Vanessa Justice Dance at the Joyce SoHo
October 19, 2009
Vanessa Justice Dance in FLATLAND, photo by Ian Douglas
FLATLAND is a curious name for such a richly textured work that draws on many forms and mediums – movement, film, and animation – for inspiration. Last Thursday, the evening-length piece by Vanessa Justice premiered at the Joyce SoHo, where Justice is currently a Residency Artist. Chilling effects, such as audio excerpts from the 1977 film “Eraserhead” and black and white video projections of the piece’s three women (Maggie Bennett, Kendra Portier, and Alli Ruszkowski) wove their way through FLATLAND, and although many moments were hauntingly striking, Justice never connected the dots to deliver a satisfying whole.
Situated in a hazy, eerily lit space, the three dancers created multidimensional images by interacting with their surroundings and each other. They picked up free-standing stage lights and replaced them center stage in order to create shadows on the white walls, which later served as the dancers’ partners as they built upon its two-dimensionality by engaging with their own shadows. Harrowing video projections of the women set against the sound of wind – perhaps during a storm – were ominous, and later on, the dancers’ pulsating head-throwing and fast breathing pushed them to the edge of anxiety and exhaustion. FLATLAND was not a comforting place. Its atmosphere was cold and disturbing, and its three characters seemed tense and tormented. At one point, they spoke robotically and insincerely to the audience, stating their wish for the audience to be comfortable and relaxed. They even invited one lucky audience member to take a seat in a plush, blue-green chair near the front of the stage (a young girl eagerly accepted the offer).
In spite of its myriad layers and the variety of texts and sources of inspiration, the work felt fragmented and its dancers too fragile and psychologically damaged to ever reveal the essence of their mysteriousness. Transitions from one moment to the next seemed arbitrary, and although Justice noted in the program that she wanted the audience to have “plenty of room for varying responses and interpretations”, there was not enough structure and substantive content to create a meaningful interpretation. Throughout the piece, repetitions of an excerpt from “Eraserhead” revealed a man saying, “I thought I heard a stranger”. By the end of the work, it seemed that FLATLAND was in fact the stranger, for it was just as elusive and perplexing as when it began.
Gibney Dance: View Partially Obstructed
October 15, 2009
How do we come to terms with knowing so little? Gina Gibney poses this question in her newest work for Gibney Dance, View Partially Obstructed, which premiered at Baryshnikov Arts Center on Tuesday evening. The hour-long piece explores the subjective nature of perception and the fact that we can never see or feel everything. In spite of having incomplete or distorted information, we shape our understanding of ourselves and others based on what we know.
View Partially Obstructed features a brooding score by Ryan Lott, with a mix of delicate piano and electronics, and a sleek set design by Lex Liang that allows the piece’s five dancers to move transparent, rectangular panels along a suspended grid. Live animation by Joshue Ott/superDraw creates projections that echo and interact with the dancers’ fluid partnering, meditative pauses, and curving limbs. The movement, music, design, and animation combine to create a viewing experience that is deeply personal. Without fully understanding the creative process for Gibney, the performers, and the collaborators, the audience can choose what to watch and how to interpret it. Where one viewer might find something meaningful, another might feel unaffected. It’s all a matter of perception.
Gibney Dance performs View Partially Obstructed through Saturday, October 17th, 8 PM, at Baryshnikov Arts Center: 450 West 37th Street. On Friday evening, there will be a post-performance Q&A and reception. Tickets can be ordered through SmartTix or by calling 212.868.4444. General admission is $20. Seniors, students, and dancers can obtain $15 tickets with the discount code “DANCE” through SmartTix.
A Day at the Dia
October 13, 2009
Richard Serra’s Torqued Ellipse II, photo by Evan Namerow
This past Sunday, I got a satisfying dose of art, nature, and tranquility just a short train ride north of Manhattan. I escaped from New York City and headed to Beacon, New York, home of the Dia: Beacon, a contemporary art museum that houses works by some of the most significant artists of the last half century. Although the museum itself was the main attraction of the day (especially Richard Serra’s breathtaking sculptures), getting there was equally enjoyable. My companion and I boarded a Metro North train on Sunday morning, and after rattling past 125th Street and leaving the city, we were treated to scenic views of the Hudson for the rest of our eighty-minute journey. Fortunately, it was a gorgeous day: plenty of sailboats were on the water, and the mountains were just starting to show signs of autumn, with reds and oranges and yellows standing out among the stretches of green.
