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bahok on the Northrop Stage

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Next Wednesday March 3, choreographer Akram Khan’s piece bahok will be performed at the Northrop, co-presented by the Walker. The Northrop’s expansive space will allow breathing room for the boundary-stretching choreography of bahok. I think that anyone who enjoyed the Northrop’s season launch (like me) will enjoy bahok; and like Wayne MacGregor’s Entity, bahok promises [...]

from bahok. STRINGER/AFP/Getty Images

Next Wednesday March 3, choreographer Akram Khan’s piece bahok will be performed at the Northrop, co-presented by the Walker.

The Northrop’s expansive space will allow breathing room for the boundary-stretching choreography of bahok. I think that anyone who enjoyed the Northrop’s season launch (like me) will enjoy bahok; and like Wayne MacGregor’s Entity, bahok promises to be a meticulously crafted, multimedia blockbuster of a show.

Here’s a behind the scenes look from when bahok performed at Sadler Well’s in London (the National Ballet of China dancers have since been replaced for the U.S. run due to other performance commitments).

For any Walker folks unfamiliar with the Northrop, its address is 84 Church St SE (Minneapolis 55455). Click here for parking and directions.

Remember also that unlike at the Walker, Northrop parking lots are cash only at the time of entry.

The Northrop has a nifty page you should visit also: 5 Ways to Maximize Your Northrop Experience.

Making Heaven: Q&A with choreographer Morgan Thorson

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After performing Heaven in New York and Houston, Minneapolis-based choreographer Morgan Thorson brings some of the Twin Cities’ most charismatic dancers to the McGuire stage for the local premiere of this Walker-commissioned piece March 4–6. Read the article from Walker magazine here, or the full Q&A with Thorson below. Can you describe the ideas that [...]

After performing Heaven in New York and Houston, Minneapolis-based choreographer Morgan Thorson brings some of the Twin Cities’ most charismatic dancers to the McGuire stage for the local premiere of this Walker-commissioned piece March 4–6. Read the article from Walker magazine here, or the full Q&A with Thorson below.

Can you describe the ideas that you began with in creating the piece, and what kinds of research you did in terms of exploring those ideas?

Initially I was interested in the idea of the impossibility of perfection; in religion it’s dangled before worshippers constantly as a carrot. What kind of control does the promise of perfection have on people? I pondered these questions from contemporary secular standpoint and came to realize—some of this might seem obvious—how perfection is an illusion, there are no absolutes, and how to begin to know perfection is to know that it’s impossible—unattainable.

In an ecclesiastical sense, there are many different interpretations of what that perfection is. Some religions look at perfection as intellectual freedom, being able to sit and ponder freely—at least in the mostly Judeo-Christian religions I studied—for others, it’s the idea of eternity. Heaven is elusive, and I feel like the piece itself begs for continued exploration, for me as an artist.

So I think Heaven initially pursues some sort of manifestation of perfection and draws multiple conclusions from that pursuit, one of them being that the body—including the voice—is capable of perfection, and it is that capability that is closest to anything pure and static. And the other is sort of the opposite: with paradise, its perfection only exists in that you can ponder it as an idea. Ironically, some of our choreographic methods — interpretation and translation—drove us even further from achieving a static notion of corporeal and ecstatic perfection.

One thing I really wanted to convey is a devotional love for space. With simple yet reverential material, the body and space unite in a powerful unison where temporal shifts underscore this relationship. And light has its own presence in this work. The other thing is the power of the voice and song. In terms of the structure of the piece I intentionally end it with a shape-note singing piece. Tonal resonance and harmony can spark an energetic or emotional shift in the performer and viewer. I really wanted to play with this power in Heaven, and juxtapose this kind of material to vigorously moving bodies. [At the end,] the piece is no longer about the body, it’s about a sonic, communal gesture, that elevates the piece in the room beyond a bodily presence. And so the community comes together in the end and joins in this singing act, sending the piece off to a dimension that it hasn’t been in yet.

How did you come to work with Low? Were you always intending to have them be performers, or if not, how did that decision evolve?

I met Low through one of my dancers and had a couple of meetings and they were really interested in the project, we talked about how this collaboration was going to work. From the beginning they were really interested in performing the music live, and I really wanted them to perform live, or at least to have live music. So they were really open to that idea.

