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Look Who’s Looking Now: How We Watch, What We Think, and Why It Matters

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Dance and  the Body Look Who’s Looking Now: How We Watch, What We Think, and Why It Matters is a four-part series on watching dance. Discussions are divided into sections on the body, space, time, and action/energy. The series aims to give audiences the tools to discuss the elements of dance performance and dig deeper [...]

Dance and  the Body

Look Who’s Looking Now: How We Watch, What We Think, and Why It Matters is a four-part series on watching dance. Discussions are divided into sections on the body, space, time, and action/energy. The series aims to give audiences the tools to discuss the elements of dance performance and dig deeper into the philosophical meaning behind the works. Feel free to add to the discussion and share your own insights in the comment section below.

Understanding dance performance begins with simply describing what we observe. Certain terms help us communicate these observations. For example, we can use terms that describe parts of the body, like head, face, shoulders, arms, legs, torso, and feet. We can describe how bodies in motion create shapes and divide space. We might describe the symmetry or asymmetry of the arrangement of bodies on stage, or we might describe rounded or angular motifs in the positions of the dancers (Cunningham). We might describe the dance techniques employed in the performance. Some techniques are muscular (Streb), while others require dancers to move from their bones and organs (BodyCartography Project); some techniques use breath at the center of movement (Eiko & Koma); and some techniques use all these elements. Beginning with simple descriptions of what we see, we can begin to think about how a dance performance makes us feel and what it means to us. Reflecting further on the cultural context of a performance, we can begin to consider what it might mean to its choreographers and dancers, and what its broader cultural impact might be.

The body is the instrument of dance. We – as audiences – watch how the body moves or doesn’t move.  We observe shape, movement, and technique; body size, gender, race, age, and more. We make these observations and others through visual cues whose cultural histories predate the present performance. What is communicated through dance performance depends both on the dancers’ bodies and the audiences’ cultures of perception. That is, our bodies, as viewers, are part of the meaning.

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Imagine a performance involving black dancers and white audience members. In the United States, this occurs in and communicates an ongoing negotiation of power dynamics and cultural conversations. The same can be said of a performance involving a woman dancing for an audience of men. In these examples, the significance of the dance has to do in equal part with the dancers and the audience members: race and gender are part of ever-changing cultures of racism and heteronormativity. These are only two examples of ways in which visual cues interact with audience culture to affect a performance’s meaning, message, and impact, in the field of dance and beyond. Many dancers and choreographers, aware of the complexity of visual cues, create work with such negotiations in mind.

Choreographer Bill T. Jones creates art with his audience in mind. He observes that the audience that sees his work is mostly white, and he admits that this awareness informs his choreographic choices. Jones addresses issues of interest for his audiences, challenging what he perceives to be the social and cultural assumptions viewers bring to a performance. In discussing his 2012 work Story/Time, Jones asks audiences to “watch [ourselves] watching.” He explains, “I’m always aware that I am a subjective consciousness, trying to observe something and trying to relate to it. It makes me very self-conscious, but it also makes me feel like I am participating in the world of ideas.”

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An opportunity arises to “watch [ourselves] watching” during a section of Story/Time. The same story is repeated three times, each time accompanied by a different choreographic representation – first by a black woman dancing abstractly, alone on the couch, then by the cast, narratively performing the story as it is told, and finally repeated again by the cast with their backs to audience and with their real names inserted into the story. The repetition and variation emphasizes how bodies and culture can influence the perceived meaning of a story. During the piece, Jones retells a story centering on relationships, struggle, and violence and the sequence of events that unfolds. The original version of the story is as follows:

A woman is sitting alone on the couch, distraught, because she can’t pay her mortgage. The father and daughter enter and try to comfort the mother. Then, the landlord [sic] comes in with his goons, demanding the money. The mother says, “have mercy, we don’t have the money. Please, please give us more time.” The landlord says, “I don’t care, I gave you another month already. This is not a fucking charity.” He tells his lackeys, “take the furniture.” The father screams, “But you can’t do this!” the landlord says, “not only can I do this, but I’m going to take her, as well.” The mother shouts, “no, no, no, no!” as the landlord seizes the daughter and begins ravishing her. The father tries to intervene, fails, and has a heart attack. The landlord, full of himself, walks away. The son enters the scene, witnessing the carnage. The mother tells him, “The landlord is the cause of all the troubles.” The son, full of fury, takes his revenge.

The story itself is an example of using the body as a weapon for control, reinforcing dynamics of sexism and classism.

After watching each segment, some questions to consider are: What is conveyed when it is performed by a black woman? How did the impact of the story change when the dancers pantomimed the events? How did the bodies of the people portraying each character influence your feelings about it? What do you think that means? What about when the dancers’ real names are used and they are portraying themselves? How do Jones’s presence on stage and his narration impact the overall presentation? Does the impact change when the dancers have their backs to the audience?

In all three iterations, the bodies performing on stage influence the significance of the piece and affect how it is perceived by the audience. In what way might the meaning change in relation to the cultural background of the viewer? Taken together, these considerations inspire unique interpretations that arise equally from the bodies of the performers and the bodies of the audience members.

