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Flash Review 1, 2-6:
TV Dinner + Talking Dance
A Night at The Kitchen = a Full Plate
By Darrah Carr
Copyright 2001 Darrah Carr
Friday evening's TV Dinner
at The Kitchen, cleverly conceived and arranged by Dean Moss, brought
together several of the greatest moving minds currently working
in modern dance. The event was moderated by dance scholar Maura
Keefe and featured panelists Ann Carlson, Blondell Cummings, Douglas
Dunn, and Bill T. Jones. While we munched on a tasty dinner and
an even better dessert, the choreographers discussed their experiences
with and views of combining text and movement, as a prelude to the
evening's Talking Dance performance series. Interspersed throughout
the dinner dialogue were video clips from The Kitchen's extensive
archive of choreographic works that explore text and talking.
Not surprisingly, each
of these very diverse, yet equally acclaimed artists has a widely
different history of using text. Cummings explained that she began
talking within her choreography by accident, after being inspired
by her acting classes. For Jones, on the other hand, the decision
to start talking was a deliberate choice that often led to a subversive,
political statement. He asked, "Who do you think is dancing? The
body is dancing, but the body is thinking. The only way you can
know what the body is thinking is if it starts talking." Unlike
Jones, Dunn never intended to start talking. In fact, he explained,
he was initially attracted to dance precisely because it was not
verbal. For Dunn, dance was originally a means to escape his social
persona and disappear behind movement.
What was most interesting
about the panel was to hear how the artists' early views of text
have changed during the course of their careers. Jones has moved
toward formalism and currently believes that it is more important
than words. He quoted Martha Graham's famous aphorism "Movement
doesn't lie" and explained that he now asks himself quite simply,
"What do you think is beautiful, Bill, and can you make some?" Again
unlike Jones, Dunn has swung the opposite way. He began to explore
the use of text after asking himself, "How can I say something without
saying anything about what I'm doing?"
By such comparisons,
I don't mean to pigeon-hole these artists, or paint them as strict
polar opposites. If anything, both the panel and the ensuing performance
demonstrated the fluidity of opinion and artistic interest over
time, as well as the wide range of ways a choreographer can incorporate
text into performance. Take Carlson's piece, "The Dog Inside the
Man Inside" which she performed after dinner. Not only did Carlson
speak, but the accompanying sound score was comprised of scattered
bits of text from television and car radio broadcasts, a man's voice
keeping an incessant tally of numbers, and a live dog onstage barking.
(The dog was portrayed by Zulu, whose "parents" were listed in the
program as the Joyce Theater's Linda Shelton and American Ballet
Theatre's Jon Teeuwissen.) The entire score was simultaneously told
by a sign language interpreter positioned at stage right -- sign
language being perhaps the ultimate example of blending text and
movement. The text that Carlson spoke was taken from a series of
e-mail letters to a variety of people. Upon hearing these snatches
of correspondence to friends and lovers, it occurred to me that
sometimes the most telling thing is what is not said.
Blondell Cummings's piece
"Just a Coupla Boomers Sitting Around Chillin'" had a similar conversational
tone. Yet, in this case, Cummings herself did not speak. Instead,
we heard recorded commentary from a variety of women discussing
their perspective on life at middle age. The multitude of thoughts
was then distilled and reflected by the singular voice of Cummings's
dancing body.
Jones used the power
of his dancing body and singular voice to tell the heart-wrenching
story of a fourteen-year-old boy shot dead. He confessed at the
start of the piece, "I have a hard time talking in front of people
without trying to manipulate them." Yet, his hold on my emotions,
though powerful, did not feel negative. If he was manipulative,
it was through the deceptively simple structuring of the text and
movement, which led to a surprising, shocking ending. Jones began
the piece by saying "The day after Christmas" and singing bits of
"The old gray goose is·" deliberately leaving out the familiar,
last word, his feet stomping against the floor as if to fill in
the blank and punctuate the sentence. These phrases were repeated
throughout the piece, each time with more detail added, until the
full story emerged.
Dunn's duet "Aerobia,"
performed with Grazia Della-Terza, also relied on the repetition
of certain phrases, both textual and choreographic. The repeated
phrases did not build toward a specific story, however. Instead,
they accumulated as a stream-of-consciousness train of thought in
the positive affirmation, or self-help genre. For example, as Dunn
danced, we heard his pre-recorded voice saying matter of factly,
"I like to be in the moment.... If this is the time, I'm in the
place.... If I don't treat myself better, no one else will...."
Similarly, as Della-Terza danced, we heard her pre-recorded voice
claiming, "There's nothing like other people, pictures don't do
them justice.... It's the size of the surprise." I felt as if I
was reading the book "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff" in the checkout
line at Barnes and Noble. After each dancer took a solo, the recorded
voices began to overlap, and they slowly encircled each other, using
the phrases as a conversation, or a means of approaching one another.
This was the funniest part of the piece, thanks to the deadpan delivery
of the text.
To complete the already
extremely impressive lineup, the performance also featured works
by David Gordon, Yvonne Rainer, and Trisha Brown. Valda Setterfield
performed Gordon's "Short History." Part of the piece was taken
from the 1978 work "What Happened Happened." According to Setterfield,
the work was originally performed by seven women who told seven
versions of the same story simultaneously. The only thing they agreed
on was that there was an accident and that the police eventually
came. Although we only heard Setterfield's version, her description
of the original piece highlighted the fact that one's choice of
language can completely change the perception of an event. Her description
of the accident cleverly interwove gesture and text, and played
off of the double meaning of different words that sound the same,
such as "sew" and "so" or "two" and "to." When she raised four fingers,
but used the word "for," for example, the gestures became something
more interesting than pantomime or straight description.
Rainer's "Talking Solo"
also incorporated descriptive gesture in order to describe the transformation
of a caterpillar into a butterfly. It was performed by Michael Lomeka
of the White Oak Dance Project. Because Lomeka is such a technically
proficient, beautiful dancer, I found myself watching him dance
more than I listened to what he was saying. This brought to mind
several of the questions raised in the panel discussion. When incorporating
text and movement, does one inevitably dominate? How can one strike
a balance? Should one make a connection between the two, or simply
let them be alongside each other?
In Brown's "Accumulation
with Talking Plus Water Motor" (which we saw on film) she chose
to let two dances with two narratives exist alongside each other
and then made a connection by jumping back and forth between the
two, picking up each time exactly where she left off. First A, then
B, then A, then back to B. Amazing. Such an agile body and mind.
It must feel like patting your stomach and rubbing your head while
standing on one leg and reciting all the state capitals in a foreign
language.
Overall, TV Dinner plus
Talking Dance added up to an extremely thought-provoking event --
a perfect blend of lecture/demonstration, composition seminar, meet-the-artist
series, and dinner theater. Talking Dance returns tomorrow through
Saturday, with a different roster including Katie Duck, Elevator
Repair Service, Foofwa d'Imobilite, Miguel Gutierrez, Sarah Michelson,
Cynthia Oliver and Jamie Sneider. For more information, please visit
The Kitchen web
site.
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