the linkage to your world remains slippery.