Connotations of the body vary from community to community. In times of war, the body is often used as a weapon and as a tool of control. In the 20th century, the Democratic Republic of Congo was fraught with political and military coups, political corruption, poverty, civil wars, and human rights violations. In a 2010 performance, Congolese artist Faustin Linyekula (lin-yay-coo-la) reflected on the significance of the body during political upheaval and instability:

So, you have a body. The ultimate territory you could occupy. And you know what? History could be understood through the lens of the evolutions of forms of violence against the body. Not only the history of my country, which has been particularly violent against the body, but any people, any country, can be understood through that angle. The evolution of forms of violence against the body. So, maybe a dancer is a fortune or a curse.

As Linyekula describes, violence against the body is not restricted to select countries or cultures. Violence against the body is a common phenomenon among all human cultures, and it has evolved over time. Rape, slavery, and mutilation are examples of extreme brutality, but violence also takes on more subtle and nuanced forms through systemic racism, sexism, classism, and religionism, to name a few. Dance and performance remind us of the embodied human experience in their portrayal of relationships, emotion, struggle, perseverance, elegance, and beauty. Live performance not only invites embodied empathy for characters and actors, but invites us to see the impact of our own interactions with other people. As audience members, we experience ourselves as embodied participants in an embodied story.

The methods that performers use to get us to challenge our own notions of the body vary greatly, but they all contribute valuable information and experiences to the ongoing dialogue around the body and the cultural habits that it bears.

Deborah Hay hails from the Judson Dance Theater, a dance collective whose philosophy centered on dismantling the conventions and theatricality that often accompanied dance performance and utilized every day movement as the predominant vocabulary. They organized informal performances in unconventional places, without elaborate lighting or costuming, in an effort to convey their true selves.

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For her original performance of O’ Beautiful, Deborah Hay hired a costume designer to design a “post-apocalyptic looking costume… it did not feel appropriate to me, at all, in that it strongly influenced my dancing and really got in the way for me. I felt quite limited by the cuteness of the costume.” During one rehearsal in the Texas heat, Hay rehearsed the piece in the nude.

I’m in the studio one day and it’s so hot, I just take off all my clothes and I start performing O’ Beautiful and that was the costume. And what I experienced performing that piece without any clothes on was so phenomenal that [nudity] had to be the costume.

Hay no longer performs the piece live, renamed Beauty, but performs A Lecture on the Performance of Beauty in which she discusses the evolution of the piece while projecting two performances of it (one in the post-apocalyptic costume and the other in the nude) side by side.

Hay’s change of opinion in how to (un)dress for the piece was a response to her daily experiences (climate control). The banality of those circumstances, however, does not change the cultural significance of a woman in her 60s performing in the nude. How differently would the performance have been perceived if she were in her 20s or 30s? If she were black? If she were male? How does showing the side by side performance change the viewer’s perception? Seeing the performances side by side, we become increasingly aware of the differences that costuming has on the body and the impact costuming has on our interpretation. Since Hay no longer performs the work live, in costume or in the nude, the audience watches a video of her dancing, while she gives a lecture, live, about the work. Her academic presentation and intellectualization of the piece further de-sexualizes the performance.

Though Hay found comfort in her nudity, not every dancer or company agrees that the uncostumed self is the “true self.” In the tradition of the Harlem vogue balls, one’s true self was her or his attitude.

This realness, what is interesting, is that it includes all the artificial means that you may need to use… While realness, to be real, you may use a lot of makeup, a lot of fake bra, a lot of costumes, a lot of accessories that’s going to make you be real. So this is this interesting situation where being real is not getting rid of all the cultural elements and all the artifices, but being real is using everything you may use, from hormones to costumes to heels to fake dick to pass as what you want to pass as. – François Chaignaud

To the members of Judson Theater, their bodies “true forms” were revealed by ridding performance of traditional theatrical elements like costumes, hairstyles, and stage makeup. Dancers in Harlem’s vogue balls took an opposite approach, utilizing all available technology for altering bodies to represent their “true selves” so that the images and persona that they presented to the world matched their inner ideas of their bodies. In both cases, the notion of “realness” has the body at its center – perhaps because we, as a society, place the body at the center, taking social and cultural cues from what we see, who we see, and how we see.

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Whether making physical or philosophical observations about the dancing body, perception and understanding are undeniably influenced by the culture in which we live. Analysis of the performing body requires contextualizing the work based on the background of the choreographer, the cast performing, and the demographics of the viewers. Each participant brings with her a body of unique experiences and varied perspectives that together effect the overall reception, meaning, and impact of a work. Dance is more meaningful for viewers who bring this awareness to a performance.

Kyle Abraham: Sparkle and Plenty

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To spark discussion, the Walker invites local artists and critics to write overnight reviews of our performances. The ongoing Re:View series shares a diverse array of independent voices and opinions; it doesn’t reflect the views or opinions of the Walker or its curators. Today, Penelope Freeh shares her perspective on Thursday night’s Live! The Realest MC by Kyle [...]

Photo by Ian Douglas

Photo by Ian Douglas

To spark discussion, the Walker invites local artists and critics to write overnight reviews of our performances. The ongoing Re:View series shares a diverse array of independent voices and opinions; it doesn’t reflect the views or opinions of the Walker or its curators. Today, Penelope Freeh shares her perspective on Thursday night’s Live! The Realest MC by Kyle Abraham / Abraham.In.Motion. Agree or disagree? Feel free to share your thoughts in Comments!