We talked about religion in general and ideas of god, and what does that mean as we have pursued performance structures for this piece. They are known for working the edges, beginning [their songs] delicate and soft or loud and abrasive, and I was interested in those edges, and that restriction and what it forced me to do choreographically. I’ve had to let go of some of the ways I’ve worked in the past, it’s made me uncomfortable to take these risks. Going back to residency, it’s been great to have that as a way to allow for taking risks, to develop a working methodology that allows for tests and accidents.

You toured with this piece in several cities now, and will doing so after the Minneapolis performances. What’s that experience been like?

[With touring,] each venue brings a host of opportunities and problems, and part of the pursuit of this piece is how to—and this is true for any choreography, but certainly for this piece—it’s finding the best, most nearly perfect place for this piece to be presented in this particular venue. Yet it’s also made me aware of the certain futility in the search for perfection; you’re bound to fail in some way. The pursuit for me is to keep angling into the work, fleshing out what I believe are some of the possibilities.

Part of what’s interesting to me is that there are certain parts of the piece I want to be wholly beautiful, in a way a lot of people can related to, and other parts I want to be intangible – something the audience simply can’t recognize. And my hope is that they can just experience it. [Because] there are aspects to this piece that are very challenging to the audiences.

The beginning has a very devotional, almost monastic structure, with walking and bowing movements, and it grows, very slowly, like over a 25-minute period. I think that part, some people really find a connection to that use of time, it’s very durational, you get to really look at the dancers, with no distractions. But some people go insane with that. For them that’s the underbelly—they get anxious. For others, it’s beautiful.

Then the piece gets more interpretive, more behavioral, and some people connect to that, it gets a little more strange. This is one of the things I made an assumption about in the piece. But everyone makes a connection to the singing and the music, and that was one of my points early on, was to draw from that expression: music is very immediate, but presenting the body can be very complicated for people.

There’s also a significant gender play in this piece, where some people aren’t sure of one performer’s gender. That was intentional as well, drawing from religious ideas about angels, thinking of people as an ideal gender, with no cultural markings, creating our own signifiers for the performers.

Can you talk a bit about what you worked on during the residency—what a residency does for you, what it allows that you can’t get elsewhere?

It allowed us to come together for the second time as collaborators, dancers, lighting and costume designers, and sound composers. Basically before we had staged sections, now we could sequence them into an order and see what manifested out of those ideas over time. Because we’d had a significant break, too, since the previous residency [at the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography, at Florida State University]. It was an opportunity to have ample space and full light and sound.

Normally when we perform I get about two or three days in a theater, there’s not a lot of opportunity within the space to look at what works, there’s no room for experimentation, you have to make decisions on the spot. With a residency you can do that and look at things for awhile, and take that beyond the residency once that alchemy is going. It’s an opportunity to see how people’s ideas are aligning or misaligning and whether those constructions are working or not working. It also allows us to have deeper relationships with our designers.

I know that many artists in Europe have that access for developing work, but it feels like a luxury in the States, and something I hope every artists gets an opportunity to have access to.

What were you aiming for with the lighting, design, and costumes in this work?

As I researched religion and different religious practices, and came across different manifestations of iconography, I found that light really played a huge role in so many religions. I wanted light to be an impressionable player. I wanted it to have an effect on the audience in a really direct way; I wanted its relationship to the audience or the performers to be literal in this piece. In some ways it guides the audience at times, and it guides the performers at times. In most dance, lighting Is designed to highlight the dance, certainly, but not to have such a presence. Here it has its own presence. The residency was essential to creating that with light.

With other design: Lenore, Emmet and I worked together to build stage view and scenic elements, it’s really taken time to balance it out, and in each space it has its own manifestation. And during the Walker residency we had reels of elastic and we really got to see how they look, look at scale and size of this material, how the dancers interact with it. It was important to have time to integrate that material into the dance, and into the costuming.

H3: Breaking with tradition

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On February 13 a group of audience members gathered in the McGuire Theater’s balcony bar for a Speakeasy – an informal post-performance conversation – about Bruno Beltrão’s H3. Beltrão’s work blends breaking techniques with the powerful, yet at times playful, partnering of capoeira. While seeped in these traditions, Grupo de Rua dismantles them, subverting audience [...]

On February 13 a group of audience members gathered in the McGuire Theater’s balcony bar for a Speakeasy – an informal post-performance conversation – about Bruno Beltrão’s H3.

