Davis Freeman’s Too shy to stare
January 10, 2012
Megan Harrold and Matthew Morris in "Too shy to stare", photo by Ryan Jensen
No need to check personal baggage at the door. Davis Freeman’s Too shy to stare, performed at the Old School as part of Performance Space 122’s COIL Festival, is all about the viewer. Nine other audience members and I took turns entering seven rooms and witnessing private performances. In each one, a photograph of the viewer was plastered to the performer’s face, forcing you to stare at yourself and encounter whatever it was that the dancers were doing. Themes of loneliness, vulnerability, desire, and aging were evident throughout this eerily voyeuristic experience. Some made me laugh, others made me sad, and one made me shiver. Staring at yourself for two hours forces you to contemplate your own personal journey, and different shades of the same person.
My experience started several weeks ago when I visited PS122 to have my photograph taken for the performance. One photo required a neutral face with eyes open, and the other with eyes closed. At the Old School, the “home base” of Too shy to stare was a small, dimly lit space with tables, wine, and popcorn. Seven curtained rooms were situated off of two long hallways. Entry into each of the rooms was a two-step process: a red light meant that you could pass a card through the curtain to an invisible hand; a green light allowed you to enter and sit in a comfortable armchair for the performance.
The first room that I entered featured a man (Edward RosenBerg III) playing the clarinet and operating a soundboard. A framed photo of me (eyes closed) was placed on a candlelit table. It was soothing but funereal, and I wondered whether the rest of the performance would unfold as my life in reverse chronological order.
Laura Hicks in Davis Freeman's "Too shy to stare", photo by Ryan Jensen
The other rooms included solos, a duet, and a trio. A woman – with my face – slowly re-ordered several photographs on a magnetic wall to make a circle. One showed an old woman, another showed a young couple. Another room featured three dancers in nude undergarments moving like apes and occasionally groping themselves. And in another, a man and woman – again, both with my face – sat on a long sofa, shifting between formal manners and primal urges.
It was all too easy to get lost in the performative qualities of the experience. Rather than seeing myself – that is, my own full being in charge of my actions – I often saw the performers as just that: performers who were wearing my photo as a mask. Looking beyond this was challenging, but the waiting period between each room (there were seven rooms for ten people, so at least three were always waiting) allowed for some much-needed reflection and whispering with others to find out which rooms they had already visited.
The most evocative experience occurred with a heavily tattooed man (Matthew Morris), who stood at one end of a long, narrow room, mirroring my movements. When he placed my hand on his chest, with his face – or rather, my face – just inches from mine, it was unsettling and surreal. The pairing of an unrecognizable body with a very recognizable face forced me to question who I was staring at, and who was staring back at me. He mirrored my movements, but the person staring at me was a stranger.
At the heart of Too shy to stare is a question: how well do we know ourselves? And how well are we willing to better understand ourselves? The performers know what we look like, but it’s up to the audience members to stare back at them – at ourselves – and find meaning. It can be terrifying, funny, strange, and eye opening.
A Farewell to Cunningham
December 26, 2011
Merce Cunningham Dance Company in "Roaratorio" at BAM, photo by Julieta Cervantes
One of my college professors told me that letting your eyes focus in different ways while watching dance can offer endless enlightenment. Zoom in on something, then zoom out, or let everything blur together and then come into focus. I tried this approach many times while watching Merce Cunningham Dance Company perform Roaratorio on December 7th at BAM. Whether everything was crystal clear or swirling together, I was mesmerized from start to finish. The company’s Legacy Tour comes to an end on December 31st, but this was my very last Cunningham performance. I was clinging to everything on stage – the colors, the sounds, the dancers’ gorgeous lines and shapes and patterns, the eerily beautiful, disorienting score by John Cage. It was momentous, riveting, and then all too soon, over.
I haven’t enjoyed everything I’ve seen by Cunningham, and the first few performances I saw by his company several years ago left me confused, perhaps even irritated. But with every performance that I’ve watched, I’ve felt more and more certain of two things: 1. These dances are extraordinary and unlike anything else, and 2. Cunningham is the most groundbreaking choreographer of our time, and absolutely brilliant. On the 7th, it was exciting to witness such a monumental performance, and simultaneously heartbreaking to witness the end of the company at a time when I’m so eager to see more of Cunningham, to keep reveling in his brilliance.
