Full-Length Dance

May 5th, “Tacit Consent”

Choreography by Liss Fain 

I didn’t take many notes for this performance; I didn’t need to.  The idea was simple and executed clearly, and I was able to physically and mentally move through the piece without a lot of unnecessary noise.  I don’t mean to imply that the dance was simplistic because it wasn’t.  Rather, it spoke intelligibly and complexly about surveillance and privacy with a felt playful intimacy that carried throughout the 45-minute piece.

The space at YBCA was divided into four “rooms” by hung walls crafted out of various materials that despite having gaps and slits were illuminated by various projections.  Matthew Antaky and Frédéric Boulay created an impressive physical, visual, and sonic installation.  

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The program notes pointed out that Tacit Consent is an immersive performance installation.  To see and hear everything you must walk about.”  I rather enjoyed the freedom of moving about and within the performance even if it was impossible to see the whole dance.  It was voyeuristic, playful, and intimate.  And the dancing amplified this experience.  The choreography embodied different kinds of desire for isolation, contact, curiosity, etc. by creating purposeful movement that could be felt from the feet of the dancers to the tops of their heads.  Nothing seemed to be wasted.  This dance was satisfyingly fun.

As the title suggests, there is something to consider about how easily we seem to allow ourselves to be watched and how easy it is to watch others.  What power do we “give up”?   To whom? For what purpose?  Even in all the fun of this dance there is a seriousness that lingers –  in the story of Edward Snowden – in the technology of drones – in the security cameras in our hallways.

 

April 16th, “echo::system – treadmill dreamtime; running in place”

Choreography by Grisha Coleman

I’m used to going to performances that don’t adhere to traditional or formal performance orientations.  I’m used to walking into a theater space with the performance already happening.  I’m used to sitting on the side of a stage instead of in front of it.  I’m used to not knowing where to fix my gaze while watching.  

However, I am not used to seeing treadmills on stage.

I attended this performance as a singular event, but each afternoon before the show  YBCA offered an interactive installation for people to reflect on their impact on the natural world.  I also  learned, that echo::system – treadmill dreamtime; running in place is the second installment of a “five-part epic.”  The first, “Abyss,” was performed in 2003.  This kind of extended thinking was evident as well as a density that resonated between various aspects of the performance, which included 3D animation, composed music, fragmented screens, and a metal ramp.  Coleman’s team included performers as well as multiple designers and researchers perhaps reflecting her orientation as a Professor of Arts, Media and Engineering at Arizona State Univeristy.  As I watched, I could sense this weight of thinking and making.

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It’s taken me a while to figure out a response to this dance.  I’ve been sitting with the program notes alongside the scribbles in my notebook.  I think the weight and density of the piece make it difficult for me write as the dance seems to demand some weight in response.  Hence, I start with a question: where is the human?

In the context of echo::system – treadmill dreamtime; running in place, the answer might be found in walking.  Coleman uses walking as her aesthetic impulse: “The choreography depicts an ambulatory narrative that explores the transitional space between urban and “country”environments by following a tribe as they embark on a journey into a mythic desert.”  The human practice of walking is explored in the dance as a technique and ritual.   The grid-like movements reference urban movement that is layered with various groupings, pilings, and processions.  “The human” seems to be located within practices of mobility that have carved out the earth and segmented society.   While I know there is more happening in this piece I just can’t seem to find my way into its density – could Coleman be thinking too hard?

March 26th, “Lauda Adrianna”

Stephen Pelton Dance Theatre, choreography by Stephen Pelton from movement devised by the company

Music – the haunting laude by Gavin Byrars was deeply felt.  Bearing witness to a process of grieving, of sorting through loss and pain of emptiness.  Considering the afterness of passing.

There are perhaps other things to say in response to this piece – like a poem – but I think I will let this one just sit as it is, and be thankful to witness.    

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P.S. I know there was a lot Bay Area History that also sat with me in the audience, I could feel (and see) it, but didn’t feel like writing that part.  Sometimes dances just need to be.

March 10th, “Analogy/Dora:Tramontane”

Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, choreography by Bill T. Jones with Janet Wong and the Company

Bill and I have been seeing each other for a while.

I first saw the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in 2006 when they performed Blind Date in Madison, WI.  I was in graduate school, and eventually, the dance became a central feature in one chapter of my dissertation.  Since then, I’ve also seen Chapel/Chapter, Fondly Do We Hope…Fervently Do We Pray, A Rite, and Story/Time.   I’m did not read any reviews before seeing this piece, but I did take the time to listen to this interview with Jones on KQED’s Forum with Michael Kransy.  In it, Jones claims that this piece is a departure for the company.  I am not sure how much of  a departure this piece is from the others I’ve seen – abstraction of storytelling, text, and movement all seem to be at play in this work too.  This work is a story and a telling of that story via Jones (with Janet Wong and the Company).   There is no doubt that Jones is telling this story.


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First, some orientation (thanks to the program notes).  Analogy/Dora; Tramontane is based on the oral history conducted by Bill T. Jones with Dora Amelan, “a ninety-five-year-old-French-Jewish women” recently “awarded the French legion of Honor of her World War II activities as part of O.S.E., a Jewish organization dedicated to saving children that was first established in 1917 and went underground in France during the war’s occupation.”  