Beltrão’s work blends breaking techniques with the powerful, yet at times playful, partnering of capoeira. While seeped in these traditions, Grupo de Rua dismantles them, subverting audience expectations and forging into new contemporary dance territory. For Beltrão,“[h]ip-hop now needs to be placed in a situation of crisis. By dissecting and jettisoning its vocabulary, new aesthetics can be discovered” (qtd in performance program for H3). As one audience member poignantly noted, these technical forms help mold the body, but the dancer is ultimately left to create something personal and unique with each performance. In this respect, training gives one the freedom to explore movements impossible without it, yet on the other hand, training can become a crutch or a restraint as it can limit one’s vision and imagination regarding what is possible within any given form of dance.

The influence of tradition and technique on the dancer led to the question of what constitutes “training.” The balletic body associated with elite conservatory programs was compared with a breaker’s body, trained through battles, personal practice, and work in tight-knit groups such as Grupo de Rua. Both bodies have skill, precision, timing, and strength that require years of dedication to master. Taking these disparate means of disciplining the body into consideration along with the many dance choreographers since the 1970s who have embraced pedestrian movements or integrated “untrained” performers into their works, this question of what “training” is or what role it plays in dance generally is in many ways open to interpretation.

H3 began with a prolonged, quite stillness and through angular, yet fluid solos and quirky duets grew into a swirling mass of organized momentum. This final velocity was read initially by some as violent, by others as expressing the urgency of cultural forms born in harsh circumstances. While Beltrão’s piece built to incorporate power moves and freezes commonly associated with breaking, the path to reach this point involved denying the audience a number of expectations. The lighting, jarringly turned on in the middle of the evening, was ultimately panned over the audience, causing momentous power moves to be viewed as silhouettes through squinting eyes. The curtains and wings of the stage were stripped away, leaving dancers exposed as they prepared to begin their movement sequences. The space itself was transformed as the scuffs of the dancers’ shoes seemed to create a graffiti pattern on the pristine black floor. Gone were the driving beat and one-on-one battle commonly associated with breaking, replaced by faint street noises and intimate duets that could be said to queer the stereotype of masculinity seen in popularized variations of hip hop culture. More directly, Beltrão presented this rejection of limitations by establishing one – a thin, glowing demarcation around the main performance area that the dancers kicked, shifted, and ultimately pulled away entirely.
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Thank you to the audience members who gathered Saturday and contributed their thoughtful insights. The above paragraphs highlight portions of our discussion. Whether or not you were able to join us, please feel free to add your own comments and questions to continue and expand the discussion in this online forum. Did you find elements of Beltrão’s work unexpected? How did you respond to his use of the space, lighting, or soundscape?

The Elements of Bruno Beltrão/Grupo de Rua de Niteroi in H3

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H3 by Bruno Beltrão at the Walker Thursday, February 11th- Saturday, February 13th.

The entrance. The footwork. The freeze. The exit.
DJ. Rap. Break. Graffiti.

The first are the codified segments of breakdancing (you can read more from Sally Banes).
The second are the elements of hip hop (granted, there may be more).

H3 by Bruno Beltrão is utter movement that can move from the tip of the skull and rock down through the veins, integrated and embodied in a spare (empty stage) and full (of swagger) intimacy. Meticulous accuracy through the tiniest trails of muscle make the aim of Beltrão’s focus undeniable. We know where we are supposed to look and what we are supposed to see -  a hold in a violent image: kicks toward a still, blasé head that never land; fingers as guns; punches near the space of ears; a foot held, stomp-ready over the crotch of another man.

We know age by – what? Appearance? A certain energy?  Without speaking we can name: young, old, elder, infant. And we know violence by – what? Impact? Result? And what if violence makes no impact – no bruise, no blood – if swagger and bravado and kicks don’t actually cause pain we still see violence. Is the violence here, in H3, rooted in the history of breaking? Or the history of the world? Or the imagination of Bruno Beltrão? Is the youth necessary to this dance? Are young bodies the only ones that can move this way? Or is it important for us to see this effort, this dance as necessary to the men performing it? They certainly perform in an all-encompassing, almost devotional character. What elements are needed for this commitment (for any commitment)?

The heads that shake are earth shattering. We know by witnessing there is an effect to this kind of action. Time is essential here. No one move or sequence lasts long. And, there is the time of youth. Here, ever present. Timing is essential – the relationships between bodies and space that build and break in a matter of moments are as distressing as they are enticing and in all cases they are impressive. The light moves across the stage like little windows and so I think of sun and again the element of time. In H3 time calls for action. It calls for us to be young and moving and alive and worthy (and male).

