Performing Arts

The following review is courtesy of Paula Mann, Co-Founder and Choreographer, Time Track Productions

"In Bella Copia", Deja Donne presents characters that are propelled through a series of powerful sexual games with humiliation as their common thread.
The work centers around obsessive love and sex...and of course, relationships. In the beginning our master of ceremonies sings 'I can't give you anything but love, baby' and welcomes us to a world of never-ending happiness where anything is possible and all our secret dreams come true. The dreams he speaks of are in the realm of sexual fantasy, not world peace. Yet it's a hopeful beginning that moves from ideal love and romance to a grim reality of sex as violence and humiliation. They take you on a journey through an almost hopelessly manipulative view of interpersonal relationships.

My first response to the subject matter, when I realized how it would be played out, was: "Uh oh...another piece from European choreographers about sex in male/female relationships". I've seen quite a few works that deal with this same subject. And it's a universal theme, who amongst us can't relate to it? I feel similarly about nudity in work, so many have used it, it's lost it value to me, so initially I was guarded in my reaction. However in this work the nudity was an absolute necessity to the narrative and I was won over, not by my interest in the subject matter, but by the skill in which they were examining it. The strength and conviction of the performers seduced me, in a manner of speaking, and I was drawn in by their commitment to the material. Each performer was a unique character, adept at conveying meaning through strong focus and intention. The performers pushed themselves to an emotional edge; the raw energy conveyed the desperation of their situation.

The choreography stemmed directly from the characters and the dynamics of their relationships. Aside from a formalistic introductory quartet, the vocabulary flowed out of the interpersonal emotional transactions. The movement itself was body centric: sinewy, long extended sequences of the spine into a deep lunge, slashing arms around a partner, high extended legs designed to entice, and some literal, sexually referential gestures. The ideas that the movement communicated were clear, concise and sometimes disturbingly funny. Half way through, a woman with a long veil encourages (pleads, actually) for two men to kiss her. Timidly they comply. In pleasure she cries out 'kiss me by the lake' and they dutifully progress three or four steps in space, and voila (!) they are at the lake. More kissing. Again she cries, kiss me by the mountains (two or thee steps forward), kiss me by the field, etc. Her desire knows no bounds, she must be kissed everywhere. Finally the men get carried away and over take her playfulness with anger that turns into a violent rape. Afterwards she stands facing the audience for a long time, as if searching for strangers to explain the circumstances she has found herself in.

A stark stage design compliments the ominous tone of the work. The set consists of rolling light trees and a long rack of colorful clothing that creates a wall that separates the stage space. Through the hanging clothing the performers enter and retreat, back and forth as if entering from a secret world. One can only guess what happens behind the hanging costumes.

The members of Deja Donne examine this well worn theme with depth and power that makes for compelling dance theater, whose provocative images continues to resonate.

