Photo: Ian Douglas

Falteringly, haltingly, Kyle Abraham begins to move. His body, his being, seems to reject itself, a pained, primordial entity adjusting to the uncomfortable feeling of his own skin. Blending deep-seated emotion with controlled technique, Abraham pulls from his own experiences and personal history to tap into a relatable, intimate agony – the clash of the individual with rigid social exhortations. In Live! The Realest MC, he takes inspiration from the Pinocchio fable to explore the concept of being “real,” within the context of masculine expectations, heteronormativity, and the performance of identity in hip-hop. Upright and sparkling in gold Abraham provides a marked contrast to the cool black tracksuits of his company members. As he begins to walk, he welcomes us to follow him on this journey.

Now in its third year, the Walker Art Center’s SpeakEasy program regularly invites audience members to participate in open post-performance conversations facilitated by Walker visual arts tour guides and local members of the performing arts community. In conjunction with this weekend’s performances by Kyle Abraham/Abraham.In.Motion, we offer this pre-performance blog highlighting a few themes connected to the work. We hope that you will join us after the show on Saturday, March 16, in the Walker’s McGuire Theater Balcony Bar for a discussion led by choreographer Blake Nellis and Walker tour guide/choreographer Ray Terrill.

Placing the work

Drawing from his conservatory training and youth immersed in the emerging hip-hop culture of Pittsburgh in the late 1970s, Kyle Abraham creates interdisciplinary work that “delve[s] into identity in relation to a personal history.” This weaving of diverse media and material is manifest in works such as Pavement, which incorporates opera, the early writings of W.E.B. Du Bois, and the 1991 film Boyz N The Hood, as well as Live! The Realest MC, with its mixture of dance, projections, and monologues.

Speaking of his interest in the work of visual artist and Walker Art Center regular Kara Walker, Abraham reflected upon identity and influences: “I am inspired by how she is able to create such provocative situational environments in her work with a willingness to evoke anger, laughter, and a whole swelling of emotions…her work deals with historic references, representation, and stereotypical content that make me reflect on my position in life…and more so in this country, as a gay black American man who grew up in an urban environment marginalized by race, poverty and sexual orientation.”

Abraham’s background provides fodder for Live! The Realest MC, a piece that both confronts issues of hypermasculinity and comically questions what being “real” in hip-hop may be. Yet behind this humor and orbiting this piece are a variety of rigid expectations and potentially cruel consequences, what Amy Villarejo has termed the “terror of the normative.” The story of Live! The Realest MC began to develop in the early solo piece Inventing Pookie Jenkins, but took on a greater significance in the context of recent suicides connected with bullying and homophobia. Abraham explained, “I began to think about a time in my life when I prayed that I could go unnoticed. Hoping that if I get my voice to sound like the other male students around me, I wouldn’t be found out. I just wanted to be a robot… a puppet…”

Being “real” in this sense becomes convoluted, not simply the assertion of some genuine selfhood, but, a “yardstick” that measures one’s relationship to a variety of notions of authenticity. To “be real” morphs into an imperative to fall in line and the individual must decide how to respond.

Photo: Cherylynn Tsushima

Public Performance

Although brought into dramatic relief in relation to expectations that one resists, the individual in society is continuously engaged with the demand “to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet” (T.S. Eliot). Embedded within myriad sets of relationships, the self is developed and performed through quotidian practices and in contrast or kinship with others. In this regard, for Joanne Finkelstein, the “controlled body” becomes a “passport to sociability.” If one knows social codes, and can successfully adhere to them, doors may open, even if merely for a performance that comes at a great personal price.

When does hip-hop become intertwined with identity or a lifestyle and how is this relationship performed? When is it personal, taking a set of concepts and practices into one’s own definition of self, and when is it public, portraying a role to be understood by others or assuming qualities and practices from demeanor, to speech or consumption? Abraham’s work pulls meaningfully from specific roots, yet the aforementioned questions apply to any range of accepted or desired roles. Where does the “real self” end and the “performed self” begin? Given that one is born and lives in situ and in relation to others, is the notion of such divisions simply an illusion?

When asked in an interview for New York’s Amsterdam News how race may factor into his dance life, Abraham replied, “It is inevitable that the work of any choreographer will come from a place of their individual journey. My personal story is growing up as a middle-class, Black, gay man from a spiritual family upbringing in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Whether I chose to create a work about my life experiences in a literal fashion [or not], the work is inevitably a derivative of all that I am.”