A golden child is hatched downstage right. Clad in sequins and lamé, Kyle Abraham is born. Shoulders articulate. Limbs elongate then shrink. Abraham tentatively balances on his sickled feet and, for a moment, he is grown.

Soon other dancers enter and athletically frame him. Their movements are clear-cut and concise. Everything is clean and visible. The oscillation from casual hip-hop to balls-to-the-wall contemporary dance is utterly discernable, readable.

Photo by Cherylynn Tsushima

Photo by Cherylynn Tsushima

There is so much unison dancing that when an image stops for a moment, like when a trio of men sightlessly hug/spoon and reach for one another’s hands, we sit up and take notice. There is depth of meaning here that extends beyond the virtuosity of high battements and multiple turns. This piece is about coming of age, being gay, pain and rage.

Video is projected on an upstage curtain of floor to ceiling white strips. Kids chase after someone over and over, a childhood nightmare played out larger than life and in color. The music is drone-like and full of static, at times too loud but to a point. Life is sometimes unbearable and dangerous. You want to cover your ears and hide away.

At about the halfway point this full-evening piece breaks apart. Humor finds its way in by way of a video of a southern white woman giving a hip-hop tutorial. Next is a voiced-over dance lesson all about the hips. Later two men physicalize the same dance instructions, one effeminately and the other hip-hop style. A beautiful juxtaposition and, I think, complement.

The evening is comprised of episodes rather than a super-narrative. This is elegantly done and with superb transitions. The lighting helps to carry this off, creating and defining sub-spaces within the larger one.

The end brought my only complaint: I wanted the last dance episode to be a solo for Abraham. After making himself so vulnerable in a section where he by turns talked tough and broke into childhood tears, I wanted just him and his sublime musicality. Alas, I loved it anyway.

From the dancers to the clever costumes, all were well cooked. For a work that drew upon the autobiography of Abraham, credit and generous dancing time was given to the dancers.

Kyle Abraham: Basketball, Hip Hop, and on Being Real

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Most of us can say that at one point in our lives, we didn’t fit in. But how did we know that we didn’t fit in? Kyle Abraham knew because people told him so: My dad, he was a big basketball coach, and he sent me one summer to a basketball camp – which was [...]

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Most of us can say that at one point in our lives, we didn’t fit in. But how did we know that we didn’t fit in? Kyle Abraham knew because people told him so:

My dad, he was a big basketball coach, and he sent me one summer to a basketball camp – which was probably one of the worst experiences of my life. I didn’t know that I didn’t fit in, but I was told on several occasions how much I did not fit in. I think there’s something about that in the story of Pinocchio, where I don’t really think he’s aware that people see him as different, he just thinks that he is this boy, he thinks he’s like everybody else. But then people tell him otherwise. And then he goes on this quest; he wants to be famous and do all these things and he does all these shows with the puppeteer. So, for me, I found all these really interesting parallels between that and my experience growing up in an urban community in Pittsburgh where it seems like if you put this kind of Hip Hop bravado on, you’ll be more accepted, or you won’t be called out as different. So that’s really what the show is referencing in relation to the story of Pinocchio. The soundtrack gives you this more industrial vibe, so, for me, it was thinking, “how can I make this story relate?” And, for me, it became less about this cobbler, or craftsman, making this wooden puppet, but more – maybe it’s happening in a factory, maybe it’s more industrial. Maybe you’re turning someone into a robot. Really devoid of feelings and emotion and just this false sense of celebrated masculinity.

Contributing to the ever-evolving dialogue on heteronormativity, in Hip Hop, sports, and beyond, Abraham’s newest work Live! The Realest MC infuses dance and storytelling in a journey of self-discovery. Questioning constructs around masculinity and identity, Abraham, like Pinocchio, only began searching for himself after others informed him that he was different. In both stories, though, it seems less about finding yourself, and more about understanding yourself while searching for others like you.

For some, sports and masculinity are synonymous. In football this past season, there seemed to be as many articles about homosexuality and players’ controversial (and also awesome) statements about marriage equality as there was coverage of the games. For Abraham, basketball became a place where his masculinity was questioned, where his “difference” was called out.

Listen to Kyle Abraham’s recent interview with Justin Jones

Speaking of heteronormativity and sports, remember Dennis Rodman? In the early 90s, Rodman challenged gender perceptions in the NBA, regularly painting his nails, dying his hair, and wearing women’s clothing. His public appearances garnered a lot of positive and negative attention, but no matter what the response, it got people talking. Twenty years later, that dialogue has evolved, hopefully progressing.

And since we’re talking about Dennis Rodman, Hip Hop, and gender roles/heteronormativity, here’s this little bit of awesome for you.

 

Join the dialogue, check out Live! The Realest MC this weekend, March 14-16.

Kyle Abraham: Prepare a Face

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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 [...]

Photo: Ian Douglas

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

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.”

I Am the Real Mimosa: A SpeakEasy for (M)imosa

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A SpeakEasy is an informal audience discussion facilitated by a Walker Art Center tour guide and a local performer or choreographer. Today’s edition highlights themes shared during a conversation on Saturday, January 26, about (M)imosa/Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at the Judson Church, by Cécilia Bengolea, François Chaignaud, Marlene Monteiro Freitas, and Trajal Harrell. [...]