Dance-theater--I'm never quite sure about this hybrid form. Often, I want performances with both text and dance to be pushed in one direction or another, dance or text, and usually dance, since that's what I prefer to see. Primarily dance-based performances which incorporate text often end up relying on text to carry meaning and change, so that dance becomes a mere illustration to the text. Because dance is harder for audiences to "understand" than text, the audience begins to rely on text as well, so that the dance sections become orphans--the choreographers/directors are no longer relying on the dance to carry anything and the audience is no longer trying to understand or follow the dance. Imagine a poet who occasionally lapses into prose in a long poem and you'll get the idea. It's not that text is inherently less intricate than dance, but that dance-texts tend to be less intricate--no surprise, since they're written by dancers, not writers.
Deja Donne's "In Bella Copia" gave me a familiar sense of frustration, then. Such interesting dancing (on which more later) getting lost in such forgettable theater--it's as if a child were cartwheeling across the stage's apron during a ballet: you can't not watch the child, and as you watch the cartwheels you become attuned to cartwheels, so that when you turn back to look at the ballet you can't follow it or appreciate it. I found myself trying to ratchet my attention back up for the dance, and failing. The opening wish-fulfillment scene, the stripping, the kissing, the mock rape, the mock-beating, the stripping--dance it, I wanted to say, because if you don't dance it it's not new, it's not heightened. Delivered as theater, these scenes are all mock-, and as such they don't implicate me, don't involve me.
Some of the theatrical elements worked for me. Take the ending: the dancers chase one man up onto a light-stand; they push him around, chasing him with all the stage equipment (which is all on stage and controlled by the dancers throughout); finally he's cornered and another man beats on the stand with a piece of metal; the man beating takes off his clothes, down to his underwear, shouting at the other man to do the same, beating on the stand all the time. With the costume rack and the lights behind them it's a bright, colorful scene; a man in tighty whities beating on a pole is funny; yet the underlying threat, the violence of metal on metal, unhinges the moment. Am I laughing at the downfall of civilization? This refusal to fix on one meaning, this slippage, is a crucial element of good art, I believe. Most of the time, Deja Donne's theater isn't complex enough to slip meaning.
The dance--every description I read said something about kicking and slapping moves. This gives you some idea of the problem of describing dance movement literally. I didn't see anyone actually slap--a slap is a lasso, a loose swing transferring energy to the one slapped--even if some arm movements used the shape a slap begins in. Likewise with the kicking. Rather than the release these two verbs promise, I saw restraint: fire unable to escape a complex system of physical rules. I saw partnering as in professional wrestling: you fall when I touch you here, even though I've given you no impetus. This fakery isn't a failure of technique, but part of the madness for rules governing the entire performance. Four people dance around each other in strict patterns; collisions are staged. The characters on stage are savage, so they rely on laws which they think will keep them in line. They play a mad children's game; to a soundtrack of heartbeats and airplanes they trade moves, a beat for you and a beat for me. This is dancing like chess. Here is the complexity of the performance. This is what I wanted to concentrate on, what I wanted to stay with.

The following review is courtesy of Emily Johnson, Director of catalyst dance

I kept thinking about being on a bus. During "Daylight (for Minneapolis)" by Sarah Michelson on Sunday night, I sat on the constructed risers built on the stage. Sitting there, face forward, with more space and more audience members behind than in front felt conspicuous. Someone near me wondered outloud if the audience members on the balcony knew more than we did, he questioned whether we were supposed to use these seats at all. On a bus, you choose your seat, sit and wait. The vehicle (space) you are in moves you physically from one place to another. Riders get on, get off - and each one, as they walk or get hoisted up those couple of steps to the main bus aisle - provides those already seated with a chance to look (scrutinize? judge?). Some people get on the bus looking down, pick a seat, pull out a book and wait with the rest. Some get on and recognizing someone else already seated, shout hello and begin a distanced communication - disrupting or enhancing (depending on how you take it) the ride. Some riders are drunk and belligerent, some you hope don't pick the empty seat near you, some you get up for so they can have your seat, some strangers you begin to know by sight because the bus route doesn't change and your schedules don't that much either. As each rider chooses how they enter and act on the bus they change the fragile dynamic built amongst those who have already ridden blocks or miles together. You don't get much of a chance to relate to fellow bus riders - inhibitions or habits or shortage of time all play a role in that. And as you sit, taking in the oncoming passengers or ignoring them completely, you have the option to look out the window. You do not; however have the option to stop exactly when you want in order to take in a scene more completely. You have the few seconds it takes to pass something by - someone crying on the sidewalk, a kid running after a grown-up, a tree, a particular garden. You have a limited view, it is obstructed by other passengers and by your original choice of seat.