While “placing” Abraham’s work may mean providing a context for it in terms of histories, norms, and social forces that have shaped his experiences, the work is not limited by these parameters. Speaking of the larger relationship between audience and art, Abraham broadened the scope: “the same great thing can be said about dance as it can about the visual arts… I want my work to have an individual effect. It’s not imperative that people walk away seeing or feeling the same thing. Art, in all forms to me, is about evoking something…either with in yourself or within those who stumble upon your vision.”

A SpeakEasy is an informal audience discussion facilitated by a Walker tour guide and a local performer or choreographer. Today’s edition highlights themes shared during a conversation on Saturday, December 8, about Deborah Hay’s As Holy Sites Go.

As Holy Sites Go concluded the Walker’s Deborah Hay Celebration, a week of events recognizing the career of this dynamic performer and choreographer. A former dancer in the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Hay was a founding member of the Judson Dance Theater, which formed in New York in 1962. Bolstered by that community, she embarked on decades of dance exploration with “trained” and “untrained” performers. Thereafter, through a series of solos, Hay honed her choreographic process, begun with a series of questions and developed into a script that guides the performer, who makes decisions and enacts this exploration, in real-time. The questions posed by Hay resonate beyond the performing context and linger long afterwards.

Discussing her work Beauty, she offered the query “What if where I am is what I need”? Specifically considering the performing context, this question has relevance for both performers and audience members. As Hay’s dancer’s open themselves to the disparate possibilities of a moment, so, too audience members are tasked with being open and aware in following that course, wherever it may lead. For a few of us, this exploration ultimately led to the Walker’s Balcony Bar for a post-performance SpeakEasy discussion. Themes and concepts shared in that conversation are featured in this post, and additional questions and thoughts are welcomed in the comments section below.

To be Holy and Secular

“…perhaps our life is still governed by a certain number of oppositions that remain inviolable, that our institutions and practices have not yet dared to break down. These are oppositions that we regard as simple givens: for example between private space and public space, between family space and social space, between cultural space and useful space, between the space of leisure and that of work. All these are still nurtured by the hidden presence of the sacred.” – Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces”

How might the theater function as a ritual site? Is it a type of holy space, reserved for a unique form of attentive, hushed experience? As Holy Sites Go is performed in silence, broken by brief vocalizations, subdued percussive accents, and the occasional soft shush of shoe against floor. The audience contributes to this score, perhaps unintentionally, through the squeak of a chair or a stifled cough. Already perhaps self-aware given the desire to maintain quiet, the audience is further drawn into the performance by the lighting, which remains on seats throughout the majority of the evening. For some, this may cause discomfort, drawing attention to each small shift, making one aware of one’s body or persona in the theatre. Yet for others, this opens up a communal engagement. One audience member recalled leaning forward and noticing that movement echoed row after row. This notion of community brings to the fore a precious undercurrent in this viewing experience. A generosity is requested of both performers and audience members, asking us to allow each moment to unfold as it may, to be patient as the performers strive to find the next impulse, to be actively present as they seek something “genuine” that lies behind habit, convention, beauty, or reason. This is perhaps the secular holiness of the theatre, the focused energy of audience and performers coalescing in this space during this limited time.

To Succeed at Achieving Nothing

One audience member brought forward the concept of “achievement” in contrast to Hay’s movement aesthetic. Throughout the piece, she noted that dancers followed impulses, yet almost as soon as these were recognized, they were discarded, overridden by the next impulse and a reconfiguration of the current moment. In this sense, the actions were without consequences, nothing was achieved or fulfilled, for achievement exists in a linear trajectory of progress and Hay demands that we sever this moment from before/after, that we focus on the emerging now. As this process unfolds, it is hard to resist layering emotion or narrative onto the evolving vignettes.  SpeakEasy participants shared diverse interpretations. Periods of prolonged stillness with bodies collapsed to the floor, then reanimated to begin the next scene, reminded one viewer of reincarnation. Others saw moments of interspecies communication, fighting, sexual seduction, twinspeak, or soaring through a clear blue sky.

To Be Here

One line was uttered during the performance by each dancer, a comment from Samuel Beckett’s The End, “Strictly Speaking I believe I’ve never been anywhere.” But, what is it to truly be somewhere, anywhere? What is it to fully embody and experience this moment? A number of audience members shared a feeling of expanded time, of time not as a quick succession of seconds, but rather time in the form of eons, in the slow periodicity of erosion. Described by Hay as a “continuity of discontinuity,” As Holy Sites Go does not build a forward momentum from beginning towards climax and resolution. Instead, each movement is presented for consideration on its own and we are invited to strive to stay with it, to experience this hour moment by moment in this space together.