Like most pieces I’ve seen by Jones, I found myself watching with my ears and listening with eyes.  There is a distinct abstraction between what is being spoken or sung and what is happening on stage.  The text, Amelan’s oral history, is spoken out loud by different dancers as they move about the stage – her story has more than one voice – it moves.   Amelan’s history unfolds as a series of vignettes accented by the mobile set pieces that are rearranged by the dancers.  Perhaps invoking the labor of history/memory making.  I don’t remember much about the dancing; it seemed to get eclipsed by the abstract storytelling and striking music (performed live by Nick Hallett and Emily Manzo).  Jones, it seems, likes to make his audiences work and because of that, the lovely dancing doesn’t always get noticed.  Brian Siebert’s review of Analogy/Dora; Tramontane in the New York Times only devotes 4 sentences to the dancing.  I am still trying to figure out if this is ok.

Since seeing this piece, I can’t help but think about my German grandparents; they survived WWII along with my mother.  They never liked to talk much about their experiences.  So much of their histories were willfully lost.  I wonder – there must be countless untold stories.  Is history ever complete?  Who gets to tell history’s stories?  Who owns history?

In many ways, this is what Jones does best – he provokes questions.  More accurately, he brings audiences to questions by re-making and abstracting stories, histories, and politics.  For now, this is enough to keep me coming back to his work.

January 22nd, “Rice”

Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan

I got a slow start this year.

2016 started with words about dance.  I attended two discussions as a part of the Fresh Festival (“Phenomenology & Feminisms, or Ladies Night with Fauxnique Monique Jenkinson” and “Dance Discourse Project #21: Dreaming the Future Landscape”).  I’m not sure what I expected out of these events.  I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to “do” as an audience member/participant, and I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to take home with me.  Maybe I chose the wrong talks (unfortunately, I didn’t have much choice in my schedule).  Maybe the they needed better facilitators.  Maybe I needed to participate more.

Now, for the dancing – Cloud Gate Dance Theatre. I bought this ticket last Fall, and it was a little weird to have this on my calendar for so long.  I am usually not thinking that far in advance.

CalPerformance program.

If I could only choose one word to describe “Rice,” it would be “satisfying.” Beautiful dancing, rhythm, video, light, sound – all of it was satisfying.

As I learned from the program notes, the choreographer, Lin Hwai-min, took his dancers to join farmers harvesting rice in the field.  It tells “the story of the land while contemplating the devastation of Earth.”  I don’t know how, but this showed up in the dance. I could sense it.  Perhaps what I found so satisfying had something to with how these dancers embodied soil, wind, pollen, sunlight, grain, fire, and water via the experiences of death and rebirth, devastation and resurrection.  The program notes also suggest that the dance “enacts a human drama parallel to the life cycle of rice.”  But is this all?  As I pressed start on my rice cooker today, I began to reflect back on the performance as something more than just a satisfying experience.  What might it mean to be watching laboring dancers embodying the human and non-human labor of rice production?  Is this aspect of labor eclipsed by the beauty of moving bodies and images?  If so, why?

It’s often so easy to sit in the audience and be satisfied with the beauty of a dance.  But dance doesn’t only exist in the theater or in program notes.  Dances connect to experiences, identities, communities, ideologies, questions, and more.  They ask us to think differently, consider alternative worlds, explore new concepts, and imagine other ways of being.  Yet, the theater can isolate the experience of watching and even detach us from those connections.  Yes, watching “Rice” was satisfying, but its labor gives me pause and in that pause I am confronted by multiple kinds labor and laboring that are visible as well as invisible.  

November 10th, “Kaash”

By Akram Khan Company

I took my brother; I think he enjoyed it more than me.

I was interested, and also a little disappointed.  I think I was expecting something a little “more” and I’m not sure that I mean by that yet.  The dancers were strong and I liked the movement aesthetic, overall, but something was missing for me.  There was a stunning solo in purple light – her body moved with such precision and abandon.  I just can’t put my finger on it.  Maybe I was distracted by learning that Anish Kapoor had designed the set.  I saw his piece, Leviathan, in Paris 2011 so my expectations might have been (too) high.  Even so, I still wanted more – a message, question, or statement.  

 

October 30th, “Opus”

By Circa

There was choreography.  There was acrobatics.  There was thinking happening.  There was Shostakovich.

I was asked in April if I wanted to purchase any tickets for the CalPerformances 2015/2016 season.  This was the only one I picked for 2015. I chose this show because it looked different, and because I could hang out with a friend I don’t get to see nearly enough.  It was fun even if it didn’t say much.

September 25th, “Earth/Body/Home”

Choreography by Amara Tabor-Smith 

Dancing on the street – talking with Christy Bollingbroke- kneeling in the lobby watching/observing/listening.  A familiar form (Tabor-Smith had a similar beginning at the Walking Distance Festival in 2013).  Then there was a speech or rather some talking and quoting, a preface of sorts.  It seemed a little much at the time. I did write down some words in my notebook (in no particular order):

mourning

birth

migration – immigration

place no place

what remains?

home

There really wasn’t time to read the program.

It felt like a ritual, but not.

It felt like a dance performance, but not.

The program notes started with: “The ritual which you will participate in…”  But I didn’t feel like a participant in a ritual: I wasn’t asked.  I felt like an audience member that was bearing witness to something I didn’t know much about; it was odd.  What if I refuse to participate?  What then?  I was almost so consumed by this oddness that I mostly forgot the dancing, the movement of bodies on the stage.  What were they doing? What were they saying?  How did they move?  Maybe it doesn’t matter. I wanted it to matter.