It was similar last night at the Walker. One audience member, growing impatient and perhaps feeling conspicuous as well - stood up, turned around and yelled to us all, "This is ridiculous. You are all sitting here, waiting for the show to start?" We could call her the belligerent bus rider. We had all made our way to these seats, passed huge drawings of people we recognized or didn't, and passed girls and a Mickey revealed along the buildings edges or crooks - or they revealed the edges and crooks - (depending on how you take it). Some of us realized there really was no official 'start,' still, we looked behind, we grew impatient, some got up to look over the big wall that was the back of our seating. Those on the balcony were restless too, I could see them and hear them. The talking was loud and I admit, I felt disloyal. I felt like turning around to catch a glimpse of one of the girls, posturing herself in a position that obscured her face and her individual identity (all girls were dressed the same, save the differing patterns printed onto their nude leotards) was disloyal to the huge effort it must have taken to design and construct the seating I was in and the wall I was facing. It is my habit, when sitting on a bus or in a theater - to sit facing forward and more or less still. Here is the crux of this particular work. I believe this piece was made to encourage us to look/experience our surroundings (in this case, the Walker and the McGuire Theater) in a more thoughtful way than we are accustomed. I believe it was made in order that we would have to face our habits. Built within this mission, however, were barriers to the exact goal. We could not sit or stand or walk as the more-or-less passive people we usually are. Even to sit and admire - really admire (or hate) the structure or the referencing of the afore mentioned girls doing the afore mentioned postures along the wall of windows facing Hennepin meant that you were missing something somewhere else. We were made to decide whether sitting still or getting up to look were our best option. It made many uncomfortable - which in fact, reassures the very habits we use to protect ourselves and increases inhibition. Partly because of this increased inhibition, “Daylight” did not encourage IMMEDIATE exploration, I think most people were perfectly settled on finding the 'stage,’ simply passing by the scenes they encountered en route. I would have liked "Daylight" to create a mad scene in which people were running about trying to catch at least a small part of everything, but the scale (those portraits were huge) and the pace (the posturing was slow) created, instead the fairly normal scene within a museum/performance space which is of a quiet politeness.

“Daylight” did completely thwart expectations - which is, of course, an exploration all its own. Coming into a theater or a gallery, we expect we will have the chance to see/experience everything that we paid for. 'Good' audience members are purposefully taking time to immerse themselves in something outside of their personal, everyday experience. This is perhaps what Sarah Michelson enjoys most - creating a place in which you cannot escape your personal, everyday habits. If some of your habits make you uncomfortable, it might be difficult to watch a performance and if you expect an easy time, perhaps Sarah Michelson’s performances are exactly what you need to watch. We are all looking for something better - better sneakers, a better job, a better place to live…and Sarah created a piece that drums up the inescapable feeling that we are missing something, that there is something better happening just over there - where we cannot get to or see. So you sit - and become obsessed with what you cannot have even while there is plenty happening right before you. You question yourself - did you pick the right seat, did you come to the right show? You get so worried about "getting enough" and to me, that points out that the self induced importance we place on what we actually see/experience is based on what we value. If we value 'getting it all' we won't ever be satisfied and if this piece is supposed to reference the architecture of Herzog and deMerron, it does it best by pointing out that we cannot take it all in at once. One has to walk the halls, ride the elevator, be on the outdoor balcony at 5am, then 5pm to note the changing light…All of this outside of the art that happens within, on and around the physical building. We are comfortable with the notion of exploring a building (even if we never actually take full initiative to do it on our own) because a building is a static thing, it does not move (of its own free will), does not sweat, does not shit. Right - the unbeautiful ways that we are human are what make us the most challenging to explore which is why the staging of the humans (rather than the staging of the building) in "Daylight (for Minneapolis)" was most intriguing.

