inFluxdance

This weekend Sugar Space presented the premiere of their artists-in-residence inFluxdance. The group is a dedicated team of women under the direction of cross-continental collaborators Alysia Woodruff & Rose Pasquarello Beauchamp. With a large team of video, sound and design artists, inFluxdance certainly presented a lot of material to consider.

In its best moments, justice for all some presented honest and complex partnering between the uniquely all-female company. Their energy toward one another was sensitive and engaging. No matter your opinion of the topics they tackled each performer maintained strong investment in their subject matter and in one another. In that way, the piece was a pleasure to see.

In other moments the piece resembled another recent work which tackled protest and social justice. The work was reminiscent of David Dorfman’s underground and both dances feature strong performance and physical research. Unfortunately both works also share problematic parts. Featuring a lack of performers of color yet employing traditional iconography of civil rights creates tension. Both also use strong visual and aural components like video montage and an identical “step forward if, step back if” dialogue regarding the dancers’ relationship to social struggles like internment or suffrage.

In the end was another startling similarity where all the dancers started placing cloth figures of people about the space. Dorfman did the same thing but with graphics. And in both cases there was a startling sense that the piece was still figuring out its ultimate direction and what it wants to show regarding such a massive topic as protest.

inFluxdance seems at a crossroads of choosing whether the subject matter of the protests they support is where the piece lies (let’s not forget the Tea Partiers are protestors too) or whether, (as I imagine) that the piece lies more in about what protests do– bring bodies together and then watch bodies dissipate, show bodies in both revelry and suffering. The lingering image of all those small figures in the space alludes to this idea, that it’s more about the body and less about the design elements. In  justice for all some the dancing told the story and I would be interested to see what more it has to tell.

Ashley Anderson runs loveDANCEmore programs through her non-profit, ashley anderson dances. 

Black/Light

I went into Allen Gardner Dance Theatre’s presentation of Black/Light with a lot of questions. I had heard that Jerry Allen, director of the group, had studied with Kazuo Ohno and was heavily influenced by Butoh. Through the program notes, I learned that he also studied kung fu and corporeal mime, two disciplines that I have also had experience with. I read several articles previewing the show, some calling it Butoh, some calling it Butoh-influenced, some trying to explain what Butoh is. My experience with Butoh has been through Dairakudakan and Eiko + Koma. While these two groups in some ways represent opposing ends of the spectrum of whatever Butoh is, I believe there is a common seed.

Here’s what myself and some friends came up with over post-show gelato: when a child drops their ice cream, they do Butoh. We all know what this feels like. The incredible upwelling of emotion and sensation overtakes the nervous system from within, and the body becomes accessory to this outpouring of raw expression. It is overwhelming, and even casual spectators cannot help but be engulfed. One of the original goals of Butoh was to subvert other forms of dance that were seen as too superficial.

So let me rewind and say that Black/Light is not a “Butoh show”, as many people described it. It was an eclectic evening of performance, some of which was Butoh. But it also included a comedia dell’arte piece, dance, and video. So all of the questions I came in with, including “What does American Butoh look like?”, were overtaken by another question: “Can Butoh share the stage with these other forms?” The answer I came away with was a solid “No.” The rawness and depth of the Butoh elements made everything else unpalatable. This means there was some very solid Butoh happening, in particular from Patrick Barnes and of course Jerry Gardner.  But it also means that the dance was out of place, the comedia dell’arte seemed farcical, the photo collage distracting, and the silhouette work sort of boring. This wasn’t a flaw in performance. The performances were quite good, in fact. I could have watched Michael Watkiss run in circles, mouth agape and arms pathetically extended, for hours. He was a pleasure to watch throughout. It was the course of the show itself that confused.

Another aspect that was less than satisfying was the use of music. I felt that the choices of music were such that they forced some of the other creative choices, particularly the timing of certain sections. Often I felt that a moment was cut short, or that a piece was stretched too thin, because a musical cue had to be met. Please, let’s all find a composer or sound editor who can work with this group. I think it will give them the freedom to do some really excellent work.