The view on the pathway to the Dia
Upon arriving in Beacon, we took the five-minute walk along the road and arrived at the Dia, which is housed in a 1929 Nabisco box-printing factory. Before even taking in the exhibits, I stood in awe of the massive size of the gallery space – a whopping 240,000 square feet. Although the Metropolitan Museum and MoMA aren’t exactly cramped, the Dia: Beacon has some unique assets that set it apart. The whole museum is lit naturally, and the sun turned out to be an integral ingredient for viewing many of the works. Furthermore, each gallery is devoted to a single artist, and the Dia catered to the artists’ needs in order to accommodate the unconventional dimensions and characteristics of their work.
The entrance to the Dia: Beacon
On the main level, Robert Smithson’s Map of Broken Glass (1969) shows a pile of shattered, transparent glass on the floor. But as its title suggests, there is a metaphorical significance to the work that forces the viewer to question the journey of each piece of glass to its current state. John Chamberlain used crushed automobile parts to make sculptures of varying sizes and dimensions in the 60s and 70s. Some were short and clunky, while another one included long, twisted strips of colorful metal that hung from the ceiling. In You see I am here after all (2008), Zoe Leonard depicted Niagara Falls through nearly 4000 vintage postcards of the destination. Michael Heizer’s Negative Megalith #5 (1998) shows a huge stone placed in a vertical wall, where the wall should be, while Fred Sandback wanted to create sculptures that did not have an inside. So, he made vertical thread constructions that depicted transparent geometries and linear trajectories, without having a definable volume.
One of the Dia’s galleries, photo by Tony Cenicola
The museum’s lower level houses four torqued sculptures by Richard Serra, an artist whose massive works first struck me when I saw them at the MoMA in 2007. They are on long-term display at the Dia, and as soon as I entered the room, I was soaked in Serra’s sculptural splendor. Situated next to each other, the four works fit snuggly into the enormous space, creating a sense of immediacy for the viewer. Although they are made of sheet metal, the sculptures’ earth tones, twists, and spirals – not to mention their striking size – make them seem grounded, natural, and organic. The earthy quality of Serra’s work is heightened by the natural light flooding through the windows, casting incredible shadows on the sculptures’ sides and occasionally creeping into their interiors. Walking through the labyrinthine structures was full of surprises. With their curving walls, it was impossible to know what was in front of me, and where exactly I would end up. Standing or sitting at the center of the sculptures was both intimidating and comforting: the walls felt protective and caring, but upon looking up, it was hard not to feel frightened by such towering, majestic beauty. Moreover, I was continually amazed by what Serra had accomplished: the upper and lower edges of each sculpture create a perfect ellipse.
Looking up from the ground, Serra’s curving sculpture meets the ceiling
As it turns out, Serra was strongly affected by contemporary dance as a young artist, prompting him to think about “ways of relating movement to material and space”. Furthermore, he said, “I found very important the idea of the body passing through space, and the body’s movement not being predicated totally on image or sight or optical awareness, but on physical awareness in relation to space, place, time, and movement.” Staring up at the sculptures gave me the sensation that the sculptures or I were constantly moving. And without any hard edges, the sculptures and their movement felt endless. Observing and entering Serra’s sculptures transported me miles away from the traditional art-viewing experience, yet I still felt firmly grounded and aware of my surroundings.
Although there were plenty of other visitors there on Sunday, my companion and I often felt like we had the Dia to ourselves. We spent a solid two hours in the museum and then spent some time exploring the outdoor spaces, which include a garden – where there is currently a sound installation – and plenty of grass to sprawl out and enjoy the quiet. On a sunny day, a trip to the Dia: Beacon is a perfect escape from the noise and chaos of Manhattan.
All photos by Evan Namerow unless otherwise noted
Past Meets Present in Lucinda Childs’ “Dance”
October 12, 2009
Dancers in Lucinda Childs’ Dance, photo by Sally Cohn
Last Tuesday evening, Lucinda Childs Dance returned to The Joyce Theater for a rare performance of Dance, a signature 1979 work that includes a score by Philip Glass and a filmed version of the piece by Sol LeWitt. It was the main attraction on the program, and the sweeping performance proved why. Two other more recent works were also performed – the 1993 ensemble work Concerto and the 2001 solo Largo, danced by Childs (who is 69) – but neither made a particularly lasting impact. With the focus on the hour-long Dance, the performance was a beautiful, flowing, and haunting dialogue between past and present.