I sat above the 'normal stage' (the risers took up maybe 3/4 of the stage space) and watched four dancers squeeze themselves and their space eating dancing onto a square footage that seemed much too small for them. Sarah Michelson had literally reduced the theater and I thought of the thousands of choreographers who, unable to afford a space to their liking or unable to be presented make use of their lofts or a storefront, or a theater that's just too small for them. I wondered why this piece called "Daylight," that utilizes both architectural findings and a very long, narrow dancing space couldn't be performed in say, an alley. I say "Daylight" would look beautiful in an alley; however, as odd as it sounds, an alley would make "Daylight" too accessible. And this is where I admire what Sarah Michelson knows about humanity and what she tries to usurp. We (ah ha) expect strange things to happen when we watch dance in an alley and we assume we might not be comfortable. Sarah Michelson needed this beautiful, fancy theater with an amazing spectrum of lighting options and sound quality to lay her base. Her base is recognizably dance but the way that the light was made to create walls, to add spectacle, to illuminate the space between the floor and ceiling and the purposefully empty seats is how she generates a new form. The way she took a recognizable theater and changed where the walls were and where we sat is how she stirred our brains into seeing that dance and performance is vital - on stage, on sidewalks, and in alleys. The concept of seeing, the concept of perception, the concept of want, the concept of beauty and functionality - they are all placed in your hands during "Daylight" and you either hold them preciously as though they were fragile, form them into something useful for you, or drop them on your way out the door.

All this concept and what delighted me the most was a Mickey coming onto the stage and holding her big, oversized head in her hands. The Mickey made sense. As on a bus, or in this piece, the characters make sense just by being there. It would be the weirdest thing to be on a bus and have no characters enter, have no one ride it with you. Mickey entering made it seem as though this piece were no longer confined to either the 'stage,' the inside of the Walker, or Minneapolis itself. "Daylight" suddenly occupied a larger space in our minds. And maybe because in actuality I know the image of Mickey more so than I do any of the dancers, I felt acknowledged and I felt a tenderness - both toward the Mickey with her face in her hands and from the piece "Daylight" itself.

The dancing. The fancy and beautifully executed rigorous, often violent dancing of the main quartet allowed the last solo to be one of the sweetest moments in theater I have ever seen. When "Daylight" seemed over enough to warrant the resumed chatter and exiting of many audience members, one woman, in the dark, back corner of the 'stage' began referencing the dancing the quartet had executed the past hour. I truly thought she was a dancer in the audience who felt compelled to get up and show off for the friends she was with - repeating movement she remembered because she was inspired or because she wanted to make fun of it (I have friends who do this). But no, in an unglorified way (the most unglorified of the whole evening) she made dancing make sense. She took what we had experienced through the movement of the quartet and saudered it down to the essential. Combined with one of the sweetest songs you may ever hear, it's like it illuminated within you every opportunity you have ever missed - in a way that made you think - "I will never again miss the opportunity to run, arms outstretched in a field! " or "I will never again miss the opportunity to let what I happen to have the fortune/misfortune to see/experience/catch in this life affect me to my deepest core!" When I had arrived to my seat an hour before I noted the built in doorless doorway in this constructed makeshift wall and I thought, "they must have left that open for a reason." When that space, that wall, and that light emanating from it literally engulfed that dancer - it made me think that we really can reimagine places and reimagine each other. The home you grew up in can hold a beautiful memory perfectly intact, a lone brick wall from a knocked down factory can offer you a place to lean against, a newly redesigned museum and newly built theater can offer a million opportunities just by existing and the next person that walks up those stairs onto the bus is much more than a stranger to you - we are all much more than we seem at initial glance (in real life or portrait).

The following review is courtesy of Vanessa Voskuil, Co-Founder of Live Action Set

Daylight (for Minneapolis)'s ambitious pre-show performance installation conceived by Sarah Michelson takes on large painted portraits of current Walker staff, strategically placed young girls in opaque dance wear, and decorative architecture of interlaced circles. Throughout the building is one or a series of girls who are starring either towards a corner of the building or out a window. The observer is immediately drawn to where they are looking allowing her/his self to address the Walker through the performers viewpoint. The choreography is very specific and repetitive with one foot stepping in front and back of the other while hands move back and forth on the upper thighs. You leave the experience with the sense that the performers are lost and disparate in relationship to the larger portraits of Walker curators.