A SpeakEasy is an informal audience discussion facilitated by a Walker Art Center tour guide and a local performer or choreographer. Today’s edition highlights themes shared during a conversation on Saturday, January 26, about (M)imosa/Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at the Judson Church, by Cécilia Bengolea, François Chaignaud, Marlene Monteiro Freitas, and Trajal Harrell. This SpeakEasy was led by tour guide Skye Stauffer and local arts and culture guru from Salon Saloon, Andy Sturdevant.

Inspired by the 1990 documentary Paris is Burning, which follows the vogue dance scene in Harlem in the 1980s, (M)imosa investigates the hypothetical question of what contemporary dance would look like today if vogue had the same influence as the Judson Dance Theater on the evolution of the art form.  Utilizing elements of time, space, persona, the four artists address the question of “what is real” while trying to convince the audience that each of them is “the real Mimosa.” The element of “real” is the dominant theme, explored through song, dance, story-telling, and costuming, challenging audiences perception of gender, sexuality, and what it means to be comfortable in your own skin. After the show, audience members gathered in the Balcony Bar to discuss what they saw. Here are some key topics:

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The house never went dark, except during a few sections. Performers were in audience, talking to people, to each other, drinking tea, eating. The audience quieted when Freitas took the stage, topless. Even as she began dancing, the lights stayed up and the other performers remained on the sides or in the audience, giving the performance a rehearsal quality, making the viewers aware that they were watching a very intimate scene of artistic and personal exploration. As the audience watched the performance, the performers watched each other, moving seamlessly between being viewers and performers. As an act was happening on stage, there was often something just as captivating happening in the audience, forcing the audience to choose what to look at and where to look. Costumes and props scattered throughout the audience brought on interactions between the artists and viewers that turned several audience members into performers themselves.

What is male? What is female?
From the very beginning, gender lines were blurred. Freitas performed topless for the majority of the show – wearing purple lingerie for one section then doing a Prince impersonation shortly after, Bengolea performed a section wearing a strap on penis then later performed in a red dress, Chaignaud seamlessly shifted between elaborate drag costumes to street clothes, while Harrell wore khakis and a sweater the entire show. The obscured gender lines were less about sexuality and orientation than they were about identity and self-actualization.

Will the real Mimosa please stand up?
In the beginning, each performer introduced themselves as “Mimosa.” In subsequent pieces they explained what made them “Mimosa” and how they came to identify with that word. At the end, they each made their case for why they are the “real Mimosa.” So who is the real Mimosa? In the film Paris is Burning, being “real” meant to inhabit a persona so fully that you could walk down the street and no one would question whether or not that’s the “real” you. In (M)imosa, the performers committed to each character, each persona, so that the audience couldn’t tell when they were in character or not. Their use of costumes, makeup, prosthetic, and so on, did not mask their true selves, but enhanced it. The performers utilized all that culture has to offer to highlight that there is not a singular definition of what is real. People have many faces, persona, attitudes, ideas and, like Mimosa, they change, evolve, and grow.

(M)imosa: “When You Go to Buy Real Shit, You Need to Bring Real Shit”

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To spark discussion, the Walker invites local artists and critics to write overnight reviews of our performances. The ongoing Re:View series shares a diverse array of independent voices and opinions; it doesn’t reflect the views or opinions of the Walker or its curators. Today, Elliott Durko Lynch  shares their perspective on Thursday night’s “(M)imosa” by   Trajal Harrell, Cecilia Bengolea, François Chaignaud, and Marlene [...]

Photo by Miana Jun

To spark discussion, the Walker invites local artists and critics to write overnight reviews of our performances. The ongoing Re:View series shares a diverse array of independent voices and opinions; it doesn’t reflect the views or opinions of the Walker or its curators. Today, Elliott Durko Lynch  shares their perspective on Thursday night’s “(M)imosa” by   Trajal Harrell, Cecilia Bengolea, François Chaignaud, and Marlene Monteiro Freitas . Agree or disagree? Feel free to share your thoughts in comments!

I’m writing as a representative of the local live news-magazine Salon Saloon, hosted by Andy Sturdevant, which I work on as a technical producer at Minneapolis’ Bryant-Lake Bowl. For five years I have also been on the technical production team of Dykes Do Drag, which also is produced at the BLB five times a year; in the Theater booth my alias is “Diethyl Mercury.”

First:

Excerpted from below:
Appendix B. Required reading for (M)imosa…

1. At the very least see Paris is Burning or, at bare minimum, watch this clip on “reading.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2lEtUqxg44

2. At the very least, Wikipedia postmodern dance or Judson dance.

3. Read the supplied program notes.

4. Visit http://genderqueerid.com or do some Google or Tumblr searches for genderqueer, gay, drag… improvise.

5. Read these two articles about the NEA Defunding Crisis and Gay Performance Art and representation in the 1990s:

     Preaching to the Converted (1995) by Tim Miller & David Roman, Theatre Journal

     Have You Heard the One about the Lesbian Who Goes to the Supreme Court?: Holly Hughes and the Case Against Censorship (2000) by Richard Meyer, Theatre Journal

Gucci-Bags

“Gucci Bag”

Let’s just say it, drag shows are hard to make happen; all those microphones need to actually work, every act needs to have just the right kind of microphone stand for their persona, someone awesome needs to be there to make sure those items and other props get to the right place onstage, and if possible everyone should get along. In the end, these shows are all fabulous and acts tend to include a few key elements (there are quite a few that happen in Minneapolis, see below) ; let’s make an informal list of what they include:

  • Play with representation & the act of becoming,
  • Performed play with sexuality,
  • Play with gender expression and realness, (may it be butch, Femme, or something in between, or poking out either end.)

