Mixed Repertory Program

Gerald Casel, “Dancing Around Race” February 15th

On a sunny Saturday afternoon, I hopped on Muni to the Asian Art Museum to catch Gerald Casel’s “Dancing Around Race.” The event included a lecture by Casel, 5 site-specific performances, and a post-show discussion. 

It started with a 20-minute lecture by Casel, “Dancing Around Race; Interrogating Whiteness in Dance,” which provided a framework for watching the 5 dances on the program. These dances “reflect on a year of research” – the choreographers, Yayoi Kambara, Raissa Simpson, David Herrera, SAMMAY, and Gerald Casel, participated in Casel’s year-long Community Engagement Residency through the Hope Mohr Dance 2018 Bridge Project:

“Together they interrogated the dynamics of equity in performance, specifically how the structures and systems of dance presentation are affected by race and power” 

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Dancing Around Race: Interrogating Whiteness in Dance by Gerald Casel. Photo: Michelle LaVigne

I stand in relation to Casel’s work as a white woman and I appreciated Casel’s framing as it encouraged me to consider the multiple ways in which my perspective is (always) shaded by this stance. Casel’s talk charted his journey in curating and creating Dancing Around Race. It was thoughtful, reflective, and insightful and brought into constellation questions, terms, and realities of bodies, dance, and dance-making:

  • Invisibility of whiteness
  • Equity
  • False universalism (as whiteness)
  • White fragility
  • Whiteness as neutral, normal, ordinary
  • Systems
  • Economies

Casel did not hold back. He voiced struggles and frustrations working on Not About Race Dance and the Dancing Around Race Public Gatherings. He stressed the need to keep naming the inequities from various standpoints. I was particularly struck by his list of major dance companies in San Francisco dominated by “white individuals.” 

Casel’s framing lingered as I moved around the Asian Art Museum encountering works in Samsung Hall, the Wilbur Grand Staircase, Bogart Court and Lee Gallery. I didn’t take too many notes as I wanted to experience the dances without distraction. By the time I ended up back in Samsung Hall for Casel’s Duet X, I felt invited into a conversation that had already been happening and at the same time ongoing. Both Herrara’s It’s Always Also Me and SAMMAY’s a technoritwal asked the audience to carefully, mindfully and playfully consider their points of view, and their bodies’ views – they articulated and spoke. With all 5 dances, I noticed direct and unwavering movement modalities that clearly embodied a year of research and the persistence of work. The post-show discussion continued Casel’s opening lecture as the choreographers discussed their movement modalities, offered ways white communities can “decenter,” and considered what it means to unpack white neutrality.  

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a technoritwal by SAMMAY. Photo: Michelle LaVigne

A week later I found myself sitting at a university forum on black women in the academy. They began by asking: “who’s research is considered valuable?” University of San Francisco University Professor Stephanie Sears responded by explaining how her research on “how black women and girls work with and against each other to create safe space, construct identities and empower themselves” was seen as “too particular” and not generalizable enough. With “Dancing Around Race” Casel is asking us to stop generalizing dance and to value dances, dancers, and dance-makers of color for their particular stances, experiences, and perspectives. Casel, like Sears, is a researcher to watch and read.

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April 6th, PILOT 71 – “Six Second Rule”

This is the second time in five months I’ve been invited to write a response for the ODC Pilot Program.  Pilot 71 – Six Second Rule featured 5 dances by ayanadancearts, HB//Collabs, Kickbal, Alyssa Mitchel, and PULP. I’m not sure how these dances were connected under the production’s title, but I did notice that each paid particular attention to rhythm and used that rhythm to amply a range of themes, questions, and moods.

The first piece, Tane choreographed by Ayana Yonesaka (in collaboration with the dancers), was danced by four adults and an 8-year old. The piece had a playful, thoughtful quality to it. The choreography didn’t move too fast, which suggested a kind of taking care, especially between the dancers and their representative generations. This mood was interrupted by one dancer expressing a moment of frustration – voice whining, body tensing. This moment stood out and surprised me as if I had encountered this scene at a playground, on a sidewalk, or in a store. Why this moment was necessary? I wasn’t quite sure. Tane ended after the 8-year old went to each adult dancer and gestured as if placing an object into each of their outstretched hands, which underscored the notion of care. Overall, the dance reminded me that we can (and perhaps should) learn from the perspectives of children.