Michelson's main stage choreography reads as repetitive, stark, and structurally complex much like the architecture of the Walker. The straight-faced dancers make strong, angular, and sweeping gestures with their legs and arms. An intention becomes apparent with the specifics of what is revealed and what is hidden. This is appropriately accentuated by the lighting design that blazes on and off, like the sun, redirecting the audience's attention above, behind, or within the shallowly raked seating area which is built on the actual stage itself. Interestingly enough, Michelson chose to limit her performance space enclosing and possibly compensating her large movement when the Walker worked so intently to increase the size of the previous performance space. With no programs in hand to guide the experience until after the performance, there is a sense of disorientation and frustration made obvious by audience members trying to stand up from their corralled seats to see behind themselves followed by a premature mass exodus before a final solo performed in the dark. Obviously the dancers are not the only ones performing here.

Ivenson's sound score, performed by a hidden band, blasts various musical genres, one after another, progressing from pop to profane rap offset by small moments of silence allowing the audience to see their clear technique and hear the breath and effort of the dancers as they spin across the floor, wave their arms faintly above their heads, kick a high leg, and at times pause for long moments while they change their reflective focus. The women are dressed sensationally in gold jewelry and evening wear while the men wear button down shirts that become increasingly wet as the dance progresses. In finale, a dancer asks, "Roger, have you been swimming? Well? It is fine if you have." - a self-referential comment stemming from a style of humor that is introduced with the surprising tormented Mickey Mouse appearance in the last half of the performance.

The following review is courtesy of Gulgun Kayim, Co-Artistic Director of Skewed Visions

As with many performances seriously engaging with the dynamics of space and architecture Daylight (for Minneapolis) by Sarah Michelson is a work reliant as much on the unique experience and autonomy of the viewer as on the manipulated events created by the artist. What meaning is eventually extracted from the piece depends as much on the mood, disposition, circumstances and attitudes of the spectator as the expectations of the creator. When my husband asked me after the show if I liked the performance I honestly answered 'like is not a relevant term for this experience'. The experience of Daylight is so individualized, depending on so many factors that I'm betting no two viewings of this work will ever be alike.

Daylight is very much a work that challenges audiences to become aware of their environment and how it is manipulated by various forces, artistic and administrative. Michelson's manipulation of concepts of space and performance extends out to embrace the entire Walker to include, not just the architecture of the building, but also the people who inhabit its walls, who design, commission, curate and make decisions about the program. Daylight it seems to me, asks that we consider everything within the charged space of the Walker as an act of creation and performance including the indiviual’s presence as spectator.

My experience of the work began across the street as I approached the building from the Vineland place entrance. Looking through the glass panel doors from a distance I could see large images of senior performance curator, Phillip Bither. As I got closer to the doors, four large monochromatic portraits became apparent, arranged in a corner in proximity to the familiar self-portrait of Chuck Close. In among the portraits a male dancer (looking from behind, very much like Phillip) faced a corner, alternately standing or reflexively jerking, leaning and pulsating to the music played overhead. My progress took me through the building along the long glass corridor where dancers were arranged in intervals against the glass wall. They were positioned to look away -heads and bodies inclined from the building's interior -out, onto the side walk towards the cars and passers by, their postures suggestive of melancholy and contemplation, alternately moving similar to the dancer in the entryway.

From the ticket desk, I went up towards the theatre encountering tableaus of dancers arranged outside the glass walls. The two I saw featured a standing figure dressed in dark shorts and shirt wearing an eerie smiling, monochrome Mickey Mouse head. This figure faced in staring at the gallery of spectators disregarding the two dancers laying at his/her feet, bodies splayed in the grass. The images though passive seemed perverse, mingling references to Disney, with suggestions of Americana, anesthetized images of cruelty, suburbia, and the arbitrary violence of civilized people.