What these drag shows do not include is lenience in duration. If there are 26 acts, then each of those acts have to deliver and be ready to go out onstage right on time. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not throwing shade (or whatever catch word Buzzfeed wants me to say today) at our beloved (M)imosas.  Let’s be more specific, it was very “Judson” or “post-modern” of (M)imosas to embrace duration and time. Some other PoMo dance choices included that the piece:

  • utilized desyncronisation & competition between disparate acts or elements,
  • dropped theatrical edifice and spectacle for sometimes ‘low’ acts and elements,
  • included agitational experiences and elements which lasted sometimes for long periods of time.

The event clocked in just a few minutes shy of the runtime of Lincoln. I respect the choice to embrace time. The multi-simulacra encrusted, remix embedded, (M)imosa (which, as mentioned in the show, “is also a cheap kind of cheese with a cow with large udders on the label”) was a presentation which schizophrenically embraced elements of Judson-style post-modern, contemporary dance and of Paris is Burning  without much social commentary. Lets face it, I had a great time, but the casual non-commentary was where I was challenged as a viewer.

While I appreciated the formal stylistic investigation and many of the performance treats that I experienced (see the shortlist below), I was surprised and somewhat disappointed that the genderqueer body was invoked lightly during this performance.  My Theater Arts B.A. taught me to evaluate performance based on how it “effectively challenges people to ask questions.” Perhaps as a genderqueer artist in America where political viewpoints are so polarized, I prefer an overtly subversive political agenda in work that invokes the genderqueer body. At the drag shows I see locally, it still is a challenge to be who you are, especially onstage sometimes. Don’t get me wrong now, play is always good, and sure gender expression is invoked lightly very often in subversive, (or not so subversive) drag acts all over the place, and in mainstream culture (Drag Race has been on television for many years, cosplayers are dragging characters at conventions and on their Tumblr feeds, and Lady Gaga had that “bro” persona for a while). But 30 years after Paris is Burning, being transgender, genderqueer, or anything other than a cisgender heteronormative white male or female is still something of a revolutionary daily act.

Consider how earnestly the film was referenced in the title of (M)imosa. I walked into the theater with the expectation that the piece may carry the discursive socio-political responsibility when Drag was inside the “High” frame of the “High Art” theater. However, with so much weight placed on Judson-style choices like duration, a disruptive flattening of spectacular and celebratory acts (mics going out, competition, consistent interruption by another performer), it felt like the genderqueer body, though highly prevalent onstage, seemed less important. Especially because the historical cultural document Paris Is Burning was implicated as a source for this work without directly talking at all about race, class, sex workers, ACT UP, or the AIDS crisis.

In that way (M)imosa seems to overlook that not everyone has been converted to informed liberal members of the contemporary dance in-crowd; or perhaps the in-crowd was their target audience and they didn’t feel they needed to inform. That “preaching to the converted” sensibility lowered the stakes quite a bit for me over time. It reminded me that these personae do not exist on stages or in documented history alone. Genderqueer and non-cisgendered people  are people in the world today. Gender expression is not something that everyone puts on and takes off, as Drag.  We haven’t gotten out of the woods yet people, especially between the coasts, and the presence of the genderqueer body onstage is still an act of defiance against those who would seek to qualify the genderqueer or non-heteronormative as deviant and obscene.

There were temporary sections during the performance when celebration of gender and sexuality seemed like the most important thing (again, see below), and they were some of my favorite moments. I was teased in the final House of Labeija-esque monologue by the recoding of the phrase “the legendary children.” In my read, it was inclusive of the artists onstage turning the gaze upon the audience and specifically the dance “in crowd.”  Though, with so much stage-gazing who did they expect to see in Minneapolis, Steve Paxton?  Perhaps aligning Judson with the Drag Balls was to point towards the current dance scenes impending cultural cliff from cliché to archetype. After all, voguing was appropriated into a mainstream form, it can’t be long before Sarah Michelson contemporary dance moves are incorporated into a new music video for a song by Madonna or Rihanna. Surely then, that Authentic Movement wouldn’t be real like a Gucci bag… remember? “When you go to buy real shit, you need to bring real shit.” At least that’s what I took away from that monologue.

Thoroughly enjoyed the performance, and the thought process that ensued. Thank you!

Appendix A. My Short-List of Keepers:

a. The “no to spectacle” loud sound, solo opening section

b. “You can fuck, but first you must fuck me”

c. The Portugal story

d. The soul song vs. opera number

e. Fantastic day glo-socks

f. The big ballet number

g. “I Love Purple”

h. “Darling Nikki”

i. Kate Bush (though I hear this was stolen from a local performance at “Pegasus”  jk. )

Appendix B. (at top of article)

 

Appendix C.  Local Live Drag Shows, Homegrown Drag somewhere other than at the Gay 90s.

1. Sequin Sundays every week at the Townhouse

2. Dykes Do Drag, Every February, April, June, September, and November at Bryant Lake Bowl

3. Minneapolis Burlesque Festival January 31st  at the Ritz Theater

4. Watch some Eddie Izzard on Netflix.

 

Goodnight.

