Rambling

I want to call Doris Humphrey up and let her know that not all dances are too long. In fact, The Rambler, presented this evening at Kingsbury Hall, was just the right length. Keeping me engaged with the thoughtful performance for one hour and then setting me free into the night before the predicted snowfall.

It’s perhaps foolish to write a critical review in total earnest since the show only ran one night. Additionally it’s toured all over the country so it’s not as though the Joe Goode Performance Group is desperately searching for a critical opinion on the record.

But I would be remiss not to reflect on the experience as a unique imprint on the Salt Lake dance scene which can be rich but often incestuous. Having a national guest reminds me where Salt Lake exists in relationship to other ways of making and seeing dance.

The performance centered around simple logic — vertical and horizontal traveling curtains framed small portals where vignettes emerged. The curtain might expand to further reveal the scene or it might stay confined around small happenings.

The vignettes ranged from theatrical monologues & sculptural interactions to more traditional movement composition alongside live singing. Each developed different ideas about the concept of rambling but left the audience with the comfort that the curtain would take us to the next scene.

Simple logic allowed for more complex experiences to emerge. Because each scene was freshly framed there was the freedom to go along for the ride without anxiety or expectation. This feeling extended to the very beginning of the piece where Joe strolls out in a cowboy hat, identifies that the day before he’d fallen off the stage in front of school children, and the dancing begins as he reads poems (more or less) about “felt movement”, something he’s known for teaching.

This casual approach, I have to point out, is also employed in Salt Lake at the Mudson performance series I run as part of loveDANCEmore. And the same way I find it demystifies art-making in that venue, it certainly demystified the evening’s performance for me. In a form where so much is unclear (where our paychecks will come from, how we will find resources to make work and how we persuade digital-age audiences to sit with us) it is nice to have a person walk before you and simply invite you to partake in what they’ve made.

There is a lot of freedom in rambling and this means the dancing, singing and acting are also free to be unapologetically intermingled. While his website refers to dance-theater and blurring boundaries the dance is really more an expression what dance can include rather than what dance is not. It deals with the limitless potential of the body to express ideas and identities whether with traditional partnering or the strain of a song.

This is another lesson that some Salt Lakers could learn — using elements of theater in a work is not an act that requires explanation and justification. It’s also not something that’s revelatory but rather, is a natural extension for the potential of the form. Living here I often I see work where the “more theatrical” elements don’t seem quite right and it’s because their inclusion isn’t always as organic as the Rambler might make it appear. They seem hesitant and careful but this evening suggests that hesitance is not the course.

I know this because even in this production there are things I’m not super keen on. A lit cyc has never been something I love, monologues that incite uncomfortable laughter give me nausea, old stand-by partnering lifts give me even more discomfort and the list goes on. But The Rambler creates and sticks to it’s own convoluted pathway, no apologies. I don’t find myself making a catalogue of my likes and dislikes as I might normally. I’m noticing instead the nuance of physicalized floundering in romantic or interpersonal relationships, the ways to seek adventure among a field of abstract cacti, a luscious disappearance and re-emergence into a field of hokey smoke.

This dance wasn’t too long but this writing is. I could go on and on, which in the case of a one-time show is probably a good thing.

Ashley Anderson

RW's Prism

When watching an evening of an artist’s shorter pieces, ranging from works in progress to older projects, it is hard to locate a place to begin writing. There is, of course, the desire to go piece by piece and offer the moments that seemed most filled with wonder (Tara McArthur hovering beneath a spiraling fan, the company being seen through and reflected upon layers of mirrors and Betsy Willberg finding new sensitivity in an older duet with Jo Blake) as well as the moments that leave you curious or skeptical. But that approach is hard to get to when considering the evening at large and the ways in which the concert, as a whole, is both wonderful and curious.

It is clear that as a choreographer Charlotte has worked on many projects since arriving in Salt Lake City and with each iteration she makes active decisions through even the longest project. Push (from earlier this year) seemed significantly edited and the use of mirrors in Touching Fire (2010) became more clear with time. It is nice, in this way, to watch and appreciate that she is rigorous in her practice and will continue to offer choreography that becomes more and more fully realized.