Making my way into the theatre the performance continued as I was led into the McGuire Theatre and invited to sit in raked risers positioned on stage facing the back wall of the performance space. Like the booth and lobby area this space also featured large monochrome portraits (this time of the dancers) propped against the back wall. Looking around I could see people already seated in the balconies, watching my entry. It was here that I became aware I was as much a performer in this event as a spectator. No one sat in the main floor audience seating, although it’s now clear to me that if I had chosen to do this, I would have been allowed.

The next phase of the performance began abruptly. The house lights were snapped off and four dancers entered and initiated, what traditionally would have been the start of a dance performance. The dancers moved sharply flaying in the very thin space left available to them on stage between the audience and the back wall. Sitting in the very last row of seating I became aware, as did those around me, that in fact the performance was not only in front of us, it was around us. Behind us on the stage, above us in the balconies, lights came on dancers appeared, heads bobbed up and down as audience members tried (sometimes in vain) to view both sides of the stage and auditorium.

The dancers in front of us were ignored as I began to watch the choreography of bobbing heads. Sometimes my view was blocked for minutes as the people in front and lower down tried to see what was going on. As the performance continued the agitation and animation of the spectators increased, as did their attempts to watch. Then the end came. Or so we thought. The house lights 'signaled' end and we clapped, unsure of ourselves and began to uncertainly and slowly trickle out of the space only to be stopped by another dancer who appeared and danced on stage in the dark. When her performance finished she exited and some audience members clapped as an after thought. That was definitely the end; though I continued to sit in my seat and watch those around me quietly file out.

While it was clear to me that ideas of space and spectatorship were being played with in the main building, I was even more impressed by how cleverly Michelson had destabilized audience expectations inside the theatre space. In this work we are challenged to question what a dance performance is supposed to be. Michelson very simply dismantled the elements of performance by repositioning the audience’s relationship to the stage and removing the normal modes of experience, particulary our ability to fully see. In so doing she revealed our dependence on the conventions of performance in order to understand it. We were forced to make decisions; to choose to experience the 'dance', or ask ourselves was the dance us? Were we the spectators and performers of this event? As I finally left the space I overheard a woman asking uncertainly, "is this the end? "No, intermission" said her companion, "this is where there would usually be an intermission".

In a broader sense, through this work Michelson examines human relationships and their impact on the world -the relationship between architect and environment, between audience and performer, between artist and curator. As an artist whose work is concerned with spatial and human relationships I was particularly interested in and appreciative of this work and the foresight of curator Phillip Bither to commission a work that engages and challenges all the dynamics that constitute the new Walker.

It continues. The reverberations of Acocella’s New Yorker article way back in September continue to be felt, in New York and here at home (see previous post titled The Literalists). Below are further rebuttals of her piece and alternative readings of the particular works she singled out. The guantlet has been thrown down, and this letter ends in a disturbing, yet necessary challenge.

Tere O’Connor’s work has recently been called ’surrealist’ by critic Joan Acocella but O’Conner’s work doesn’t fit the historical definition of that art term. O’Connor’s work is not an attempt at revelation through a joining of conscious and unconscious imagery, but instead explores an overt struggle between these two realms. The powerful unconscious, the realm of the feelings, is explored in O’Conner’s recent work through the use of voice, in raw, barely-formed peeps and wails. Sometimes the sound also comes out in the form of a word, but due to the unfamiliar context, the meaning of these words in the present moment is elusive. We feel more meaning pouring from the intensity of the vocalization; sounds are let loose rather like releasing energy from a high-pressure valve, a task that can be, in it’s risk-taking, both thrilling and frightening.

