decreation at BAM

You should be very very jealous of me and Jimmy Lo. Not only did we have great weather in New York this weekend and stay with the lovely Kasia Kowalczyk (yes she plays an alien in star trek), but we also had front row seats to Decreation, choreographed by William Forsythe.

It's not often that a performance exceeds already-high expectations, but this one surprised the shit out of me. Based on an essay by Anne Carson about (what do you think?) relationships, the text explores the impossibilities of moving/communicating thru romantic jealousies. The dancers confront each other, scream, they try not-talking, they attempt to make time stand still, they condescend each other, they tease and flirt, they break things down detail by detail, they just fail at it all. And that's just what I can say about the text.

The music was done by David Morrow and it was really wonderful. Most of the dialogue was spoken into mics and manipulated in realtime, supplemented with Morrow onstage keyboard. The mics acted more like confessionals or telephones than soapboxes and dancers constantly moved the 4 or 5 microphones around--creating territories and zones on an otherwise blank stage. During the musical climax, dancers (and a sprinkling of professional singers I think) built a really long crescendo of 'i love you's sung into the microphones. The dancers spoke/sang/screamed the lines to the microphones amidst heightening activities/dances.


Below is a clip pretty indicative of the pacing and feeling.

Aspen Sante Fe Ballet

Friday night I went to the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet. A very pleasant experience considering my expectations were low and I was up in the cheapseats. They performed pieces by three different choreographers: Twyla Tharp, Jorma Elo, and Moses Pendelton.



I went to the ballet specifically to see the first piece: Sweet Fields, choreographed by Twyla Tharp. It's set to Shaker hymns, which were so gorgeous I would have bought a ticket just to listen to them (unfortunately they were recorded, not live). The movements where modeled after traditional Shaker worship. ** A side note, Shakers haven't really shaken in a long time, they just walk around in a circle swinging their hands up to their chest and down again. ** But Tharp definitely knows this and the translation/interpretation is pretty effective, esp the kicks as they relate to that Shaker arm-swing. The dancers' outfits were also perfect: these charming loosely hanging shirts added the right amount of lightness to some pretty heavy movements/gestures. To me, that's what worship is all about: the heavy and the light.

Ever since I've seen the documentary on Shakers I've been sort of obsessed with their relationship to activity/activities. Shakers were sort of like worker bees: but bees for the glory of God. Since they weren't judgmental or witch hunters or into other crazy isolationist acts (maybe the no-sex things seems crazy, but it makes sense to me), their thing was activity and craftsmanship. I keep wondering about that relationship to activity. How does it bring one closer to God? A question for the cosmos I suppose, but I was secretly wishing the dance would get into this question. Unfortunately it didn't, but the dance was still very lovely and personable (which is an odd word to describe a dance, but apt).



The second dance was choreographed by Jorma Elo. A few weeks ago I saw 'Lost on SLOW', a piece of his, but felt wishywashy about it. I was really shocked how much I enjoyed this one (I can't remember the name). Where Lost to SLOW seemed to be dancing about dancing (like ballet was looking into the mirror and making faces), this piece felt like a balletic romp. A pure system, instead of trying to figure out what to be (I believe the other piece sort of tried to be 'puppeting' dance or some such thing). And so energetic and new. Yay! I'm now a fan and can't wait to see another.



The last piece is hardly worth talking about, but was a real crowdpleaser. In Noir Blanc, choreographed by Moses Pendelton, dancers appeared to be black-lit aliens wearing half-black, half-white suits. Projected on a semi-translucent screen, pictures of planets and other-worldlinesses slowly panned to the beat of quintessentially new age tunes. The dance was mostly just creating optical forms and illusions in the glowing suits. [and the audience says 'ahhhhhhh'] Snore. I guess you have to pay your bills somehow. Jorma certainly isn't for everyone...

Dance Salad Review

I went to Dance Salad last weekend with mom (visiting) which was a little nerve-wracking because I wasn't sure how she'd fair for two days of three-hour dances. I'll run down my high points:



Xing Liang performed a quick solo called Existence. I wish I had the dance vocabulary to give you a proper run-down on this one There weren't any bells or whistles, no tropes, narratives, shout-outs, or tricks. Can't really say where it all came from. But I can say it was straight-up and intense. Soaring, really. A side note, I will say the man appeared to have freakishly large hands. Mom said it was the dancing that made them look big but I'm not so sure. I've tried to research this online but haven't come up with much yet.