I do get a little tired of the stand-offs. The onslaught of men challenging one another and the space around them can become tiresome and though the choreography of duets are intricately laced and the floor patterns are almost single-mindedly circular – which is a nice juxtaposition to the straight edges of violent impulse – the onslaught never ends. When the shirts started to come off I screamed (in my head) “no!  too much of this maleness already!” But see….I screamed too soon, for there is reason for a few bare chests as they arc up to the never ending pulse of time and light.

And pulsing with these men is the sound of their effort. Tennis shoes are a status, a symbol, a costume on-stage and off. Here, they cause that high, rubbery squeak we know from basketball courts. I love that sound and in this dance it creates a secondary map – an aural map that helps our minds see where the action has been, where it could be, and it instills a pleasurable excitement. Like a game, we route for the action happening on stage.

I am delighted with the light that frames a finger then breaks open the stage; that becomes oppressive and then almost holy. The light here is time and these dancers are caught. But when one grabs hold of the waist of another, throws his lower body away from the gravity of ground and takes two running, controlled steps in the air I get a chill in my chest and I think they can do it – these men can keep dancing like this forever. They will stay young and stop time. Everything they stand for, all the elements of their lives, everything they fight for and against will make sense because they will continue running full speed backward and into the space of one another, flying almost.

There is much dancing in this world that is not yet defined. This remains true for H3. It is something entirely new to view this dance. Those who get to see it are lucky because at no time in history has anything like this existed. In fact, it is the more definable breaking moves that become less interesting – though they are stunning, they are belted out without regard to anything but immediate impact. And, while the accumulation of this effort is something to be valued, it unfortunately becomes too much of a good thing.

I would not call H3 a “fusing of hip-hop and contemporary dance” as it is described, in part, in the Walker brochure (and this may well be a description from the company itself) because to name it like this is too simple. The labels cause us to think in categories. It makes us view the dance in parts and influences upon Beltrão. This dance is formed from movement into excitement and beauty. It is youth. It is speed. It is an image of violence in challenge and it is a challenge to violence. It is a pursuit upon the space that separates our bodies. It is looking up to the sky which is a form of surrender. It is effort which remains when the movement stops. It is community. It is the sound we make when we are surprised. It is hip hop. It is contemporary dance. None of this is label. All of this is elemental to our lives.

Youth. Challenge. Pursue. Remain.
These are the elements of our lives honored by this dance and I am honored to have viewed it.


Speaking of Dance…

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“Where bodily endeavors assume the status of forms of articulation and representation, their movements acquire a status and function equal to the words that describe them.  The act of writing about bodies thereby originates in the assumption that verbal discourse cannot speak for bodily discourse, but must enter into ‘dialogue’ with that bodily discourse.”  – [...]

“Where bodily endeavors assume the status of forms of articulation and representation, their movements acquire a status and function equal to the words that describe them.  The act of writing about bodies thereby originates in the assumption that verbal discourse cannot speak for bodily discourse, but must enter into ‘dialogue’ with that bodily discourse.”  – Susan Leigh Foster (Choreographing History, 9)

“Desire of the beautiful requires that writing seek to exceed its own constraints, to present what is ‘beyond’ the word by and through the word.” – Judith Butler (Critical Terms for Literary Study, 374)

I have chosen to begin this introduction to Walker Art Center conversations about dance with quotes that highlight two interrelated challenges involved in translating articulations from bodily to linguistic realms.  Judith Butler, writing about desire, brings forward an issue at play in attempting to speak about encounters with the performing arts as well, encounters that although at times experienced as emotional or visceral, “beyond the word,” are conveyed into words to be shared with fellow spectators.  Susan Leigh Foster’s work describes a different perspective, emphasizing that the body is producing meaning with its every movement, it is creating a language all its own, which the audience is left to imperfectly translate into words.  Both authors write of an inherent gap between the body and its maneuvers (the body that describes) and the words that can be used to draw out this meaning (the body that is described).

These challenges can be frustrating, but they can also inspire a longing for a deeper understanding of dance and an opportunity to share this exploration with others.  Taking this into account, the Performing Arts Department has created a new opportunity for dance audiences to engage with performances and one another through the format of post-show discussions.  Speakeasy was tested during the Walker’s Out There series and will continue in conjunction with this spring’s dance season.  The program is a collaboration with the Walker’s Tour Guide Office and pairs a tour guide with a community expert for informal open discussions in the balcony bar following Saturday performances.  The guide and expert are in-place to instigate a conversation about the evening’s show, with audience members invited to participate and voice their own comments and questions. 