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Tane, ODC Dance Commons April 2019. Photo Credit: Mark Shigenaga

Wonderment “focuses on the emotion and experiences of joy” and incorporated recordings from 7 interviews. Choreographed by Hayley Bowman (in collaboration with the dancers), the movement and gestures exemplified togetherness, including the clapping and holding of hands. The recorded interviews and music created a disjointed sound experience that seemed at times unnecessary to the concepts at work in the piece. Why not let the movement speak more? What did the words add? The dance ended with all the dancers in a clump, one on top of the other and then one dancer stood on top before jumping off as the lights darkened. The concept of joy as articulated in Wonderment suggests that the experience of it can be intimate, scant, small, and even difficult at times. The dance’s message seemed clear (to me): Joy should not be taken for granted.

Relic, the third piece on the program, was playful and introspective. It started with a dancer taping down a large piece of white butcher paper on the floor stage left; once in place, the dancers walked around it counting out their steps as if measuring distance. Later, another dancer rolled out butcher paper across the back of the stage, tapping it down. Then she rolled across it while at the same time outlining parts of her body on the paper with a sharpie. These tactile moments and earthy hue of the costumes gave the dance an archeological feel – were they making relics? Discovering them? The dancers also played with the audience by smiling and winking; It was hard not to smile back. While I wasn’t sure what choreographers Emma Lanier and Ky Frances wanted me to take away from Relic I did enjoy the whimsy articulated by the dance and dancers.

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Relic, ODC Dance Commons April 2019. Photo Credit: Mark Shigenaga

Frustration is part of a larger work by Alyssa Mitchel titled The Classroom based on Mitchell’s experiences as a math and organizational skills tutor and, like Wonderment, includes audio from interviews. This is the second time I’ve seen Mitchel’s work, which was also part of The Classroom. The dancing in Frustration clearly embodied and expressed the myriad ways frustration manifests – as small fits, exhaustion, isolation. The dance also served as a reminder that we are not alone, especially when it comes to learning and the structures that constrain that process. The research behind Frustration is compelling yet the inclusion of the interviews at times seemed intrusive to the choreography and my experience of the dance. My 7-year old daughter wrote in her notes that this (i.e. frustration) “happens a lot of times to me.” The message in Frustration clearly speaks across ages, which doesn’t happen very often in dance but maybe it should more.

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Frustration, ODC Dance Commons April 2019. Photo Credit: Kyle Adler

The last piece on the program, Foot Fault, choreographed by Jenna Valez (in collaboration with the dancers), was infused with rhythm of five dancers that never seemed to stop dancing. Before the dance started, the curtains were pulled back to reveal the windows, providing a backdrop of the street and amplifying the communal feel of the dance; we were not in a theater anymore. The choreography – with fast gestures, movement cannons, and a delightful head-bobbing moment on the floor – was consistent and playful. The dancers kept moving. The music choices suited the movement quality of the dance as a felt experience of shared energy. Foot Fault didn’t dive too deep and seemed a fitting way to end the evening of dance.

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Foot Fault, ODC Dance Commons April 2019. Photo Credit: Mark Shigenaga

I’ve been attending the ODC Pilot performances on and off for years and am always pleasantly surprised by what I see. The dancing across all 5 pieces was committed and thoughtful, suggesting that dance can include 8-year olds, field research, interviews, outlining, and more. Reflecting on this evening of dance I wonder how often people take the time to try out a new choreographer, dance venue, or art form. I’m thankful for the opportunity to keep trying new things and hope the ODC Pilot program continues to thrive in a city that seems sometimes at odds with its artistic sense of self.

Last post of 2018/First post of 2019

One of the last dance performances I saw in 2018 was Performing Diaspora 2018 at Counterpulse featuring choreography by Cynthia Ling Lee and Melissa Lewis (with Kim Ip and Nina Wu). It was an exceptional way to end a year of watching and writing dance. I was grateful to learn about the Santa Cruz, CA Chinatowns and Chinese labor camps that existed between 1860-1955 in Lee’s Lost Chinatowns. The layers were sometimes hard to see through, but some points resonated – the value of testimony, community, and memory. I couldn’t help but think about my grandmother, my Oma. She immigrated to the U.S. after WWII with my 7-year old Mother. How did she manage to make a home and find a place after the atrocities of war? Then I thought about how much she never talked about that time and how many stories get lost – the unspeakability of things.

It seemed fitting for the evening to end with I dreamed Bruce Lee was my father. It was poignant and funny, thoughtful and fun. I wasn’t sure what to expect (I explicitly avoided the KQED review of the piece before seeing the show). As part of the Performing Diaspora Residency at CounterPulse, I suspected this piece would be about racial identity in some way. Race was part of the conversation, but it didn’t dominate, which allowed for Lewis, Ip, and Wu to dig deeper into issues of ancestry, identity, and longing. Part dance, part theater, part movie set the pieces of  I dreamed Bruce Lee was my father added up – the dancing amplified the content along with the costume changes, karaoke singing, and spoken word. I didn’t get lost or wander too far.