But as I watch the evening at large I notice some troubling aspects alongside these nice moments — similar costuming and musical selection throughout, music at precisely the same volume for that matter, and repetitive structures that ask the audience to watch the same lifts, falls and ultimate conclusions (with Jo balancing toward the sky in more than one work). In isolation from one another those lifts are alright and Jo balancing toward the sky is even sublime. But in repetition these moments have a tendency to be redundant and lessen the impact of those counterparts which do change from piece to piece (whether architectural elements or the projection of a sad, sweaty, standup comic).

In some cases it is more than the act of repetition that leaves me curious. The musical scores for example are consistently out-danced by the company (who are a strong unit and individually fierce as hell). Their movements are doubly strong as the Black Angels notes and their easy duets softer than the songs of Sigur Ros. Add to this that every BFA candidate has used these artists at every ACDFA since Merce checked them out at the age of ninety and I am left straining to find the dance within the context that they are massively exceeding.

Now, this isn’t to say I’m in the business of re-choreographing dances. I don’t know if there is an alternative to these choices, or if there is, what it would be. However, as a viewer I know the evening becomes cloudy as a result. And I desire for the clouds to part so I can continue watching.

I see some glimpses of a more evolving aesthetic with the newest work-in-progress, West, which the company worked on this year in Arizona. In these vignettes not only does the music seem more related to the context of the dancing but the group really finds their new relationships. Specifically, Bashaun Williams doesn’t appear to be dancing someone else’s part but his own. The material seems fresh and at the end the company watches one another, really watches, the same way I do. It reminds me that the act of watching, as an audience, is nearly as vulnerable as the act of dancing and being seen.

Ashley Anderson runs loveDANCEmore through her 501c3, ashley anderson dances. You can read her full bio on ashleyandersondances.com

tEEth's Home Made

Last night, Portland’s tEEth, a self-styled contemporary dance and performance art company lead by Angelle Hebert & Phillip Kraft, brought “Home Made”, to the Rose Wagner. The engagement (presented by Dance Theatre Coaltion) continues today and Saturday.

“Home Made” was an hour long love-dance from hell, which began rather innocuously. A naked man and woman tousled with a camera under a silver silk sheet that blanketed them and the rest of the stage. The scrim flickered and what the camera saw was projected on to the back wall. The audience was taken for a ride —mostly sweet and a little suggestive — up and down legs, arms, backs, and buttocks. This live video play, was scored by mostly sung live accompaniment from another male-female (Luke Matter and Cali Ricks) pair standing stage left.

After returning to the opening shot, where the two dancers stared into the lens as the crowns of their heads connected, the camera flickered off. Some tricks of light and fabric comprised a transition, where the dancers dressed and made shadows as they stood up one-by-one under the semi-opaque drape. The blanket was removed and they were revealed, slowly turning in a tight embrace. We were no more than ten or fifteen minutes in, and several drastic shifts in tone had already occurred —from the playfulness of a couple and a camera in bed, to the backlit Las Vegas formality of Nikolais or Pilobolus — and now they were unmasked finally as real people, and sent into a kind of wooden, self-destructive expression of heterosexuality that everyone who watches much dance is pretty familiar with. I was impressed that they had taken the audience through so many habituated ways of seeing dance in such a short time. It kept us in suspense about who these people were, but it also kept me interested.

Then, abuse. Angry, brittle partnering, with lots of grabbing and dragging of mouths and jaws ensued. They took off their clothes and continued with the same. There were microphones to be wailed into, to be smashed into bodies, and to be manipulated by an unseen sound mixer. The dancing developed abusively and formally; the man (Noel Plemmons) got tangled up in cords and the woman (Keely McIntyre) did a kind of broken doll grande allegro around him. At one point the manipulated sounds from the other couple, the musicians, broke the collective focus on the dance, as they seemed to kiss, microphones both ostensibly in mouth.