Responses to dance can vary greatly and whether one is incited to animated verbosity or rendered speechless is both about the performance itself as well as the individual.  The goal, then, in creating a forum for talking about dance is not to arrive at a united conclusion, but rather to learn from the disparate opinions and interpretations that arise from this shared experience.  Through the process, the hope is for each of us to hone our individual abilities and increase our comfort to speak about this art form that in many ways defies attempts at description.

For our next Speakeasy on February 13, I will be joined in the balcony bar by Max Wirsing, Walker tour guide and performer with choreographer Morgan Thorson, to discuss Bruno Beltrão/Grupo de Rua de Niteroi’s H3.  We hope to see you then!

-Jessica Fiala

Baghdad/Seattle Sweet

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Perhaps because this New Yorker article was fresh in my mind, but all throughout Baghdad/Seattle Suite I kept thinking about chess. It became clearer after the show: the article describes Bill Frisell’s style as “Minefield America, a forbidding territory of ascetic, chesslike improvisations—multidirectional interactions in which every note counts, every modulation is eventful, and intense [...]

Perhaps because this New Yorker article was fresh in my mind, but all throughout Baghdad/Seattle Suite I kept thinking about chess.

It became clearer after the show: the article describes Bill Frisell’s style as “Minefield America, a forbidding territory of ascetic, chesslike improvisations—multidirectional interactions in which every note counts, every modulation is eventful, and intense concentration is a prerequisite for player and listener alike.” During the performance I kept picturing interlocking chess pieces, not only due to Frisell but also because of the whole sonic entente of the evening. Sitting equally paced from one another in a semi-circle, Frisell, Eyvind Kang and Rahim AlHaj gave the impression that they had reached a very careful musical agreement. There were no words exchanged between them, and it was clear from the initial moments that this would not be an evening of cordial, noodling, world music fusion. The music was careful, complex, subdued, and subtle. Although the night ended with a lighter piece, with musical phrases that were a little friendlier and a little more familiar, it felt very special to me to have been along for the whole ride. To me, it felt like the players could have been investigating the territory of a musical endgame.

Frisell performed a solo piece during the show that exemplified the “multidirectional interactions” mentioned in the New Yorker: with pedal and looping effects his guitar notes ventured out, then flew back together, reassembling. Frisell, perhaps out of all the players, best evokes a sense of space: listen to Coffaro’s Theme below (also featuring Eyvind Kang–pardon Sean Connery’s mug) and you can almost hear a skyline. YouTube user ‘Lillogambino’ says it better: “Only somebody who knew the city’s feelin could’ve written somethin like that”.

The musicianship throughout Baghdad/Seattle Suite was never less than incredible. Rahim AlHaj set the mood with his spine-tingling vocals, rhythmic playing, and friendly banter with the crowd. And violist Eyvind Kang seemed to make the biggest impression, with his fiercely meticulous playing over an extended solo (I was later told his solo lasted 20 minutes, it seemed effortless) that left the crowd in a state of awe, almost shock. It all made for the most intellectually rewarding music to pass through the Walker this season.

Presenting performing arts in hard times

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Nearly all arts institutions faced budget strains in 2009 that are not likely to let up much in 2010. The current issue of NEA Arts, the quarterly published by the National Endowment for the Arts, addresses the economic pressures facing performing arts presenters in particular; in “Focusing on the Work: Arts Presenting in Hard Times,” [...]

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Premiere of Radiohole's "Whatever, Heaven Allows" at the Walker (January, 2010)

Nearly all arts institutions faced budget strains in 2009 that are not likely to let up much in 2010. The current issue of NEA Arts, the quarterly published by the National Endowment for the Arts, addresses the economic pressures facing performing arts presenters in particular; in “Focusing on the Work: Arts Presenting in Hard Times,” writer Paulette Beete sought perspective from Philip Bither, the Walker’s McGuire senior curator of performing arts, as well as Michael Kaiser, President of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.

Both offered a number of often overlapping insights; for Bither, persevering in hard times means three basic things:

  1. Take risks: “I would encourage my presenting colleagues in general that sometimes the smartest thing to do is to take the biggest risk. Surprisingly we have found that sometimes the scariest projects, the most ambitious and audacious undertakings, have delivered the greatest rewards” –not just in terms of acclaim, he noted, but in future support from funders.
  2. Collaborate both locally and nationally: “Very infrequently [is the Walker] the sole commissioner of a new work. I think collaboration and cooperation between arts entities that’s on a national scale and on a local level are really part of what we define as requirements that allow us to be fiscally responsible and still support new work.”
  3. Focus on the artists: “ … it’s a very vulnerable and lonely place, especially for emerging and mid-career artists, to not know who’s out there that might believe in them enough to not just put on their last hit but to actually support their next idea. I think in many instances the Walker saying to an artist, ‘We believe in you, and we want to help make this great idea you have come to life,’ is equally important, if not more so, than the cash we can put on the table or the range of resources we can provide.”