Thank you to local performer, choreographer, and author Judith Brin Ingber for joining me to lead the SpeakEasy for As Holy Sites Go. The next SpeakEasy will be held on Saturday, January 12, when we will discuss Rude Mechs’ The Method Gun. This will be the first performance of 2013’s Out There Series. We hope to see you then!

Dig Deeper

Feminist Movement: Deborah Hay, Artistic Survival, Aesthetic Freedom, and Feminist Organizational Principles by Walker assistant curator for the Performing Arts Michèle Steinwald

Deborah Hay: The Outlier as Insider, by Michèle Steinwald, as told to Julie Caniglia

Talk Dance producer/host Justin Jones’ interview with Jeanine Durning on working with Deborah Hay

A SpeakEasy is an informal audience discussion facilitated by a Walker tour guide and a local performer or choreographer.  Today’s edition highlights themes shared during a conversation on Saturday, October 27,  about  BodyCartography Project’s Super Nature.

Described with roots akin to “a documentary on the Animal Channel … about humans,” BodyCartography Project’s Super Nature takes the audience from an extended exploration of interpersonal awkwardness to a primordial forest. Emerging from the mist, audience members gathered in the Walker’s balcony bar for a SpeakEasy conversation facilitated by Walker tour guide Mary Dew and choreographer Rosy Simas. Themes from that discussion are highlighted in this blog and additional interpretations, questions, and musings are invited in the comments section below.

The BodyCartography Project, Super Nature, 2012. Photo: Gene Pittman

Sustained Awkwardness

During the first half of Super Nature, performers surged, fell, undulated, posed, stumbled, and regained their footing only to collapse upon themselves. Peculiar nuzzling shifted to become inappropriate and slightly sinister, only to return to its original awkward state. Working against the grain of the pretty or virtuosic, Super Nature invited audiences to marinate in discomfort, the performers pushing themselves into the territory of the physically and aesthetically ungainly. The emotional impact of this action was raised, and audience members commented on a sense of disquiet, a feeling of being alienated within one’s own body, and a disconnect between the propriety of the costuming and the intimate invasiveness of the partnering. This unease was heightened for some at a visceral level early on as performers punctuated movements with continuous short, shallow exhalations. Expressed responses of physical anxiety, or the impetus to mimic, are perhaps instances of the kinesthetic empathy between performer and spectator which has been an area of exploration for the Body Cartography Project in recent years.

Devolution

Midway through the performance, the bright colors of animalistic dancers in retro apparel transformed into the subdued tones of a forest wrapped in fog. Partially nude performers hidden by branches became a slowly moving grove of trees, setting a scene described by one audience member as a “dream forest.” Alongside this costume change to partial nudity and animal prints, there seemed to some to be an alleviation of anxiety as the performers shifted from awkward individuals into a primal pack.

Through carefully chosen angles, nudity was seen to highlight the musculature of the human body as well as presenting vulnerability and the removal of another set of social boundaries. Exploring the human animal in its society and settings turned to investigating the biology of this being, as a papaya projected onto the torso of a performer became viscera probed by curious fingers.  This study of the body’s systems brought out the choreographers’ involvement with Body Mind Centering, an experiential study of the physical body in its relationship to consciousness.  Describing this influence, Walker Art Center Assistant Curator for the Performing Arts Michèle Steinwald wrote of the simultaneous attention to “the micro (the body) and the macro (the community)” which enables performers to both ground themselves and to connect with audiences through sympathetic physical responses and recognitions.

A Rorschach Test

Multiple connections arose between Super Nature and visual art, from moments of contorted statuesque stillness to a comparison between dance and abstract painting, wherein viewers are invited to create their own interpretations or narratives.  The set design of simple ropes strung diagonally across the stage enhanced the depth of the space and, when manipulated, became an array of associations, the bars of a zoo, sinewy umbilical chords, a net ensnaring the performers, the facia of a great organism, and a representation of the communal interconnectivity of individuals. One participant likened watching abstract dance to developing an interest in experimental music; first there is noise, but as one learns what to listen for and how to hear, there arise points to grab onto and a deeper experience develops. In this sense, we are offered a Rorschach test, a chance to open ourselves to see what we will and to explore that experience. As  our post-performance discussion progressed, a distinction arose between the initial question of “What are you supposed to take home?” to the more personal reflection “What are you taking home?”

Participate!

Join the conversation by adding your thoughts in the comments section below!

Attend the next SpeakEasy discussion on Saturday, December 8, in conjunction with Hay Days: A Deborah Hay Celebration.

Come to Art School!  The Walker is hosting a series of monthly lectures exploring various disciplines in contemporary art.  Next up: photography on Sunday, November 18!

