Performing Arts

If anyone wants to discuss Reggie Wilson and Andréya Ouamba’s The Good Dance: Dakar/Brooklyn, I think I’ll start things off with a question:

What do you go to dance for—and to what extent did this dance give you that?

And I’ll give a partial answer. One of the things I go to dance for is kinesthetic pleasure—the feeling of the imagined body, the mental map of the body, moving along with the performers on stage. You’d think after five years of being a dance critic, not to mention twenty-five years of dancing, my system would be jaded, responsive only to the most unusual or extreme movements. But as far as I can tell, the kinesthetic sense doesn’t work like that. It’s one of the basic, inexhaustible pleasures of life, like sex or eating. Any time I see an arm reaching to the sky, urge spreading out through the ribcage, I feel the same thrill. Even the minute, waving permutations of a hand are magic.

The Good Dance definitely gave me that—all those sweeps and reaches, plus tiny engines of fine-grained coordination. But the pleasure wasn’t unadulterated. Wilson and Ouamba intentionally (I believe) cut through that pleasure in order to find another aspect of the dance.

I’ll stop there. But what other aspects were you looking for? And what did you find?

Where to begin with the sublime Good Dance?

Before the performance began, I was comparing the stage to that of another Walker dance performance this season, Bolero Variations. Whereas the stage for Raimund Hoghe was more mysterious, undefined, and open, the stage for The Good Dance is something circumscribed, bare, and exposed. There are no curtains to hide behind like there were in Bolero. But The Good Dance is free from the heavy movements of Bolero, and it exists in a state of play with none of Bolero’s austerity.

Red lights and industrial beats open the show, and the music turns out to be a remix of “Mary, Don’t You Weep” the most jaw-dropping of the tracks on Aretha Franklin’s 1972 live album, Amazing Grace. The track is the most exceptional example I know of both the genre and improvisational genius found in gospel music—the gospel song to send to space—and The Good Dance moves within these rituals and improvisations. The music in Good Dance is so strong, so emotive, from the trance of R.L. Burnside-like blues to the guitar wizardry of Congolese musician Franco.

The Good Dance shifts into a state of play, with disposable water bottles half-empty/half-full kicked and thrown all over the stage. As the bottles are assembled, bowled over, and reassembled on the stage, they create the boundaries within which the dancers move. Since disposable water bottles seem to signify a disconnect from the natural world as much as being a vessel for the life-giving substance of water, it’s tempting to see the dancers moving between this dichotomy throughout the performance. And the water bottles seem to signify many non-literal things as well.

Reggie Wilson asks us to think about what a Good Dance would be in light of the many adherents to the “Good Book”(s). Evoking both the pleasure and pain of rituals, The Good Dance confronts us with the sacrifices necessary for transcendence. It also shows us that it’s only the performer—not the audience member—who can be the most passionate spectator, to both watch and be watched, and it is only the performer who is free to both move and be moved.

The Good Dance is a seduction, the performances of marionettes who are stringless for the first time. Ouamba himself is a tour-de-force. Two nights left; go see The Good Dance.

Jesse Leaneagh is a Performing Arts Intern for the 2009-2010 season

(on behalf of Emily Hanson)

The Red Detachment of Women: Art in the Throes of Change

“One of the most powerful and moving ballets from the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Instead of weak, fragile women dressed in fluttery tutus, women were depicted in military uniforms with rifles. Instead of frail motions, women had strong arms and clenched fists. This play shook the entire foundation of bourgeois art.”
—China Daily

Ballet as a medium is restricting and unified, expressive and without limits. These seemingly opposite parallels in the world of dance are not only what makes the art form so beautifully of its own, but what so closely ties it to China, to the recently celebrated 60th anniversary of the Peoples Republic of China.
In an examination of cultural forms—in this circumstance, dance—there is a divine parallel between the nature of the form and the actual artistic piece presented. A desire for escape exists—of leaving the present time to be immersed with the life of the art. The potential catch-22 is the depth of the medium and the cultural/political undertones of these stories.

The story of The Red Detachment of Women, for example, takes place during China’s ten-year Civil War and is about one woman’s trials and tribulations to become the Commissar of the Red Detachment of Women. The end of the play is marked by a vow: “Forward, forward! Under the banner of Mao Zedong, forward to victory!”

Quite clearly there is cultural resonance in The Red Detachment of Women—whether a critique or celebration of history. The Red Detachment of Women was one of “eight” model works permitted during the Cultural Revolution. These stories, ranging from plays to films to operas to ballet performances, have striking political overtones of the time but remain popular today. The resonance a repertoire dance or operatic piece can have is really quite astounding. Consider works like Swan Lake and Don Quixote that have been performed numerous times but remain as cultural milestones in the genre. Red Detachment, in the midst of the Cultural Revolution of China, has morphed into a momentous work, renowned not only for the art of the ballet itself but for its component of history.

Within the collection of dance pieces the National Ballet of China performs, cultural milieus run rampant. The dancers embody not only a timeframe but history, ancestry—the life worked towards and away from—in their profession that in many cases moved the dancers from their families. The parallels between the regimented training of the dancers in contrast to, say, military training, do not go unnoticed. Coincidentally enough, the original dancers from The Red Detachment actually lived in military camps to learn swordplay to vividly portray the soldiers on stage.