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I dreamed Bruce Lee was my father, CounterPulse December 2018. Photo Credit: Robbie Sweeny

This multimedia, and multimodal piece asked the audience to consider the past as part of how we are now, in the present. What are the lineages that keep us moving, keep us asking not only who we are but who we hope to be? This inquiry, as played out by the dancers, is serious and also humorous. Writing for KQED, Gluckstern claims the piece “doesn’t lead to a greater revelation of the persistence of outmoded stereotypes.” I noticed that too, but that criticism didn’t linger for me. What lingered for me were questions about ancestry and a longing for connections between parts of ourselves that we don’t know to connect or wish we could do better.

As I walked out into the night, I thought about what I long and hope for. I can’t think of a better way to end 2018 and begin 2019.

 

December 2nd, Pilot 70 – “Merging”

Choreography by Alyssa Mitchel, Charlotte Carmichael, Marlene Garcia, Nadhi Thekkek, Molly Matutat, and Tanya Chianese

I was invited by Alyssa Mitchel to write a response to Pilot 70 – Merging and happy for the opportunity. I’ve written responses to Pilot 65 and 67 programs and generally found them to be fun evenings of dance making. The ODC Pilot Program provides a performance venue and framework for emerging artists and is supporting its 70th cohort. Each choreographer is mentored by a professional choreographer and ODC staff in their artistic work, production, and promotion. The selected choreographers self-produce and promote their work collectively, which is not an easy task. 

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Defining Intelligence, ODC Dance Commons December 2018. Photo Credit: Kyle Adler

Defining Intelligence by Alyssa Mitchel explored the meaning and nature of intelligence by incorporating video interviews with students and teachers. The inclusion of school desks, rulers, and other classroom references highlighted that institutions of learning still underpin how (and where) we cultivate intelligence. This piece had a lot going on, and it seemed to move fast. I wasn’t sure the videos were even needed as the choreographic movements clearly worked through some of the questions we have about the relationship between intelligence and learning. The end of the dance aptly captured the idea that intelligence is an ongoing process and place of wonder and perhaps a kind of play.

multiple ways to feel invincible by Charlotte Carmichael, a solo performed by Rachel Geller, set a different tone following Defining Intelligence. It was slower and almost melancholic. The music, “Picture your favorite place” by Neterfriends, gave the dance a spacious quality that was amplified by deep plies and large forth positions – as if Geller was gearing up or waiting for something. Maybe she was trying to figure out where to go. Maybe she was gathering strength for some feat. There were glimmers of invincibility especially at the end when Geller’s expression broke into a smile, suggesting that she had figured something out that the rest of us hadn’t. In this way, invincibility might have something to do with persistence and resilience.

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multiple ways to feel invincible, ODC Dance Commons December 2018. Photo Credit: Kyle Adler

Fuerza by Marlene Garcia offered a dark landscape. The trio of dancers moved in and out of synchronicity. They started the dance together, in a small circle facing inward. I was drawn to this quality the most.  The dancers moved seamlessly between individual and collective moments. The repeated twitching movement suggested an unease or distortion that made the darkened aesthetic even more so. Fuerza is Spanish for force and I wasn’t quite sure how (or if) Garcia was speaking to or with this concept. I couldn’t quite make out the words of “oh ahh Hum” by Jane Winter (designed by Jonathan Crawford), but thought I heard the word “home.” I kept trying to figure out the connection between it and the dancing. The piece ended as it began with the dancers in a tight circle and instead of facing inward, they faced outward as if they gained a new perspective or way of seeing.

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Fuerza, ODC Dance Commons December 2018. Photo Credit: Kyle Adler

Reminisce by Nadhi Thekkek, was part of a larger work, Broken Seeds Still Grow, a mixed media dance production. Thekkek notes: “This work is inspired by witness statements describing the events before, during and after the 1947 Partition of British India.” I was inspired by the possibility of a dance actively engaging with a complex (and troubling) historical moment and its impact on people. The aesthetic and movement vocabulary was fitting and embodied the multifarious drama, particularly in gazes passed between the dancers. The end, focused on the question of how to forgive hate, seemed particularly relevant to the current political climate. Reminisce did feel like a fragment of something larger, but it felt committed and made me curious about the whole work and how one uses dance to deal with the suffering of the past. 