Four dancers from the Dresden Semper Oper Ballet performed Forsythe 's STEPTEXT . This is a an old piece, created in 1985, but I've never seen it done and was absolutely enthralled. It felt very intellectual and odd in the way the gestures spelled everything out (hence, the title). Many of the gestures didn't fit together exactly, didn't "flow" to use a pretty idiotic term, yet still proceeded as if finishing a sentence. This made me think of what a sentence does, what it means to do, and how it does it. Maybe a dance can be like a sentence, be this propulsion of gestures toward some new or undefined meaning? What I've learned about Forsythe does lend to this kind of reading of the dance. Tho I haven't got it quite right yet.



I also enjoyed the technicality of Forsythe 's Two Part Invention. Even tho the shtick was pretty ordinary (a piece was performed with flawless classical virtuosity and then redone in a jerky deconstructed way); the execution was flawless. I loved the movements. I just wish they were used as something more than just a reactionary/intellectual exercise. Maybe I wish the first 'classical' part were taken out and we got the crazy stuff straight-up, without any context.



I enjoyed Mats Ek's performances. When I attended the talk he gave last Wednesday at the MFA, he emphasized the non-collaborative aspect to his choreography. He and he alone develops the dance, perfects the dance, and then begins directing the dancers. This is very different from most experimental dance now, where the dancer and choreographer often engage and influence the movements together. Ek said that this was dangerous because it allows the dancer to do what they like doing instead of what should be done. Anyways, his choreographic approach was clear in dances like Memory and O Sole Mio, both being humorous pieces about getting older, health, and death performed by Ana Laguna. Since Ek is getting on himself, his process lent itself to these confrontations with the body.

However, I was shocked by the youthfulness of the The Apartment, performed by the Royal Swedish Ballet’s touring group Stockholm 59° North. The dance was a really powerful look at new relationships, sex, miscommunication, etc. I felt like the piece sprung from my own head which really shocked me. Maybe I'm just susceptible to these types of topics right now, but I did think the dance was excellent (and not as hokey as some of the ones he screened during his lecture on Wednesday).





And who can forget the man on stilts, the women with hair to her toes, the mechanized insanity of an insect-like man and the yogi who tree posed for what felt like forever? Well, I didn't because I watched it both nights. The first night, I was interested, engaged, but felt that all the smoke and mirrors was covering up something. The "what's coming next?" questions was getting in the way of the choreography. So the next night I was able to really enjoy this peice (or actually it was two peices sort of slapped together), especially the music. The mucisicans of Ensemble Micrologus, an Italian Medieval and Renaissance instrumental and vocal group, were all situated on stage with the dancers (lit and everything). The music was really something. Also the choreography was better when I wasn't distracted with all the props and set-up and allusions.

Anyways. All in all, it was splendid, a word I don't use but think fitting.

A Convenient Woman by Teresa Chapman and Leslie Scates

Let me not forget A Convenient Woman, a dance-theater piece by Teresa Chapman and Leslie Scates. I went last Friday and quite enjoyed it. I will not give you the play by play because Nancy Wozny has already cleared the way for me. I just want to offer some freak applause where ol' Nanc might be stitching things a little too tight.

First off, Frederique DeMontblanc produced some wonderful lo-tech visuals. I was surprised how much I enjoyed watching the cursor click thru different high-end websites like Barney's and Nordstrom's, pick out items of interest, save them, then push pictures of shoes and dresses side-by-side to test whether they "go." Instead of making a (tired) point about the commercialization of femininity, this was doing something far more complicated and interesting: the process of "outfitting." Shopping is a very complicated activity of discovery and assimilation. I was pleasantly suprised (and entertained) by the story of subjectivity playing itself out online.