So what is the struggle in O’Conner’s work all about? It seems to be about the attempt of the conscious mind to edit, remix and reframe early experience in a way that negates some overpowering pain of rejection and loss. O’Connor doesn’t really specify what has been lost or why there’s been cruelty and rejection in his past, but one can speculate that it has something to do with growing up gay in small-town America in a conservative, mainstream-religious family. What O’Conner brilliantly delivers to the audience in Frozen Mommy, however, is his knowledge that we all - gay, straight, male, female, so-called beautiful or so-called ugly - carry around these scars of rejection inside. O’Conner brashly presses the audience to admit that there has never been a boy or girl so golden that they have not, at some time, been made to feel their uncomfortable otherness, been made to experience a confusing mix of overt, violent rejection and subtle, passive-aggressive discrimination that peers and family alike constantly heap on each other. If it is true that each man is driven to kill the thing he loves, perhaps it is also true that each mother is driven to annihilate her child in moments of glimpsing frailties and imperfections; or more likely, she just quietly abandons that child and follows her more-positive urges by conceiving the next one. Frozenness might be seen in this light as a child-saving genetic adaptation.

O’Connor’s Frozen Mommy then can be seen as a kind of artistic self-portrait, with snatches of feelings, moods and actions from a brain-that-never-forgets projected onto his performers. This is the kind of self-portrait that knowingly enlarges to simultaneously comment on culture and self. The key word here is artistic; for in the end we don’t feel sorry for O’Connor, that he has experienced something painful that he taps for making a piece. Instead we are impressed by the artist’s tenacity and insistence on being in control of his own fate. The poignancy we feel in viewing Frozen Mommy is in knowing that this kind of artistic reframing is only half-successful; we can’t afterall, remake reality. And yet, as artists perhaps we can; O’Connor gives us each a glimpse of one possible way out of the enduring cruelty of being human.

What part does movement play in O’Conner’s dance works? On first viewing the movement in Frozen Mommy seems to provide a kind of pulse of life for the work. There’s a big emphasis on regimentation and breaking-away. There’s also an inner story, one known only by the dancers’ viscera and not by their brains. That story is the story that cannot yet be told in words but can only be known through its power and dynamics. As O’Connor manipulates his dancers in 3-dimensional space and time, he remixes history and present time, inner and outer space, sensory and motor intake and output and the known and the unknown in everyday life. As these aspects of space, time and dynamics are fundamental to the deepest roots of movement, O’Conner does in fact reveal a lot of choreographic meat.

What I find most interesting in discussing O’Connor’s work with other artists is that many respond to the work mainly for the pleasures of its structures and formal inventions. I, on the other hand, resonate more with its unconscious power and use of the voice. Whatever one’s point of entry, there’s no doubt that O’Connor’s whole body of work is extremely original; he makes dances unlike anyone else’s. So I find Acocella’s critique baffling; I can’t understand why anyone would call this work surreal. Her response overall seems anemic and fearful; perhaps an infusion of red blood cells, or maybe primal scream therapy would help - something, anything to wake up and subdue the fear that so unconvincingly disguises itself as dismissal.

Perhaps someone could write an article on something that’s REALLY SURREAL - the state that the downtown choreographer-artist finds him or herself in - career tethered to people (critics, presenters, dance bureaucrats) who seem to actually hate contemporary dance. Can anyone explain this strange state of affairs??

-Roseanne Spradlin

We here often lament the lack of organized forums for dialogue post-performance that are accessible to a broader constituency. What worked and what didn’t, what offends and what inspires. There are of course the occasional reviews from local media outlets, but it’s often the immediate conversation that occurs right after a performance - by interested audiences and members of the creative community with a tangible stake in this city’s cultural fabric - that contain the most provocative insights. It’s usually the most energetic time for discussion, with impressions still bright from the live art just experienced.

Lament no more, as we’ve just launched on the blog site a section called Re:View - Overnight Observations. Starting with Sarah Michelson’s Daylight (for Minneapolis) , we’ll be featuring discussions on select performances throughout the 05-06 season by artists, critics, and writers based in Minnesota. Writing on Daylight will be Gulgun Kayim of Skewed Visions and the Visible Fringe, dancer Vanessa Voskuil, and Emily Johnson, Artistic Director of Catalyst Dance. Consider Re:View your home for comments good, bad, and ugly.