Perhaps my Butoh beef is also ultimately about creative freedom. Jumping from one form to another is not as satisfying as abandoning form and just doing the work that feels true. I think this was a fascinating presentation, and I would love to see more work from Jerry Allen. But next time I would like to see his work, in his style. Maybe it will be Butoh, maybe it will be dance theatre, maybe it will be some sort of crazy synthesis of all that he has studied. But Black/Light felt like he forced his work to fit the styles of others, each piece a distinct element that had his creative touch but ultimately was not well integrated into the whole

Matt Beals is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Utah

Hunting the Hemo Goblin at Sugar Space

Last weekend, the Sugar Space presented a new work-in-progress by Andrea Dispenziere. The hour-long work, “Hunting the Hemo Goblin,” was comprised of a scattering of vignettes touching on themes of hunter and hunted.

The dance began in a modern setting—the grocery store. As the audience settled into their seats, dancers casually wandered around the stage, “shopping” among tables laden with vitamin water and peeking into a number of tall, cylindrical wire cages that carried labels like “Quinoa” and “Yogurt Pretzels.” From these slow and pedestrian beginnings, the dance gradually developed into a hunting scenario in which dancers pursued their prey across the stage. However, it was not until the performers were given a chance to truly start dancing that the work picked up its momentum. Moving with unrestrained physicality, the dancers displayed impressive commitment and athleticism, though the limited amount of space caused several collisions. The work then took a violent turn, as performers began tackling and throwing each other across the stage—even simulating the cannibalization of a few (presumably weaker) dancers. I particularly enjoyed the number of inventive and surprising ways in which the dancers took each other down; the impact of the dancers colliding—and I mean full on tackling each other—was especially powerful when it happened less than ten feet in front of my face.

In the next section, Dispenziere drew from Greek mythology concerning Artemis, goddess of the hunt, and Actaeon, a hunter who was transformed into a deer and then killed by his hunting dogs. The myth of Actaeon was spelled out in “old-school rap” by a Greek chorus as dancers portrayed the action through gesture and dance. Dispenziere’s rap contained clever lyrics, yet was difficult to hear over the music and some fumbled articulation. Through some inventive rearranging of the wire cages, the dancers transformed the stage, creating forests, waves, and walls. However, under-rehearsed transitions between the configurations made the props seem unwieldy and difficult.

The final vignettes featured strong dance sequences—most notably, a quartet of women performing quick, precise articulations of the arms and torso, as well as a series of overlapping solos accompanied by a Discovery Channel-style narration describing the elusive “Hemo Goblin.” The humorous, meandering text managed to simultaneously amuse and confuse me, and the ending of the dance—in which the audience was invited to come onstage and observe the performers before they were led away, tethered together like cattle—left me with all my questions unanswered. The work incorporates interesting representations of the health food movement, hunting, shopping, consumerism, and mythology, but does not seem to tie them together before its completion. I feel that “Hunting the Hemo Goblin” put forth some provocative images and associations, but ultimately stopped short of articulating a discernible message.

Emily Terndrup

b sides & rarities

Movement Forum surprised me last weekend at B-Sides and Rarities, a one-night engagement  at Sugar Space. I wish I’d come at seven (they did two shows in one night) and everyone in the cast lamented that I’d missed the earlier show. But I certainly didn’t feel cheated by what I saw, in fact I left feeling encouraged in a way that I haven’t in a long time.

The program notes were printed on an 8 ½ by 11 sheet that the audience was encouraged to write on and throw onstage during the performance. The dancers and three musicians began warming up on stage, the lights and conversation dimmed and everyone adjourned from the middle of the space except for Michael Watkiss, who stood with an unusual presence for several seconds before beginning a gestural solo which seemed to develop the character his costume began: holey dress pants and a too-nice button up.

Watkiss’s dance took a long slow turn for the introspective as he looked at his body up and down, cataloging the possibilities and searching patiently for some unexpected resonance in the folding and unfolding of his joints. The other dancers stood around him like a gang in the shadows out of some dance musical film from the fifties. They began to take turns narrating his solo in a sort of dialectic exquisite corpse. Now he’s a father. But he’s a dead beat dad. Now he’s twenty-six. There’s some kind of mental illness. Now he’s having an affair. Now he’s thirty. I’ve seen this kind of text-based work before, but rarely have I seen it with such tenderness between the performers. The framing and reframing that the other performers provided was excellently timed. It really made me think about truth and fiction and how the artifice of performance was functioning. I can’t tell you how his abstract dancing moved me in a different way that it might have out of context, but I know that it has stayed with me and I’m still digesting it. I’d also like to take the opportunity to comment on how much Watkiss’s dancing has developed since I last saw him perform in May. Something is happening; during his training at the U he managed to preserve a rare sense of interior monologue in his dancing, but now he’s taking it into space with a clarity and humor I didn’t know he was capable of.