Elliott Durko Lynch

 

(M)imosa: In the Ballroom, You Can Be Anything You Want

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“What would have happened in 1963, if someone from the voguing dance tradition had come downtown from Harlem to Greenwich Village to perform alongside the early postmoderns?” This is the question at the center of (M)imosa/ Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at the Judson Church, in which choreographers/authors/collaborators Trajal Harrell, Cécilia Bengolea, François Chaignaud, [...]

Photo by Paula Court

“What would have happened in 1963, if someone from the voguing dance tradition had come downtown from Harlem to Greenwich Village to perform alongside the early postmoderns?”

This is the question at the center of (M)imosa/ Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at the Judson Church, in which choreographers/authors/collaborators Trajal Harrell, Cécilia Bengolea, François Chaignaud, and Marlene Monteiro Freitas explore their own identities and what it means to be “real.” This work is part of Harrell’s larger series of seven (presented in sizes XS-XL, Jr., and made-to-measure) investigating the ways in which the vogue scene of Harlem and the postmodernism that developed in the Judson Church intertwine and is being performed during the third weekend of the Walker’s Out There 25, January 24th-26th.

In December, the Walker hosted one of Judson Dance Theater’s founders, Deborah Hay, for what would have been the collective’s 50th anniversary. The theories and practices developed by Hay and her contemporaries have had a lasting and profound impact on the trajectory of contemporary dance ever since the movement began. In (M)imosa and the Twenty Looks series, Harrell, Bengolea, Chaignaud, and Freitas explore the hypothetical space where voguing and postmodern intersect.

What interests me is historical impossibilities and how, through performance, we can rethink history. And we can, in a way, participate in a sort of historical invention, in a certain type of way. So, what’s interesting is these two histories haven’t shared the same value in terms of how they’ve been brought to contemporary dance and the contemporary art world. It’s only now that people have begun to see voguing in a certain type of way, and yet, it had some fundamental, important, theoretical things to bring to the table, that’s what I think is important., but, of course, so did early post-modern dance. And, of course, those things have been absorbed, and continue to be absorbed, into contemporary dance. (Harrell, in interview with Justin Jones 12:20)

The central issue that Twenty Looks, the vogue balls, and the Judson Church similarly explore is the concept of reality/realness and draws inspiration from the 1990 documentary Paris is Burning, by Jennie Livingston. In the Judson school of thought, “realness” meant to strip dance and performance of all theatricality – costumes, lighting, staging, even technical training.  But in voguing, “realness” meant to immerse oneself into their desired reality so fully that the performer’s original self was unidentifiable. Choreographer/author François Chaignaud explains:

This realness, what is interesting, is that it includes all the artificial means that you may need to use.  It’s this realness, Trajal was always opposing it to the authenticity of the Judson Church that was trying to get rid of all the theatrical tricks. While realness, to be real, you may use a lot of makeup, a lot of fake bra, a lot of costumes, a lot of accessories that’s going to make you be real.  So this is this interesting situation where being real is not getting rid of all the cultural elements and all the artifices, but being real is using everything you may use, from hormones to costumes to heels to fake dick to pass as what you want to pass as. (Interview with Jones 27:45)

Listen to Justin Jones’s full interview with Harrell, Bengolea, Chaignaud, and Freitas.

(M)imosa/ Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at the Judson Church runs January 24th-26th.

8-Ball: Choreographer/Author Trajal Harrell

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In the third weekend of Out There 25, choreographers/authors Trajal Harrell, Cécilia Bengolea, François Chaignaud, and Marlene Monteiro Freitas, bring their work (M)imosa to the Walker. It is the medium version of Harrell’s series of seven (sized XS-XL, Jr., and made-to-measure) titled Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at the Judson Church. The series is [...]

mimosa-trajal-harrell_12

In the third weekend of Out There 25, choreographers/authors Trajal Harrell, Cécilia Bengolea, François Chaignaud, and Marlene Monteiro Freitas, bring their work (M)imosa to the Walker. It is the medium version of Harrell’s series of seven (sized XS-XL, Jr., and made-to-measure) titled Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at the Judson Church. The series is based on Paris is Burning, a documentary film on voguing. In preparation for their visit to the Walker, we asked Harrell to take part in our 8-Ball series, in which artists answer questions about some of life’s most (and possibly least) pressing issues:

What global issue most excites or angers you?
Domestic violence

What’s one of your guilty pleasures? 
Gossip Girl

How do you like to unwind/relax?
Watch tennis

Whom would you like to spend three hours in an elevator with?
Serena Williams

What is your favorite euphemism?
Werk, bitch!

If you could have any job/career, what would you choose?
Foundation officer of foundation with a billion-dollar endowment

What’s your favorite comfort food?
Fried fish and collard greens

When did you realize you wanted to be an artist?
Yesterday

(M)imosa/ Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at the Judson Church runs January 24-26, 2013.

Fully Awake: Olive Bieringa on Deborah Hay

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To spark discussion, the Walker invites local artists and critics to write overnight reviews of our performances. The ongoing Re:View series shares a diverse array of independent voices and opinions; it doesn’t reflect the views or opinions of the Walker or its curators. Today, Olive Bieringa shares her perspective on Friday night’s performance of Fire and  No [...]