Radiohole’s production of Whatever, Heaven Allows, which played as part of the Out There series last month, was a case in point of point 3. The Walker’s commission – a partnership with New York’s PS122, Pittsburgh’s Andy Warhol Museum, and UCLA Live (see point 2) – allowed members of this company to work on a scale they haven’t before.

Other upcoming commissions for the current 2009-2010 season include new music from Bill Frisell, Rahim AlHaj, and Eyvind Kang, created during a residency in the McGuire Theater (February 6); Morgan Thorson and Low’s Heaven (March 4-6), also supported by a residency; and the John Jasperse Company’s Truth, Revised Histories, Wishful Thinking, and Flat Out Lies (May 20-22). Midwest debuts include Bruno Beltrao/Grupo de Rua with H3 (February 11-13), the Akram Khan Company with bahok (March 3), and Saburo Teshigawara/KARAS with Miroku.

The Great War Resonates

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My collegue Mr. Campbell asks ‘Why the great War?’  My answer:  Why not? Holland may have remained neutral terrirtory in this conflict but the physchological and physical effects of the war had great impact far beyond borders. I see no reason to criticize Hotel Modern for their choice of material. In fact, the Great War as an [...]

My collegue Mr. Campbell asks ‘Why the great War?’  My answer:  Why not? Holland may have remained neutral terrirtory in this conflict but the physchological and physical effects of the war had great impact far beyond borders. I see no reason to criticize Hotel Modern for their choice of material.

In fact, the Great War as an object of respresentation and as part of cultural memory and as an event that still resonates and still figures largely in Europe is of little surprise. The Great War was and still is a large  part of  the European High School curriculum. I grew up in England and vividly remember these lessons. I remember being struck by the power of the first world war poets in my English literature class, our endless visits to the Imperial War Museum’s WWI trench displays (we went several times in history class) and every year on the 11th day on the 11th month we were attacked by poppy selling kids on Armistice Day (1918). Poppies were the symbol of the day to remember the dead of WW I and commemorate the end of the war (on the 11th hr of the 11th day of the 11th month…blah..blah )as these flowers were the first to bloom in the war ravaged terrain. As per Mr. Campbell’s experience, these texts were handed to me by my 6th form tutor and they had a siesmic effect on my young, pubescent mind.  In particular I became very attached to the work of Wilfred Owen (Dulce Et Decorum Est) and Issac Rosenberg (Dead Man’s Dump).  And they still have an effect on me and my approach to history. In fact I will venture that  WWI set into motion events that are still spinning themselves out and impacting us today. Following the war, the League of Nations sliced and diced what remained of the Austro-Hungarian Empire/the Ottoman Empire putting the winners in charge of rearranged territories into newly minted countries like Palestine, Iraq etc..and yes, I think those resonances continue on today.

But is that what drove our friends Hotel Modern? I think not. I found it interesting to discover from one of the performers after the show on Saturday that the makers were interested primarily in the impact of war on the landscape. Am I being literal or is environmentalism  a whole new way to , to look at old WWI topic?  Certainly images like the striking pile of dead and decaying bodies at the end underscored this concept but… really… REALLY? Did anyone else understand this piece as a green  meditation on war? Not me. The more I think about it the more I do not see it. The camera’s point of view, the performers point of view, all seemed to dwell on the individual soldier’s experiences and the pointless waste of human life. And this I agree with Mr. Campbell is not a new take on WWI events, I grant you.

However,  even with these inconsistencies I found the performance interesting and resonant. As I said, I will never tire of this topic I’m a bit geeky about it. And like my other collegue, Mr Kelley-Pegg, I also enjoyed the skill and inventiveness of the performers finding, dare I say, pleasure in their restraint and handling of the topic overall.  Is that a bad thing ? To find pleasure in such difficult, ugly subject matter? I will admit that part of my pleasure came from watching  the ingenious way the events unfurled before me.

My vote goes to Hotel Modern as the overall winner of the 2010 crop o’ Out There performances.

Gulgun Kayim

Skewed Visions