There was much more sound and fury that I could try to recall. At some point they ended up putting their clothes back on and standing in a pool of square light to suggest a posed photograph of a couple. I kept wondering what I had missed. Yes, relationships between men and women can go very bad. I already knew that. But I wanted to get to know this couple particularly, and I never got to. The choreography was more concerned with some other agenda I never really felt invited to. I heard the unpleasant noises and saw that the music and the dance had been integrated to some effect. I saw, that almost as though it was an obligation, breasts and penis had each been manhandled at least once by partners’ hands. All of these things seemed like goals being checked off of a list. And yet, as hard as both the very competent performers were working, I didn’t know who they were supposed to be or why this was happening. I was left to wonder why the dancers had submitted themselves to this.

Sam Hanson holds a B.U.S. from the University of Utah and choreographs/performs throughout SLC.

van(guardians) of dance history; a sort of review

Tonight RDT presented Vanguard, their 2011-2012 season opener. Part of RDT’s mission has always been to present dances by seminal choreographers that showcase important moments in dance history. Adding Scramble to the roster was an important step in that mission — particularly after Cunningham’s fairly recent death and the pending completion of his company’s final tour.

RDT has taken great pains to contextualize Cunningham’s Scramble as well as the two pieces by Yvonne Rainer (Trio A &Chair/Pillow) that the company performs. These efforts are incredibly important, especially for RDT. Their panel discussions on the choreographers as well as extensive program notes offer insight about why audiences should care about these older works and elucidate the contributions each made to dance history. From these “vanguards,” audiences and new choreographers might add to their bank of ideas: ways to work collaboratively with artists of many disciplines, new choreographic methods, notions of narrative, or use of props.

Within the context of these artists as pioneers of their time I do find that one thing was missing — the fact that both Rainer and Cunningham went on to be avant-garde well beyond these “famous” works. Cunningham  afterall was not only known for abstraction and chance procedure but also for being one of the first choreographers to use i-pods and commission popular bands like Radiohead for music well after his eligibility for the AARP. Rainer departed dance to make very well-known films and then returned to dance with works premiered as late as 2008 (http://www.villagevoice.com/2011-03-23/dance/yvonne-rainer-s-got-game-at-the-baryshnikov-arts-center-the-royal-danish-ballet-dances-the-guggenheim/).

These facts only enhance the context through which one might view the RDT concert. Audiences can then see the ways in which artists continue to break traditions even as their career advances while simultaneously considering which artists might become the next generations avant-garde.

These facts also ask curatorial questions about the ways in which the avant-garde could be presented. Is it more relevant to watch Rainer & Cunningham side by side because they shared a decade? Or is it of equal benefit to dance history to watch Rainer’s work beside her films? Or Cunningham’s work alongside Martha Graham to better demonstrate the traditions he had once performed and promised to break? Is it any more reasonable to consider the ways in which Helen Tamiris or Loie Fuller were also vanguards though their repertory may now be longer accepted in a dance canon?

At the end of the evening the dances were performed to the letter. The Cunningham work showed the technical prowess you might expect but also showed dancers really seeing one another and forming relationships on stage through even the most abstract material. Trio A went through almost all of it’s possible incarnations — a silent solo, simultaneous silent solos and raucous combinations to music, it was easy to imagine why and how the piece has been performed so many times in so many places. Chair/Pillow made evidence many techniques of the Judson Dance Theater including performing as though you were casually showing something to a friend.

After those three works RDT also moved through context into new ground.  They offered RDT dancers the opportunity to develop movement sections that were strung together through chance procedures and eventually set into a clear score despite the illusion that James Larsen (the lighting designer) would actually call cues from stage or that an i-pod in the corner could be changed at random.

The piece, called Gamut, incited various responses. The first was to know which RDT dancer had made which section, it was fascinating to guess who may have developed each part and to consider RDT performers in a way we might not always see them — as choreographers. It made me see the value in trying your hand at another choreographer’s tools and find ways to see your movement that you might not otherwise (Karinne Keithley Syers writes about this in an essay in the upcoming performance journal). Further, it made me long for the “chance” to have been more in earnest and rather than stringing the works together in a (lovely) complete way for them to truly happen in the moment without the artifice of a lit cyc or perfect phrasing. Perhaps this longing displays what a vanguard Cunningham truly was, that his tactics used elsewhere only remind us why his tactics were so good.