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Reminisce, ODC Dance Commons December 2018. Photo Credit: Kyle Adler

Residue by Molly Matutat, was another trio of 3 dancers that started with one dancer in a spotlight center stage that eventually opened up to the full stage with all dancers sharing the space. This was another dark landscape – costumes, lighting, and mood. The crackling-static like sound amplified an other-worldly tone. The choreography included exhausting repetitive movement; the dancers at times ended up on the floor. They never wavered energetically and the pace of the dancing was persistent. I kept wondering what the dancers were searching for, what did they want or need? There wasn’t much resolution at the end, but maybe that was part of the dance’s message. What is left behind? How can we make sense of what we can’t quite grasp? Such questions resonate with 21st Century living.

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Residue, ODC Dance Commons December 2018. Photo Credit: Kyle Adler

Daybreak by Tanya Chianese, was the last piece on the program and brought light (literally and figuratively) to the end of the evening. Inspired by the rising sun, Daybreak offered a vibrant dance filled with chorus-like movement and breathing. The seven dancers spent most of their time dancing together, repeating choreography and gestures that at times seemed a little frantic and at others more grounded. While there was a lovely duet it was the collective movements that really stood out to me. And I kept wanting the dancers to slow down so I could focus on the energy between their movements and how they breathed through them. Even so, the light was palpable and the communal aspect of the dance resonated. This piece was well placed on the program given the darker shades of content in the previous pieces by Matautat, Thekkek, and Garcia.

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Daybreak, ODC Dance Commons December 2018. Photo Credit: Kyle Adler

“Merging,” the title for Pilot 70, is a verb that means to immerse, to plunge, to be absorbed and disappear, to combine, to be amalgamated (from the Oxford English Dictionary). The six works (all female choreographers by the way) did not directly engage with these definitions of merging, but they did explore concepts, experiences, and voices in ways that suggest a kind of bringing together. Whether it was a collective questioning about intelligence, hate, or dreams or repeating of shared movement, the dances by Mitchel, Charmichael, Garcia, Thekkek, Matutat, and Chianese were engaged with their content and danced with commitment. I went home glad to have seen six women choreographers and hopeful for the future of dance in the Bay Area.

October 13th, “Movement for Sound”

Watching Dance with Others, Part I

Back in October, I took my 6yr old daughter with me over to Shawl-Anderson Dance Center to watch 5 dancers respond to the music of Michael Wall. She was nervous and we were almost late but got settled quickly on the last cushions up front in a large studio converted into a cozy performance space. I brought her for two reasons: 1) this kid loves music and 2) the show started at 6pm. After the hour-long performance, we were home by her bedtime.

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The evening featured 5 responses to Wall’s music: Simpson/Stulberg Collaborations, dazaun.dance, Dana Lawton Dancers, ka⋅nei⋅see⎥ collective, and Molly Heller. What stood out to me was how the live music that accompanied the first and last pieces amplified the physical space and resonated through bodies moving, gesturing, and gazing. In Still Life No. 1+5+7, choreographed by Lauren Simpson and Jenny Stulberg and danced by Stulberg, the music didn’t just fill in the dance’s movements of stillness but amplified them to generate a lingering emptiness full with potential. In Heartland, choreographed and danced by Heller, the music “danced” along with Heller, adding to messages of must-ness, persistence, and unrelenting-ness. When I asked my daughter about the show she said she liked Daybreak the best; she enjoyed how all the women danced together.

The best part of the night really wasn’t the dancing or the music but spending time with daughter watching and talking dance.

April 14th, “Still Life No. 8” Edge Residency 2018

Choreography by Lauren Simpson and Jenny Stulberg

I’ve written about Simpson and Stulberg’s work for years and always look forward to a display of small quick gestures that play with sound, space, and sight that contain surprises of unusual directions, gestures, and glances. The audience on Saturday, April 14th seemed much less familiar with their work. I noticed short bursts of laughter and gasps from the audience, which encouraged me to experience “Still Life No. 8” on its own, as something new.

Simpson and Stulberg did not reveal which still life painting from the de Young Museum this movement study is based on. Instead, they wrote: “The eighth work in our series, this dance acknowledges the labor and life of the table and performers.” Multiple forms of labor were clearly articulated as the dancers kept pushing an industrial looking table (designed by Giacomo Castagnola) into different positions around the stage, locking and unlocking its wheels. As the trio of dancers worked (and danced), they kept checking in with each other with simple phrases like “yep” and “ok.” Their costumes looked like uniforms and they seemed concerned with getting “it” just right. 