Dig Deeper

Read Michèle Steinwald’s essay Sourcing Dance Through the Body: BodyCartography Project’s Creative Process.

Learn about the elements of dance from the Perpich Center for Arts Education.

Listen to Justin Jones’ interview with BodyCartography Project choreographers Otto Ramstad and Olive Bieringa on the Walker Channel.  Also check out Justin’s primer on watching experimental dance for MN Playlist!

A SpeakEasy is an informal audience discussion facilitated by a Walker tour guide and a local performer or choreographer.  Today’s edition highlights themes shared during a conversation on Saturday, September 22, led by choreographer Anat Shinar and tour guide Jack Bardon.  Join us for the next SpeakEasy on Saturday, October 27, for a discussion about   BodyCartography Project’s Super Nature.  Coming up next, the Walker presents Voices of Strength: Contemporary Dance & Theater by Women from Africa, October 10-13.

Instructed to join hands, the audience forms a communal gesture that encircles the stage. Our collective gaze fixed upward, we are engulfed by a shifting spectrum of colors and a low bass that vibrates around and through our bodies.  But how does each of us come to know this performance? What of it exists in the world and what comes into being only in our minds? It is an experience shared by all – differently. Following Miguel Gutierrez’s And lose the name of action, a group of audience members gathered in the Walker’s Balcony Bar to discuss these diverse impressions and interpretations during the first SpeakEasy of the season. Themes from that conversation are featured in the paragraphs below and readers are invited to add thoughts, questions, and responses using the comments function on this page.

Presence & Non-Presence

Beginning with a pseudo séance and continuing through moments of seemingly possessed ecstatic dance, And lose the name of action is imbued with specters. The nature of ghostly being is in essence to not be, to perform and embody in a diaphanous presence this non-being. A ghost references a realm beyond, but such phantoms also bring to our attention the ephemeral and faltering nature of being in this world. Flooded in an instant by distractions, self-doubt, critical reflections, memories, judgments, or questions, there are myriad barriers to being fully present, as well as a variety of interpretations as to what “fully present,” if possible, might be or mean.

A soloist falls, seemingly out of control, through a series of precise stumbles and suspensions as another performer describes her actions, making noticeable the gaps between language and action, explanation and feeling, being and analysis. With this piece, Gutierrez not only brings these divisions to the fore, he questions and seeks to bridge the mind/body dichotomy so ingrained since Descartes. Rather than privileging the mind, Gutierrez focuses on the body in the world as the seat of consciousness.

As the dancers writhe, seemingly entranced, the question arises as to how the body might be used to actively seek heightened mental states – through rigorous, meditative practices, or the contrary, ecstatic, Dionysian exhaustion. It is perhaps in such instances where cause and effect overlap, the body both creating and reflecting the activity of the mind. The edges of psychic and physical comfort present a kind of thrill, enjoyed with the knowledge that one can control deviation from and return to a reliable norm. The loss of such a base presents an extreme alternative experience, perhaps the most ghostlike of all, where intensely felt struggles at the margins, viewed from the perspective of a stable center, might appear incomprehensibly otherworldly.

Time & Resolution

Two dancers work out a sequence of choreography in the corner while another performer crawls diagonally across the stage.  Time is simultaneously slow, constant progress and a series of fading moments. It could be 9 pm or 2 am. Time distorts and one senses only a constant now. Dancers rush by and sit amongst the audience, who are lit throughout the performance.  It is in turns comical, invigorating, and exhausting.

A sense of timelessness surrounds the idea of ghosts, yet in presence, they are associated with the ephemeral, with a subtle half-seen motion that disappears as soon as it is noticed. This transitory quality is echoed in the nature of dance itself – fleeting movements of the body, traces across the stage. Although passing, these moments hold weight, just as our own humble and short-lived gestures, which maintain such import as they transpire, are revealed to be mere traces as well.

The evening begins reflecting on the process of learning without a teacher and as an audience we are left to piece together unresolved fragments, to make our own meaning and to become accustomed to this process. Anxiety in the face of such uncertainty makes the source of Gutierrez’s title particularly fitting. Hamlet, after asking “To be or not to be” explores the possibility of suicide, but is stopped by a dread of the unknown afterlife. He comments that the paralyzing effects of the fear of an action’s potential results might “make cowards of us all.” In Gutierrez’s work, there is a call for an embodied, engaged form of presence which, when it falters, perhaps causes our simple impulses to lose their boldness or intensity And lose the name of action.

Join the conversation!
The above blog shares a few impressions voiced by audience members at our post-performance discussion.  Additional comments, ideas, and questions are welcome in this on-line forum, using the comments feature below.