Created in 1983, Roaratorio pulls from Irish step dancing and is inspired by James Joyce’s “Finnegan’s Wake”. This lively, textured work shows couples coming together for festive social dancing featuring rapid footwork fused with dramatic tilts of the torso. The stage was busy yet clean, with dancers moving at different tempos or joining others to build something new altogether. John Cage’s richly layered 1979 score, ”Roaratorio: An Irish Circus on Finnegans Wake,” is remarkable on its own, but even more beautiful when paired with Cunningham’s choreography. Sounds from everyday life – a crying baby, traffic, a leaky faucet – blend with traditional Irish music. I strained my ears at times to identify the different sounds, to determine where one sound ended and another began. Running through the mesmerizing soundscape was text from “Finnegan’s Wake”, adding yet another dimension. Like Cunningham’s movement, the score was busy but never messy. It felt like a long, hazy memory – or strands from many memories – that was strikingly reflected in the lighting design by Mark Lancaster and Christine Shallenberg. At one moment the dancers are bathed in sunlight, at another shadows are cast across their faces. Whether encompassing a whole day, a week, or a year, Roaratorio reflects the passing of time.
Merce Cunningham Dance Company in "Roaratorio" at BAM, photo by Julieta Cervantes
Weekend Review: Kyle Abraham & Gallim Dance
December 14, 2011
Kyle Abraham's "Live! The Realest MC", photo by Paula Court
Choreography from two young, emerging choreographers – Kyle Abraham/Abraham.In.Motion and Andrea Miller/Gallim Dance - was on display over the weekend, and both offered compelling, deeply personal works.
At the Kitchen, Kyle Abraham’s Live! The Realest MC was a coming-out story inspired by the tale of Pinocchio and the tragic death in 2010 of Tyler Clementi, a victim of bullying. As a black, gay man immersed in the hip-hop community, Abraham’s journey is a quest for acceptance. Although a cast of six supports Abraham, he is clearly the star. Wearing a gold sequined shirt, he rises from the floor in a self-conscious, awkward solo of spasms, jerkiness, and tension. Later, set against a film of a dusty sidewalk in an urban neighborhood, Abraham’s movement shifts fluidly – not to mention brilliantly – from anger and anxiousness to a place of calm.
The other dancers are strong performers, but the choreography for them lacks the entrancing quality of Abraham’s solos. And the work’s structure – solo, ensemble, solo, ensemble – is frustrating. A trio for Abraham, Chalvar Monteiro, and Maleek Malaki Washington, however, is intriguing, suggesting how forced masculinity and femininity can be. Yet the most powerful part of the piece was a gripping monologue for Abraham, in which he plays both the victim and the attacker. “He hit me…they held me down!” he repeatedly shouts while sobbing with shaking arms. It was startling and painful to watch after some of the piece’s funnier moments that addressed gender roles in hip-hop. In the end, Abraham reaches acceptance on his own terms, removing a black jacket to once again reveal a shirt of sequins.
Arika Yamada rehearsing Andrea Miller's "Mama Call", photo by Emily Terndrup
At the JCC in Manhattan, Gallim Dance, led by artistic director and choreographer Andrea Miller, presented two works that marked the culmination of the company’s year-long residency at the JCC. Seven Circles, a work in progress that will be developed into a full-length piece at the Joyce in 2012, was a refreshing addition to the company’s repertoire. It tackled intimacy, limitations, and vulnerabilities – themes explored in some of Miller’s previous works, but this new piece did so in a more experimental and improvisational vein. The dancers move slowly and gawkily against the stage’s back wall, entangle with one another, and perhaps test to what extent they can trust one another. Later, Francesca Romo and Troy Ogilvie shout gibberish without understanding each other.