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“Still Life No. 8,” Simpson/Stulberg Collaborations, Counterpulse 2018 (Photo by M.LaVigne)

The zig-zagging movements of dancers on the top, bottom, middle, and sides of the table created moments of tension and surprise. They slid across the table’s surfaces, stopping just as it seemed they might slide off the edge. When the table was turned on its side, they used the sides as walls or screens, moving in and out of them to create a dynamic tableau. The first and last sections had no music, which amplified the labor of the body on, off, and with the table as well as the verbal recognition of that labor between the dancers. The only part with music was the middle section; it was “danced” by the table. Arletta Anderson could barely be seen underneath the table as she moved it across the stage – another nod toward the labor that goes unseen or unacknowledged.

I never quite figured out the end goal; what were the dancers working to achieve? It occurred to me that perhaps that was the point or rather question. What are we trying to achieve with all of our multiple forms of labor? What do we take for granted in those labors (like a table)? What kind of connections do we make or break while we labor?

Like “Still Life No’s 1-6,” I left the theater with a little grin. This time I was delighted by the experience of seeing a table “dance” and by the gasps and laughter from the audience. Simpson and Stulberg have a unique ability to play with incongruity that is insightful as well as humorous. “Still Life No. 8 ” found movements to show us how the unnoticed  – like a table – often get missed in the labor of living. I wonder what will be on display in “Still Life No. 7” April 28th and 29th? Come join me to find out!

I’ve Been Watching

First Performances of 2018.  

Another slow start. I have yet to process all the dance from 2017. I saw a lot and wrote a little less. I did an interview, had a conversation, and invited a guest writer. I had fun.

My first show of 2018 was back in January. I caught Fresh Festival Performance Weekend #2 at the Joe Good Annex with choreography by Gerald Casel and Keith Hennessy; Sara Shelton Mann; Rachael Dichter and Allie Hankins. It’s interesting to look back – what do I remember? What lingers? Here are two lingering memories:

In” A Dance in a Theatre” Keith Hennessy kept all his clothes on!

Loved the refrain at the end of “FramesFrames/The Revolving Door II” by Mann. It was a satisfying repeating of song and movement that brought some of the audience on the stage – I couldn’t help but smile.

I also snuck in A.C.T.’s production of Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party. I loved all of it – the acting, storytelling, the humor. I didn’t mind being out past my bedtime. 

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September 16th, Transform Fest at YBCA

Choreography by Amy Sweiwert; Larry Arrington with Sandra Lawson-Ndu and Minoosh Zomorodinia; and Fog Beast

I’ve been looking forward to this evening of dance since YBCA announced its lineup for Transform Fest – 7 choreographers responding to the question “Why Citizenship?” According to Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Chief of Program and Pedagogy at YBCA, “The curation of the festival is intended to reveal our artists as accountable agents in service of civic impact.” This claim merits further investigation in relation to the dance works presented so I will come back to it later. It frames the pieces on the program in a very particular (and rhetorical) way, which I found problematic for several reasons.

Audience

Walking into the YBCA lobby around 7:15 the energy was palpable. A group of people were sitting at a large table engaged in a pre-performance talk of some kind. Small groups were forming and others were exploring the Tania Bruguera, “Talking to Power / Hablándole al Poder” exhibit on the first-floor gallery. We were not allowed into the Forum space until performance time (about 8 pm). Just before the doors opened, Marc Bamuthi Joseph grabbed a microphone and welcomed us to the evening; it was odd as usually these remarks are made after entering. He informed us there would be one intermission and that the audience could expect to participate and be asked to move around. So in we went.

The Forum is a large room in which various kinds of seating had been arranged so you never know what to expect. By the time I entered the performance space, the only seating left for my two friends and I were foam cubes – they were not comfortable. In addition to these foam cubes, which framed part of the space, there were short stools on wheels placed in front of regular chairs on bleachers. File_000 (31)After the first 40-45 minute piece by Fog Beast and an intermission, we moved and were able to sit in regular chairs. I think some folks left (I noticed that Marc Bamuthi Joseph did). I was surprised that no one warned the audience that some of the seating options could be difficult for those with mobility challenges or injuries. I was also surprised that the printed program for the evening was not listed in correct order. Usually, there is a supplemental insert or an announcement when something deviates from the printed program. These are some of the initial reasons I didn’t feel tended to as an audience member.