Ashley Anderson

Nancy Carter @ Sugar Space

This weekend at Sugar Space, Nancy Carter premiered her performance company Rumble Motion Jawbone with “Tale from the Land of Frightful Dreams,” as well as a short piece by Paul Wirth as a part of the New Blood Dance Project.

 New Blood Dance Project is a new for Salt Lake City; “non-choreographer,” Paul Wirth made a piece with professional dancers in the city and with the support of an experienced choreographer. This short piece, “At Last a Spell,” began the concert. When the lights came up, dancers dressed all in white were seated in a tight ball downstage left. They began slowly rolling out of their tight balls, up the diagonal. The piece continued, mostly on that diagonal, with the dancers first jiving by themselves to the music, then acting as forces on each other, and finished with them dancing to their own rhythms. It was great to see a work by a “non-choreographer.” It made me wonder what his process was and how it might have differed if an “experienced choreographer” since the end product was not as different as I might have expected. This is an exciting and admirable project; I hope that it continues.

Next up was “Tale from the Land of Frightful Dreams,” which was the majority of the concert. I was excited to see this new work by Nancy Carter, knowing that it combined contemporary dance with circus, acting, and butoh-like movement. Combining all of these seemingly disparate elements is no simple task and I was curious to see how the concert might come together.

“Tale from the Land of Frightful Dreams” did not disappoint. Carter beautifully and seamlessly wove together all of the elements, creating a unique and interesting world for the performance to exist in. Each character had their own unique movement signature that was completely different from every other character and yet each one seemed to fit with the whole of the performance.

    The piece began with Lumlum (Tatiana Mixco) peeking out from under the curtain—using different body parts to explore the stage space. She tentatively made her way out, becoming more and more confident. Her movement was playful, even squirrel-like, barely ever coming more than three-feet off the floor.

Next to enter was Iao (Michael Watkiss). First, just his hand and arm appeared upstage right, fluttering and slightly jerking. Then the rest of his body appeared, echoing that fluttery, jerky movement style—which soon became evident as his movement signature. Both of these dancers fully embodied the movement signatures so that there was a definite, unique and even three-dimensional impression for the audience. The same was true for Itst (Mary Oliver), Wetseek (Tanja London), and even for the Three (Cody Tahmassebipour, Lynn Bobzin, and Maryann Lang).

The Seer (Scott Maddix) was a lovely actor, but because his part was acted, it felt less embodied and not as three-dimensional as the other dancers. As an audience member, I was brought out of the “Tale” for a moment to adjust to the difference in his performance style.

Similarly, while the aerial lyra section with Chaise (Aleisha Paspuel) was beautiful to watch, this character also felt slightly less developed. There were not quite as many distinctive layers to her movement as the rest of the characters. However, the aerial work fit perfectly with the rest of the piece, which is often hard to pull off in a contemporary or even experimental dance forum.

The duet between Itst and Iao was intensely stunning. The complex relationship between the vibrating Iao and the bird-like Itst was fascinating. I found myself vacillating between feeling like the two were a perfect match for one another and feeling like Itst was manipulating Iao, forcing him to do or be something he didn’t want. I couldn’t quite grasp if she was helping or hurting him—which was what made it so interesting.

At the end of the piece, Iao is trapped in some kind of jail, and Lumlum and Wetseek are unable to free him. At that point, I was ready for something even more exciting to happen. Maybe Itst would reappear or the Seer. I wasn’t sure what would happen, but I was excited. But then—it just ended. I felt let down. I wanted to know more, to see more, to experience more of this world. It didn’t feel like the piece had really resolved—but rather that it was cut off.

Overall, though, “Tale from the Land of Frightful Dreams” was a very well-choreographed and performed piece, which did “blur the limits of codified dance forms,” at once bringing together a variety of styles and forming a cohesive and intriguing whole. It will be exciting to see where this piece or other pieces created by Carter’s newly-formed performance company Rumble Motion Jawbone go from here.

Rachael holds a BFA from VCU and will finish her MFA at the U this spring. She regularly contributes to the loveDANCEmore blog and publication.