Several weeks ago, the The New Yorker’s dance critic Joan Acocella wrote a piece titled “Mystery Theatre“, ostensibly about the new downtown (meaning New York City) vanguard of dance creators and their supposed links to a kind of choreographic surrealism. She namechecks four artists, Tere O’Connor, Lucy Guerin, Christopher Williams, and Sarah Michelson, who also happens to be a current Walker artist-in-residence and will premiere the work Daylight (for Minneapolis), here on September 15.

And then, on Monday, The New York Times featured a piece by the critic Gia Kourlas titled “How New York Lost Its Modern Dance Reign” , which very accurately outlines the moribund state of dance presentation in America. Most importantly, it serves as a call to arms to accurately, creatively, courageously, and lovingly present the unexpected works being made by today’s most innovative art makers.

The timing of this dialogue is extremly prescient for us now, as we face not only the physical challenges of mounting Sarah’s work, but also to correctly contextualize the spirit in which it’s intended. As a presenter housed within a museum, the obligations to broad audience, education, and the local community remain vitally important, but as a home for contemporary art, it’s also paramount that we remain a locale for alternatives to mainstream and popular culture and critique. Sometimes, and joyfully so, that means presenting work in a way that is completely outside the realms of what is familiar to us. That in turn, can mean an experience that is outside the realm of your standard performance presentation, that’s also unfamiliar to the audience, and might perhaps be on the uncomfortable side. What does it mean? This doesn’t make sense! Why won’t anyone explain it fully? I couldn’t see everything! What’s happening over there?

All valid. And yet, as workers in this ever-changing field, we must also recognize that to know is not always to be correct. What if there is no answer? Is that so incomprehensible and unacceptable? There are many, many accepted schools of thought in the visual art world, an assimilated understanding that art thrives on multiple readings, points of view. Why has this not yet taken root in the dance world? Dance can be about movement, this we know. Dance is also about performance. It is cinematic. Sometimes it’s theatrical. It is often abstract. Sometimes it’s a personal vocabulary that means something to the creator, but nothing to a viewer. It refers to history and influence, or not. It is an object. It is an act. Many times it’s both. Usually, it’s so deep as to be impenetrable. More often than not pleasure was the point. Dance will always be the most complex art form. Dance loves to entertain. The physical feat is glorious. That hand flutter was just cute. Choreography is tyranny. The dance was an exploration, it continues to find its way. I totally got it. The answer was there! I remembered something. No, I felt something. Dance comments. The silence was deafening. It was such a letdown. It is neutral and it takes sides. And yet, you can take it home with you. Not to hang on your wall, but to live in your heart and your body and your mind.

We must be brave, we must be strong, we must be wild, we must constantly ask the question “why”? But maybe we don’t always have to answer.

And here’s Tere’s response to Acocella. Unlikely you’ll see it printed within the pages of The New Yorker, but I couldn’t have said it any better myself:

Joan Acocella had better check her “sell by” date because her article entitled “MYSTERY THEATER/ downtown surrealists” in the Aug 8 & 15, 2005 issue has the distinct odor of irrelevance. Her musings on my work and on that of the others mentioned are so badly observed and so off track that I have to speak up. Through her lack of understanding and her inability to reach out and get information from artists, she joins a group of critics whom I will call “the literalists.” These critics do not know how to read dances created outside the restricted confines of the narrative or musical frameworks from past centuries. What’s more, they don’t do the work of finding out what is actually going on in the minds of artists or what are the contexts in which these works are created. They have reduced dance criticism to an explanatory, superficial, retelling of events steering the documentation of contemporary dance into an impenetrable forest, dark and mistaken. When she called me to fact check, Joan intimated that there was really nothing going on downtown. I don’t know what is more maddening - the dismissive, erroneous idea that nothing is happening in contemporary dance or her anachronistic insistence on an uptown/downtown dichotomy. Her bloated, oracular tone is classic. It is born out of a reluctance to say: “I don’t know what this is.”

The rest of us will swim, now, in this.
Tere O’Connor