Dances

The three pieces on the program were framed by the question “Why Citizenship?” in different ways: reconsidering the past;  exploring its connotations; challenging the present; addressing incongruity. Fog Beast, “He’s One of Us,” began the evening with a little satire. The audience was segregated into “conference attendees,” “citizens,” and “honored supporters” by Patricia West, the conference M.C. The other dancer, who was the keynote speaker, reminded us of the importance of success, privilege, networking, and belonging. This world is all about words. The dancers then shifted into a different world – one of movement and little words. I couldn’t quite grasp the message here or how this world related to the conference. Was it meant to reflect some aspects of our social life – the shifting between two different ways of being or thinking? As a result, the witty satire didn’t seem to go far enough. How might we find our way out of or around the current state of our “conference.” What other ways of living do we need to remember or recover?

I was eager for Larry Arrington’s collaboration, “Opia,” with Sandra Lawson-Ndu and Minoosh Zomorodinia, in part because I had seen Arrington’s work in the past. Arrington started with a poem of sorts. I didn’t catch all the words but understood that rather than assert an answer to “Why Citizenship?”  the piece enters through the question through the back door. Arrington’s backward movements of crawling on hands and knees and tiny bourrees reflected this impetus. There was stitching, searching, and reflecting of fabrics, lights, and sound. It was at times hard to see and at other times hard to follow, but I didn’t mind too much. “Opia” was kind of dream-like and as a response to the question of why citizenship the piece suggests that maybe it is a myth, a wish, a desire. Citizenship is yet to be fully realized but perhaps we can glimpse it in our dreams.

The last piece by Amy Seiwert “The Degree to Which you are Free,” started with a white costumed duet followed by a group dressed in black that danced to protest songs inspired by acts of protest such as “Ain’t Gonna Study War No More” and “We Shall Not Be Moved.” About half-way into the piece Seiwert talked about “Danger of Speaking,” a dance she choreographed for Austin Ballet in 2011, which was not without controversy. Seiwert talked about it as her “first experience with censorship.” These three different elements seemed oddly connected and I couldn’t quite figure out what Seiwert was trying to articulate about citizenship.

Did these 3 dances answer the question of “Why citizenship?” either individually or collectively? I’m not so sure.

Was the evening just another night out at YBCA? Perhaps.

Curation

I had ample conversation with others after the show but on my way home couldn’t help revisiting Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s claim about the festival: “The curation of the festival is intended to reveal our artists as accountable agents in service of civic impact.” To me, this claim suggests that the pieces on the program would be advocating for change or engaging in civic participation. As an audience member, I do not see how these artists felt themselves as “accountable” in “the service of civic impact.” Do the messages of these dances have an impact outside of the YBCA Forum? Are these artists accountable for something other than what happens on the stage?

In his program notes, Marc Bamuthi Joseph goes on: “The question at the center of this work appears to be rhetorical, but the stakes of our social landscape don’t afford us the luxury of witness without personal implication.” As a scholar and teacher of rhetoric, I find this sentence problematic. It suggests that rhetoric is not part of our social landscape. It suggests that rhetoric is a bystander in the work of change. It suggests that rhetoric involves actors (or rhetors) that are not implicated in what they say (or do). Rhetoric is an art of potential – it is a way of being the world that aims for change. It doesn’t always aim for the “right” kind of change and it doesn’t always achieve the change it intends. Rhetoric does indeed matter, and to suggest that art is somehow different from (or above) rhetoric seems to miss the valuable connections that could be made by engaging with dance as a sometimes rhetorical art.

August 10, New Original Works Festival at REDCAT, L.A.

Guest Blog Post by Julian Carter

The 2017 NOW festival events are presented in REDCAT, a decent size black box theater with a fancy lobby. It’s on the ground floor underneath a major symphony hall (the Disney, natch) and across the street from the Broad Museum of contemporary art—a top-notch address if you judge by the neighbors, and a space making some architectural claims about its place in the art world. The promotional materials on the REDCAT website reinforce the message that we are supposed to sit up and prepare to be impressed. But that’s not why we went. We’re in LA for the weekend and our host, who is deep in the LA dance scene, wanted to come. He had to be downtown anyway to meet a young person he knows through the LA LGBTQ center’s mentorship program, and also out of personal loyalty to choreographers Jeremy Nelson and Luis Lara Malvacías. He explains they’re a transcontinental couple, which means they almost never get to work together, and he wants to support their collaboration.