Deborah Hay, No Time to Fly, 2012

To spark discussion, the Walker invites local artists and critics to write overnight reviews of our performances. The ongoing Re:View series shares a diverse array of independent voices and opinions; it doesn’t reflect the views or opinions of the Walker or its curators. Today, Olive Bieringa shares her perspective on Friday night’s performance of Fire and  No Time to Fly by Deborah Hay and Saturday’s As Holy Sites Go/duet. Agree or disagree? Feel free to share your thoughts in comments!

“The waiting might continue, and you feel like you’re failing and yet there’s no spite or malice, it’s done out of love and a striving for some kind of authenticity.”
—Michèle Steinwald on Deborah Hay

No Time to Fly
Performed by Jeanine Durning

She enters through the side exit just as the last audience members are getting settled.

Dressed in a sequined jacket, black shorts, leotard, and black shoes. She has a wireless microphone. No hat.

The stage is open, with a flat cyclorama across the back of the space lit in low blue light. Lighting booms stand on the edges where the wings would end except there are none, creating a smaller space within the stage.

She begins by activating the whole space, visiting locations, she moves across the space, she serenades a boom, she stands by the screen half obscured by the side lighting, she comes directly downstage to us, a little soft shoe tap, she stands in the dark corner. Her barely audible murmurings have us lean in and listen with our whole bodies.

She sings a melody, swinging her arms contracting collapsing through the front of her body then snaps an erect spine, sits bones and skull reaching. Intentionally awkward transitions in and out of the floor. She is thinking her way through every shifting position. One moment she is leaning forward over her legs. Her arms held wide, hands like paint brushes tapping the floor.

An aria has begun again, she is singing it, do we know it, is it just made up for this moment? There is no other music or sound in the space. Rhythm of arms and legs in different time zones, rhythms evolving show show show time.

The breath, the effort, the murmuring we hear it.

Up against the back wall in the other corner of the space … sliding down, down, down, hand indicating and urging the pelvis in to the inevitable splits.

Her hand wipes her brow.

We wait.

She moves through the space, attacking it with her arms, feeling the solidity of her legs, the squeak of the shoes.

There are lots of gestures.

Dance references, jazz ballet, tap dancing, that hop skip–or is that a skip hop that I remember from watching Deborah dance this same solo in 2010 at St. Mark’s Church? What is transmitted through the scoring process that so many have danced that is similar? What is the directorial process for this particular evening?

I can feel the multiple layers of attention being held in the whole body of the performer. The timing is everything. The complexity holds us. The audience is so focused. A series of interruptions lead to elegant descents into awkward positions on the floor. Balanced on knees, head and back of hands. She begins speaking gibberish in a deep foreign tongue. Like a member of the Japanese mafia out in the alley or talking on a far away TV screen. More aria, this time almost falsetto, again corrupted into a descent and awkward stillness on the floor.

What’s the motor in her movement? Obviously the scoring of complex images. But what else? The song? The words? One limb cycling to rev up the core and move her across the space like a ship through the water?

She comes downstage to soft shoe again and declare, “Strictly speaking, I believe I have never been anywhere”–a quote from Beckett–and immediately begins humming a melody while her head is dropped and hands are half inserted in her pockets.

She travels behind the screen making a loud repeating sound with her mouth and tongue into the microphone and then comes out hop slide, delicate toe walking, arms wide to present herself to us her audience. And then there is something indicated on her head by her two hands, like a Javanese court dancer, the roof of a temple? More loud interruptions into slow descents and stillness, another interrupted melody now face down on the floor murmuring.

We come out as we entered yet changed.

She is murmuring in standing with back turned, talking to spirits we cannot see.

She fakes an exit.

Lights leaving dancer in silhouette in the middle of the stage.

The subtle shifting lighting designed by Jennifer Tipton through is extraordinary.

Fire
Performed by Ros Warby

She appears in a spotlight in a bold white leotard, white headband, black shoes and wireless microphone. Long limbs extended and then the movement begins. Fast limbs releasing, pelvis bounces, head bobs, sounds through the microphone, a Foley of her own body’s movements, knees out, plié, butt clasps, neck held tight, brain escaping.

Directly to us “who are you? Where are you from?

She holds a an invisible box between her hands, the bottom hand drops out.

“What do you want?”

FIRE!”

A lot of marked songs, as if she was singing along with headphones, half remembered, half forgotten, fully improvised, fully embodied including guitar solos. Through the complexity of this embarrassing score we can see her, her timing, her humor, her physical skill, her commitment.

Abrupt cut as she walks toward the audience.

The limbs are a lot to manage. The awkward plié, maybe it’s the super awareness inside of the action that heightens the dance “moves” making the human into an odd animal. The recognizable dance vocabulary arrives and dissolves from unknowing locales. Cunningham arrives. Ros pitches and arabesques and balances.

So curious if the dancers intentionally forgot the score for a moment and let themselves ride. Would we feel let down? Abandoned? Would it be delicious counter to all this nervous system attention, just for a moment?

The audience is absolutely silent.