The progression of the evening was rambling in a charming way, they didn’t have any real concrete plan, which is not an easy thing to pull off, especially with a cast of almost twenty. There were some impressive interludes of explosive dancing to the amiable music of the live band (Alex Aponte, Trevor Price and Randal Topper), including a bombastic little number that looked a little bit like a Tere O’Connor dance falling out of an airplane (danced by Sherisa Bly, Corrine Penka and Eileen Rojas). The cast also undertook a sort of movement roast of departing and founding director Graham Brown who dived, leapt and tired himself with his usual inimitable athleticism. His dancers barraged him with loving jibes and crumpled airplane’s whose comments from the audience had already been turned into a series of experiments ranging from a hilarious deep lunging routine led by sassy Corinne Penka and an awkwardly funny send up of the late king of pop whose initials are M.J. (danced by Sofia Gorder and Jersey Reo Riemo).

Before it was all over there was a brightly surreal trio with blind-folds and another stunning performance by Watkiss, this time joined by the equally witty Danell Hathaway, who will direct the company when Brown moves to Maryland to pursue graduate school this fall. Watkiss told us of a fantastic encounter with a giant talking spider (a dream? an acid trip?). As Watkiss was disarmed by this invisible figment of his subconscious, Hathaway playfully tried to undress him, he batted her off, much as one might an annoying insect. Here were performers dancing with a real sense of metaphor, and making it up as they went along. Some deep, but very playful investigation was happening that night and I was grateful to be invited inside of it.

Sam Hanson

Oosimaginary on tour

I’ll get to the actual show, but first I want to heave a mighty BRAVO to OosImaginary for hatching the wild idea of going on tour and bringing it to life. Sam Goodman, from an interview on the Sugar Space blog:

We have venues booked in Louisville, Nashville, Conway (AR), Denver, Salt Lake, Missoula, Seattle, Portland, & Ventura, but the idea behind the tour is to perform every day in some capacity, so we are also planning on doing a lot of guerilla/street/outdoor performance in addition to the venue shows.

This is not something that happens easily or without a strong commitment to following through with absurdity in spite of all the shit that people give you, not to mention all the shit we give ourselves. So, to the whole OosImaginary crew, congratulations. You made something awesome happen.

The show itself was a wandering journey through fractured dreams, twisted imaginings, and bizarre visions. The improvised dancing was skillful and engaging to watch, and the entire cast gave solid performances in a dance-theatre-music mashup that satisfies. Make no mistake, this show is the scenic route on the road to I don’t know where. If you need to arrive at some defined story or moral, this might not be your show. This is not a weakness.

The score for the most part matches the rest of the material, though I found myself bothered by some of the lyrics. Not the actual lyrics, just the fact that they were there — I resisted their pull back into a place of verbal cognition. I didn’t mind the integration of poetry as much, but this may be due to the low volume of the cassette player which turned the reading into more of a mumbling aural score than actual verbalization.

In the end, I wanted more. I’m not saying it was unresolved or too short, I’m saying I wanted more. OosImaginary, you walk us right up to the brink. You point over the edge and explain the darkness below, like a very competent tour guide. I want you to jump off, and I want you to take me with you. Similarly, in theory you are dissolving the roles of dancer, actor, and musician into a holistic improvisation. In practice, you’re just taking turns, passing those roles around. Now I will dance, next I will play music, then he will play music, and she will act.

My experience with improvisation is that when you really feel like you’re losing your mind, that is the beginning of the work. Most people stop there because, frankly, it’s scary. Right now I feel like OosImaginary tells the story of losing their minds, or collective mind. It’s a good story. But it’s a bit like trying to drown yourself in a kiddie pool. You know in the back of your mind that ultimately, you’re still safe. Give me the ocean. Give me high tide on a stormy day, salt and sand and seaweed and an undertow that does not relent ever.

Overall I’m excited about this group and what they’re doing. I think that OosImaginary is capable of pushing the envelope, and I hope that they will. I’ll be keeping an eye out for them (Summer tour 2011!?).

Matthew Beals