I agreed to tag along because I am interested in my friend’s mentorship relationship, and also because Nelson has a reputation as a truly marvelous teacher. I’m a touch ambivalent about a second piece on the program called “Butch Ballet.” My host is dreading it rather but I have some hope that its maker might be a person I met at a dance event last year and liked very much. I don’t quite recognize the choreographer’s name, but it all adds up to mean there is a consistent element of queer sociality and community in this outing. Before the show begins we’ve already agree to leave before the third piece on the program. We drove down from SF this morning, we’re too tired to stay out late, and the description suggests it’s going to be very loud.

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Screen Shot Retrieved on 8/30: https://www.redcat.org/event/now-festival-2017-week-three

Jeremy Nelson and Luis Lara Malvacías, “C.”

The piece opens with what turns out to be its strongest gesture: the two men springing softly into low, travelling hops with their feet in parallel at hip distance and their arms loose. These carry them around the stage in a sequence of loose squares, their feet landing first slightly in front of them, then to the sides and the back. Their feet create a satisfyingly steady 4:4 drumming as they land in emphatic unison on ONE, and more softly on the two-three-four, before their legs swing forward again to mark the downbeat.

The stage is black and bare save for a large screen on which is projected a 20 minute timer and an abstract pattern in green with some movement in it. There is also a potted plant hanging from the flies on a wire. This simplicity gives me a moment to appreciate that Jeremy has a remarkably fluid hop, his legs swinging underneath him with a powerful soft economy. Two stage hands—slender white men in black—come on and dress the stage with white furniture: a table, three chairs, a standing lamp—then leave again along lines apparently dictated by economy: the shortest route on, the shortest route off. The dancers stop their rhythmic bouncing, carry the objects offstage along the same efficient routes, and resume their soft explorations. The audience appreciates this with a laughter that I share. Everyone recognizes the collision of tasks and the need to clear a space for concentration. The stagehands return and repeat. The dancers repeat and return. There is no laughter this time. I normally like repetition and am curious to see how the choreographic relationship between these two contrasting kinds of task-based movement might develop; but it doesn’t get a chance. The music changes, the image on screen morphs into a blue sky with clouds, and the men stop bouncing.

To my mind, the piece could have, and perhaps should have, concluded at any point in this opening passage. The screen got darker and developed menacing imagery. The soundscape got louder and more aggressive. Clouds. Bombs. Fire. Contentious voices talking about God and hell and being an intellectual. For all the intensity of the material, the actual movement got less and less interesting to look at, in a way that made me think they were being deliberately anti-spectacular. I tried to get interested in that but failed. The dancers never connected with one another or with the objects on the set. There were some small exceptions: Jeremy hovered in the act of being about to sit on one of the chairs, for a few almost supernatural seconds that could well have been extended; at another point Luis moved the table just in time to catch a second plant that came hurtling down from the flies and landed with a thud. At the end they turned away from the house and fiddled with devices that lit a pile of vinyl upstage. The glowing result was partially projected onto one corner of the large screen. It seemed possible that there was a technical difficulty that prevented full projection, but since the pile was not very interesting to look at, I didn’t particularly miss its enlarged 2D version.

My notes scribbled on the program say: “it’s a good thing Nelson is such an accomplished mover” and “the less pedestrian the less interesting.” It’s true. The long passages of dance-y movement (in a generic kind of downtown NYC postmodern vocabulary) were so abstract that I found myself longing for the combination of intentionality and a simpler movement.  I would happily watch Nelson brush his teeth, but I could not care about this dance. These artists have sufficient sophistication about the craft of making dances that they brought the thing to a close by returning to that initial springing bounce—this time while banging on small saucepans with sticks—yet the ABA’ structure wasn’t enough to justify the fifteen minutes in between. It looked to me as though the conceptual project of the collaboration had been allowed to take over the stage, with the result that any nascent aesthetic or affective communication with the audience got lost.

Gina Young, “Butch Ballet.”

In contrast, the limited charm of the second piece derived from its absence of polished craft, which made abundant room for the performance of identity earnestness and affective bonding between audience and performers. Here spectacle attempted to compensate for lack of craft and what appeared to be lack of intention about whatever craft was at the choreographer’s disposal. Five butches—or was that 4 butches and a transman? Or two butches, a transman, a lesbian and a nonbinary person? Or…

Anyway, five more or less butch people moved through a series of vignettes “about” female masculinity. Or so the program notes told me. There was bonding in a locker room; competition in a bar; playing video games as an inarticulate form of post-breakup emotional support; a swim party apparently intended to answer the perennial question of what a butch can wear to the beach; building a campfire; and three vintage dyke anthems, two of which were sung live and well. The little dramas seemed to suggest that the essence of female masculinity is an oscillation between  competition and companionship with other butches. The exception came in the most developed vignette, which featured a large pink purse on a high table center stage. One butch began cooing to it to please hold her keys, then her phone and her this and her that; the others came out to add requests to hold notebook, pen, glasses, butch tears, fragile masculinity. The punchline: all the butches say “Can you hold all that?” and walk off.