In Mama Call, Miller reworked excerpts from previous repertoire to examine the idea of home. A community comes together and dissolves, a couple yearns for something out of reach, and an individual emerges from a processional march (inspired by the processionals that Miller has witnessed in Spain, as explained in a post-performance Q&A), reborn and renewed. All of these vignettes demonstrate the rawness and emotionally charged physicality of Gallim, along with the uniqueness of each of the company’s skilled movers.
Laura Peterson’s “Wooden” at HERE
November 8, 2011
Edward Rice, Laura Peterson, and Janna Diamond in "Wooden", photo by Steven Schreiber
There is something irresistibly appealing about the idea of dancing out of doors. For a dancer, sinking your feet into moist soil or feeling sand between your toes is a refreshing change from the smooth surface of a dance studio’s flooring. So with eagerness I headed to HERE last Friday to see Laura Peterson’s Wooden, a dance installation that cycles through three environments inspired by natural architecture. The visually stunning set, which included a bed of growing grass, elegant pieces of driftwood suspended from the low ceiling, and wooden benches that served as seating, transformed HERE into a verdant space. It was an environment deserving of daring movement that would respond and react to its surroundings.
Sadly, what filled the space wasn’t nearly as inspiring as the space itself. In Part 1: Ground, three women and one man in simple blue and gray costumes (by Candice Thompson) created circular patterns as they dashed back and forth across the grass. Set to Soichiro Migita’s score, which sounded like a mixture of wind and sand, the dancers’ movement across the grass went on for what felt like an eternity. With no real precision or focal point, it was exhausting to watch, and perhaps even more exhausting to perform: their bodies were covered in sweat and blades of grass.
Kate Martel, Janna Diamond, Laura Peterson in "Wooden", photo by Steven Schreiber
After the space was reconfigured during intermission, the audience sat on benches placed over the grass while the dancers performed on solid ground in Part 2: Trees. Prickly, sharp twitches of the body and static noise replaced the lushness of Ground, and evoked a dry, desert atmosphere. Yet edgy movement isn’t so believable when the dancers don’t throw themselves into it with full force. The section was frustratingly light – not nearly as powerful as it could be, even with driftwood dangerously rotating inches from the dancers as they hovered beneath it on the ground.
While the program notes indicated that Part 3: Corridor was a return to the first environment, it felt like an extension of the second section. Hazy and unfocused, it again left me itching for something stronger, something more immersive. That never happened, but if you have to be stuck indoors, at least real grass and trees can make it feel like you’re miles away.
Wooden continues through November 12th at HERE: 145 Sixth Avenue in Manhattan. Tickets are $20.
I Believe in Forsythe’s “Outer Space”
October 28, 2011
William Forsythe's "I don't believe in outer space", photo by Dominik Mentzos
I’m still processing William Forsythe’s I don’t believe in outer space, which opened at BAM on Wednesday evening. For the first twenty minutes or so, I worried that it was going to be a repeat of Decreation, which I reviewed in 2009. That work was irritating, but the harsh and jarring qualities of the piece were ultimately a commentary on how we communicate with one another. And so with outer space, it initially felt and looked quite similar, with exaggerated voices, chaotic interactions, and disorienting sounds. But as the piece progressed and mixed hilarious use of lyrics from Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” with profound reflections on mortality, I was deeply moved. And how satisfying to watch as the various threads from the work came together and cohered. Just when it ended – after a poignant scene in which the audience heard Dana Caspersen’s natural voice (as opposed to her exaggerated ‘character’ voices earlier in the work) – I wasn’t quite ready to let go, and clung to the final moments of outer space for as long as I could. Forsythe’s work has always challenged me, and has even bothered me at times. Outer space was no exception. But it struck a chord more so than previous Forsythe works that I’ve seen, perhaps because it so smartly – albeit still messily – blended humor with sadness.
A final thought: The New York Times review says that the characters we see are “freaks”, possibly meant to be laughed at, and that Forsythe creates a “hellish anti-world”. Freaks? No, I’m certain that the characters we see are us. We laugh because we recognize ourselves in these characters. And Forsythe’s “hellish anti-world”? That’s our world.