Facing backwards she begins an extreme lean to the left, reaching with her elbows to the ceiling as she extends upward. A wordless version of “You Are My Sunshine” becomes audible. And then she turns back to us: “Who are you? Where are you from? What do you want?” Again her sounds illustrate her movement, like the sound track for a martial arts movie, and then we are with the corp de ballet. Just for a moment. Arms crossed, elbows delicately reaching skyward as hands rest on the front of her shoulders. We wait. Her mouth becomes a mud pool. Hands illustrating her sounds. Bubbling and gently grotesque. And then she is jogging almost in place but slowing gliding across the floor, looking at the world, its different landscape features, as she travels through it. It shifts our location and the scale of the world we inhabit with her. CUT.

“Hon, I want you to wake up and look at the stars. There really beautiful tonight.”

A moment passes.

“Oh hon, I’m so glad you got up. Are you ready to come look at the stars?”

Repeat.

Her head is lowered her hands exposed and suddenly she’s peering through a telescope and then it’s gone.

“A heavy oval stone with a fine white oval shape lining the rock cradled in a red boat leaving shore” and she pushes off into the waters and departs upstage.
…

Because of the nature of Deborah’s scoring we taken on a surprising journey, it could go anywhere as long as it’s well performed.

As an audience we are super engaged trying to figure out the inner logic. What is driving this activity on stage? It is inspired and deeply considered work.

The complexity of the scoring leads to an intensity of presence, sometimes a marking or gestural quality in the movement, a fully awake nervous system. So much is being processed that sometimes the movement or the image only needs to be indicated, it shimmers before us, sometimes clear, sometimes only hinted at before the performer is pursuing something else. What is important is the “how” not the “what.” All perceptual systems fully engaged.

As Holy Sites Go/duet

In the program notes its says this work was originally a trio based on the solo No Time to Fly. This duet version was performed for the second time on Saturday night at the Walker.  Having watched No Time to Fly the night before it was kind of like watching an expanded rerun.

Again the performers enter just as the audience is getting settled. The stage is bare except for the lighting booms on each side and a cyclorama across the back of the space. Jeanine wears shorts, black top, and her shiny shoes. Ros, all in black; pants, black top with a very short ruffle cardigan. Both with wireless microphones.

Jeanine begins activating the space as she had the night before, visiting the cyclorama in the back of the space, the unlit edges of the space. It was exciting to have one performer begin and not know when the next would start. One waiting and watching as the other moved through the space. This occurred several times throughout the piece.

We hear the singing but now it’s two voices instead of one. Challenging to improvise a song and develop one’s own melody when someone else is doing the same thing next to you. Sharing sound space is not the same as sharing physical space. The singing becomes entangled. What does the duplication bring us?

The dancers circle the space coming together upstage or downstage. They start up a rhythm, keep it going, chase it, evolve it, be it, drop it.  A vague obtuse musicality manifests. The effort of keeping something going … sometimes it’s easy and sometimes it’s, well, effortful, and sometimes it’s so slippery it changes before you ever knew what it really was. The repetition begins shifting the humans into animals.

They are never directly social with one another, even when they came close, but highly aware of each other’s every moment, every breath, every sound. They stand side by side like a deconstructed party without music. They are more direct with us than each other. What if the formality of the relationship fell apart? What if the audience was no longer the front?

They stand far apart. They scan the space looking at different features of the unseen landscape. They make something out of nothing over and over again. We scan back and forward from one to the other like at a tennis match.

Their side-by-side angular descents into the floor were like two mating insects working the negative space. At one point Ros crosses below the horizon of her forearm with her gaze. Time shifts as she moves from above to below. Sometimes they descend, accompanied by quiet murmuring invoking other beings in the space. It was always a mystery where they ended up on the floor in relationship to one another, and how they would find from the waiting, the initiation back into ascending, to their more common uprightness.

One moment they both arrive miraculously downstage in unison pointing upward to quote Beckett again–“Strictly speaking I believe I’ve never been anywhere”–before the discontinuity cuts the action and our world is altered yet again. We are chasing rabbits just for the pleasure of it.

At the very end they stand turn to each other for the first time, settle, and then turn to us.

Fade to black.

It was interesting to notice how familiar I became with the vocabulary of the piece from seeing the solo the night before and then seeing the duet. In retrospect for me the solo was stronger. I was less interested in the loose symmetricality that occurred throughout the duet. I was curious about other spatial configurations. I am drawn to awkwardness and imbalance. I would be curious to see a trio version but imagining what it would look like is also fun.

Ros’s performance of Fire on Friday night was so strong and her range so dynamic that I was more excited about that earlier work than the detached cool of this later duet.

The question of performativity in Deborah’s work is an interesting one. I have seen several versions of people performing her solo commissioning project. For example last year I had pleasure of seeing Karen Schaffman perform Fire and Eric Geiger performing Art and Life at the Bryant Lake Bowl. Her earlier works were mostly created and performed on community dancers. About ten years ago she began working with rock stars of the dance community, and all of sudden everyone started noticing her work. Lots of formal recognition ensued with awards, funding, touring opportunities. The truth is the work was always good, and this weekend at the Walker, with veteran performers Ros Warby and Jeanine Durning, was no exception. The work is especially good from the inside. I say that from having danced in her group work titled Lamb, lamb, lamb in 1994 at Danspace, New York.

I missed seeing Deborah on stage!

I’m curious now that her rock star phase is over where she will go next.

She pursues a quietly radical path.

 

Unfolding Still: A SpeakEasy for Deborah Hay

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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 [...]

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

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