The performers all seemed to be in their 20s, which might have something to do both with the ADHD pacing of the vignettes and with why my middle-aged companions and I felt a bit protective of them despite our boredom. We were also embarrassed, and even a little indignant. Out of kindness, we wanted to be generous; and equally out of kindness, we wanted to urge them to more rigor. But this wasn’t the place where we could have that conversation. As my friend hissed in my ear, “This isn’t Highways!”—that is, REDCAT isn’t a safe venue for queer identity work; and besides, in decades of going out we have seen this done infinitely better literally dozens of times, in community performace spaces where real creative risk-taking can land well. It was genuinely disappointing to see these people literally half my age repeating the same damn moves I and my peers made decades ago, with very minor development, despite the growth of institutional supports like the LGBT mentorship program that brought us to the neighborhood of this event in the first place, and the material and cultural resources that allow this performance to be staged in this expensive and prestigious space.

And yet at the end there was a rush of warmth from the audience, a sincerity of applause, that startled me for a fraction of a second before I recognized its inevitability. This again is something I’ve seen again and again since the 1980s: the overvaluation of predictable performance because it offers gender-minority bodies live on stage. Such offerings in queer spaces are risky because they so often rely on mobilizing a universal “we” that is easily exploded with simple questions about whose subjectivity, whose experience, whose embodiment is being offered as a mirror to the audience. And in straight venues, they risk presenting queer and trans modes of embodiment as tidbits for consumption in a way that leaves me both sad and mildly offended.

But beyond the question of presumptive audience, which is after all not entirely under the choreographer’s control, “Butch Ballet” displayed a disappointing lack of attention to the history and craft of making performances. Between several vignettes there was connective tissue provided by quotations from ballet class that seem to have been intended to highlight the performers’ butchness by presenting them in a situation conventionally associated with femininity. What it actually did for me was highlight Gina Young’s lack of thoughtful engagement either with choreographic technique or with the dancers’ actual individual capacities: several of these people were interesting to watch in different and potentially intriguing ways, none of which were drawn out for the audience to witness. For instance, in the vignette about inarticulate yet effective forms of emotional support between butch friends, one performer slouched onstage, took a seat on a bench facing us, and settled into a spinal C-curve to play an imaginary video game. The calm authority and naturalness of this posture were utterly persuasive, so that for a moment the audience got to be inside the screen, our attention focused on the competent grace of the hands extended toward us, manipulating imaginary Gameboy controls. But this performance had no interest in exploring task-based competency and the beauty it can create, preferring instead to imagine “dance” as ballet and ballet as a synonym for an outmoded system of gender discipline.

By the time “Butch Ballet” was done I was deeply relieved that we’d already agreed to leave before the third piece. Two weeks later, I’m still wondering about the imbalance between the resources that support the NOW festival at REDCAT and the quality of the arts experience we were offered. The REDCAT website is full of claims about fostering dialogue, yet the only connection I could find between the two pieces I watched was that one eschewed narrative and downplayed spectacle while the other relied entirely on those tools. Surely there’s a way to support experimental work by emerging artists while also curating potentially meaningful conversations.

First Show of 2017 – How to Write?

Meg Stuart, “An evening of solo works,” January 20th

A good friend pointed out that maybe after 2 years, I don’t have to write about every dance I see anymore. He pushed this point a bit further: “maybe you’ve gotten what you need out of that practice.”

He might be right, but I still strongly believe that this writing practice enables me to participate in the dance community in a way that (I feel) is meaningful, thoughtful, responsive. So do I write only about the dances that inspire or challenge me in some way? Do I write only when asked?

Another thought as I type is to write every week or so either about a dance I’ve seen or something about dance. I’m not sure I can keep up, but it would be a different kind of practice and writing.

As I ease into the possibility of writing more (and less), I offer a brief response to Meg Stuart’s show, “An evening of solo works,” at Counterpulse Jan. 20th. I went with a few friends; they knew more about Stuart’s work. We all agreed that “Blanket Lady” (2012) was the most compelling dance of the five performed. The music, costume, and choreography came together in such an interesting way. I wanted to see the entire piece (maybe I did). That said, what I enjoyed the most about the evening was being in the company of friends, talking dance and resistance.