Me and Nanc both enjoyed watching magazine cutouts of diamonds and rubies slide across the screen. I actually squealed when little paper hands scooped them around. How great is it to compare magazine-obsession with paper dolls? Why didn't I think of that? Not long after that, I had another "Why didn't I think of that" moment. We watch a giant headshot of Teresa Chapman's big beautiful face staring into the camera (blinking, but being very still). Chapman's intense expression is pretty great by itself, but slowly you realize that the image is changing, morphing actually, but you can't figure out why. Bit but bit you see eyebrows getting dark, lashes heavier, eyes lined. It was subtle. It took me a while to figure it out. The timing of this thing is impeccable. By the end, Chapman is so drag-queened out, the intensity of her eyes takes on this really masculine look. She's a man! Just add makeup! Yay!

I do hate going on about the video, since there were parts of the choreography that I also enjoyed. Admittedly, Nancy is right about the text/gesture in parts. Sometimes too robotic, sometimes too hippy. But I argue that terms like "unkempt" and "messy" and "rough around the edges" are exactly what this piece SHOULD be doing. If anything, concepts should be less defined, murkier, jerkier, more "stuck on." Something that I kept looking/listening for: to hear and feel the exhaustion of the choreography in their voices. Ah, but no such luck. They timed little breaks between dancing to avoid such "messiness," but I say BRING IT ON TIRED AND OUT OF BREATH. Thay mastered dancing in high heels but they never faltered. If I missed anything in this show, it was a faltering.

Enough with the criticism, tho. There were gestures that really stuck with me. One that I keep coming back to is this truncated shimmy that both dancers do. They shake the head and shoulders wiggly-like but don't really loosen up, it's like the movements of a little girl and an old woman at the same time. I keep thinking of that gesture. I do it at home sometimes trying to recreate it. It was totally female without being feminine. To me, this was the highlight of the show.

The Objectification of Things

I can't help but smile when I think about the performance I saw at DiverseWorks on Friday night. Michelle Ellsworth and two sidekicks performed "The Objectification of Things," a snarky little romp about the thing-ness of the hamburger. And snarky it definitely was. The piece began with the Unveiling of the Hamburger which took quite a while because the poor thing was hidden, Russian-doll-style, beneath in a variety of weird textures: velvet curtains, chicken wire domes, a leather and twizzler corset, etc. Many of these textile concoctions already had me snorting (quietly, I was trying to be quiet).

Once into the show, all three performers broke out in song about the scientific makeup of the hamburger (it is made of carbon, we are made of carbon). A song about the sociological and historical implications of the hamburger, the people that brought the hamburger to the masses, etc. Ellsworth's two sidekicks were a bizarre mix of go-go dancers and queen's attendants, usually in sync, moving thru a haphazard set of gestures. I do wish their choreography were a little better, but it was no matter because Ellsworth's performance was the focal point. Once I got used to her rushed, almost caffeinated, delivery; I really enjoyed it. While "lecturing" us, she rapidly changed the slides on the screen by snapping her fingers (really
loud!).



Late in the show, she took a different approach to these lectures. Sidekicks brought out 5 wheels with different words written on them: god's will, greenhouse effect, food, sex, who's to blame, etc. After spinning all the wheels, Michelle would lecture on the topic. While the spontaneity of this kind of performance should be interesting, and Ellsworth certainly pulled it off, I'm a bit tired of things like this. The whole chance-operation performance shtick gets old. I guess I'm more interested in smaller acts of spontaneity, not headliners that scream performance art art art art art!

The highlight of the dance was a long monologue that Michelle performed with the hamburger. If other parts of the dance were about the hamburger's history and biology; this part was about the sexual hamburger: the desire for a hamburger. The choreography itself wasn't spectacular, but the monologue delivery (and the writing) were. Also, the use of the hamburger in the dance. She danced (while speaking) for about ten minutes, caressing the hamburger in her hand, balancing the hamburger on her head, placing the hamburger on the bottom of her feet, and so on. The hamburger truly transformed.

Subsequently a plaster image was made of the hamburger. After the hamburger was ritualistically killed, it's likeness was resurrected. While certainly the snarkiest part of the show, the whole thing was pulled off in a certain conversational style ("I used white plaster because it's prettier") so there was no grand "Statement" thank goodness. In all, the performance was a breath of fresh air for the Houston scene and form of slapstick irony that I could actually enjoy without feeling guilty or mean. Certainly a step up from the Joe Goode performance that I actually walked out on earlier this month. Yay Michelle! Glad you came!