Two at a time, the dancers, all in white slacks and leotards, skimmed horizontally across the stage in a series of skips, turns, and low jumps. The movement itself, which remained on one level throughout the work, was not nearly as striking as the dancers’ rhythmic quality and the driving force of Glass’s score that propelled them forward. Layered on top of the dancers was LeWitt’s black and white film, making the work feel three-dimensional and historically richer. The ghostly figures were projected onto the scrim at various sizes, so that in one moment they seemed to be dancing alongside the live dancers, and in another they loomed large over the entire stage, stretching from the floor to the ceiling. They also framed the space in several ways: at one point the film was projected above the dancers, allowing the audience to simultaneously watch both live and filmed dancers.
The blending of archival footage with live dance brought up questions about authenticity. For the audience, were the “originals” – the filmed dancers – more real than the live performers? Or did the audience more closely relate to the live dancers because they were there, in the present, performing something more tangibly felt than the filmed footage? Depending on how the performance was viewed, one was echoing the other and comparisons between the two were inevitable. The live dancers were more technically trained, showing more stretch in their limbs, while the filmed dancers seemed to have a better understanding of the music’s propulsive energy.
The filmed image of Childs, and Caitlin Scranton on stage, photo by Sally Cohn
A giant-sized image of Childs appeared in the work’s second section, showing her severe beauty and ethereal movement quality as she danced on a grid while Caitlin Scranton performed on the Joyce’s stage. In her performance of Largo, Childs showed the same poise and presence that she had thirty years ago, but she looked sadly brittle and stiff.
The third part of Dance was similar to the first, but it included more complex interactions between the live and filmed dancers that accumulated as the section progressed. In the midst of the joyous, sweeping movement, one of the live dancers gazed upward at the filmed dancers performing overhead. Perhaps she was acknowledging her predecessors, offering her performance to them as much as she was offering it to the audience. Or maybe it was just coincidental that the filmed footage was hovering above her when she lifted her eyes. In spite of the archival component of the piece, preserved and here to stay, performances of Dance will always be ephemeral. The filmed dancers will remain ghosts, but as the cast of live dancers changes, so too with the live and filmed dancers’ interactions. The documented past will continue to encounter an evolving present.
The Forsythe Company in Decreation at BAM
October 8, 2009
William Forsythe’s Decreation, photo by Dominik Mentzos
William Forsythe’s 2003 piece Decreation, which opened last night at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, is a meditation on the messiness of life. The work takes its title from an essay by Anne Carson, and as the title suggests, the eighteen dancers dissolved into nothingness while in states of rage, tenderness, love, and jealousy. For sixty-five minutes, dialogue, movement, live video, and jarring sounds joined forces to create a chilling, frustrating commentary on the emotional self.
A heated dialogue occurred between a man and woman questioning their love for one another as they tugged at their own clothing and jerked at each other’s limbs. Their argument was re-contextualized and distorted as other dancers repeated their words elsewhere in the piece. A man matter-of-factly presented his own needs to a moaning woman (“This is the deal. You give me everything and I give you nothing.”), a lonely, lustful woman pressed herself between two stoic men, and a raging man ripped at his own skin while shouting in German. Contributing to the dense, claustrophobic atmosphere was the sound design, which amplified or changed the pitch of the dancers’ voices, or drowned them out with electronics. In addition to suggesting that the speaker and listener have different perceptions of what they hear, the dizzying sounds also reflected the chaos of conflicting internal voices.
However distressing the on-stage communication was for the audience, it was surely more challenging for the dancers of The Forsythe Company as they courageously, meticulously navigated through the performance. With remarkable commitment, they conveyed a range of emotional states through dialogue and movement – which shifted among convulsions, fluid softness, and combative, tangled duets and solos – while also working with a video camera and sound equipment that depicted and altered their own images and voices. Besides battling with each other, the dancers were forced to face their own projected images, illustrating the hidden interactions that occur within an individual.
“This is irritating”, said one of the dancers to the audience, and as this line was repeated throughout Decreation, those words felt increasingly true of the piece itself. Perhaps this was Forsythe’s intention – to show how vicious, loud, insincere, confusing, and tender our communication with one another can be. And to make us realize what the same dancer asked aloud, upon removing herself from an argument: “Is this it? This is our life?” If there was a spiritual component in the piece, or an attempt at a journey of the soul, it was buried beneath the dancers’ extreme states and the forces that shaped them.
Decreation continues at BAM through October 10th, and there will be a free post-performance talk with Forsythe on October 8th. Tickets can be ordered online or by calling BAM ticket services at 718.636.4100.