In September of 1964, the National Ballet of China premiered The Red Detachment of Women, which would go on to become the first and most successful full-length Chinese ballet. Two versions of the story were filmed—a film in 1961 on which the ballet was based, and the other in 1972 of the production of the National Ballet of China. This Sunday at 3 pm, the Walker will be screening the 1972 filmed ballet as a part of the People’s Republic of Cinema: 60 Years of China on Film. The 1961 film will be screened Monday, November 9th at 6 pm at the University of Minnesota’s Bell Museum Auditorium.

Just went last night. Beautiful.
During the first scene, I have to admit, my mind wandered a little. But I was completely drawn in by the second scene, and this lasted through the end of the show. I think mostly this was me getting used to the style (also, partly, the fact that the first scene is the busiest and least clear). So if you’re going tonight, give your eyes some time to adjust. Oh, and read the program notes, so you know the story.
Dhvee culminates in a battle between good and evil, between Rama and Ravana. Normally we try not to see things in such black-and-white terms, but there’s an undeniable compulsion about that struggle. Rama and his brother Lakshmana (Ashwini Ramaswamy and Amanda Dlouhy) looked like embodiments of rightness from their forthright faces to their open gestures, from their clear steps to their white costumes. Ravana (Tamara Nadel, I Gusti Ngurah Serama Semadi, and others–hey, he has 10 heads) was the opposite, with his stamping, his crimped fingers, and his awful echoing laugh. Even though I knew who would win, I felt in suspense–on the edge of my seat, even.
I loved that the ending took us back to the beginning–it left the story, for me, in an eternal present tense.
If anyone wants to follow up with discussion, here are some ideas:
• the dance/theatrical form here (perhaps considering how it broadens our ideas of dance)
• the story–why is the battle of good and evil such a compelling story for us, even now?
• cross-cultural comprehension (or lack thereof)

Check out Jay Gabler’s review in the TC Daily Planet.
Gabler comments on the difficulty of getting the full content and implications of the Ramayana from a brief summary. Right. . . I slogged through the Wikipedia entry without much success understanding the higher planes of the narrative. I can just add one element of clarity: embodiment is important in the narrative (and in the culture–I think that’s fair to say). So the doubled characters of Dhvee are in play with the story itself. . .
Gabler says something interesting about the classical tradition:

Both the challenge and the appeal of any classical tradition—think Western classical music, or classical ballet—lie in its practitioners’ commitment to enacting (at its best) profound expression within a strictly circumscribed vocabulary.

This is true–but I want to add a little to it–which is that the language of a classical form makes up a world. Ideally you cross into that world at some point; you cease to see the vocabulary itself.

I’m looking forward to Ragamala this weekend. Think of Dhvee as an immersion in sound, color, dance, acting, story, etc–the multifaceted performance arts of south Asia.
I was lucky enough to be at rehearsal on one of the first days when Ragamala (Mpls) joined forces with Cudamani (Bali). Translation, improvisation, everyone excited by everyone else’s art, and the gamelan crowded into the corner–if you’ve never heard one, you really have to. It’s an orchestra in itself.

Last night I saw Bolero Variations by Raimund Hoghe.  It was surprising and personal and grateful.  I entered the performance not knowing what to expect but with hopes for something unique and special.  What unraveled in the next two hours was unexpectedly stunning – extremely detailed simple often slow repeated movements would suddenly subvert my expectations and make me gasp.  It was like Hoghe and his dancers drew out a continuous line that started before I came into the theater, periodically splintered off into me, then followed them off stage.  This line probably has something to do with Hoghe’s artistic integrity – the piece was artistically “unified, unimpaired, and sound in construction” to quote the dictionary definition of integrity.

This morning, I can’t pin down the meaning of the piece but I know that in a year when I think back on it will mean something very important.  Important to me as an artist, more importantly to meas a person.  It’s not a performance to forget.

Leading up to the show a number of people have asked me what a dramaturge is.  It is a flexible term generally referring to the individual in the theatrical creative process who does research into the history and context of a piece, often with an eye on interconnected themes and overarching quality of the production.  It’s clear to me now that Raimund Hoghe is a choreographer who privileges overarching quality and interconnected meaning in his dance.   He values the ritual of the moving body, “Dance is not to be wasted for it is a rare and precious gift.”

When you see it (and if you can please do) enjoy the themes.  I couple of things I watched throughout the piece:

• Black on Black and White on Black and Colors in Black
• Folds in fabric and bodies
• Isolated personal journeys
• Circles and cycles
• Appearing and disappearing

The piece was also unexpectedly political.  You’ll understand why if you see it.

Raimund Hoghe and his company have arrived in Minneapolis and are working with the Walker’s Events and Media Production department to set the stage for their premiere of Boléro Variations this Friday. If you missed Philip Bither’s eloquent and impassioned comments about Hoghe at last week’s performing arts season preview, you might turn to Bither’s colleague, Walter Jaffe, a co-founder of White Bird Dance in Portland, OR, who interviewed Hoghe recently in conjunction with the U.S. premiere of Boléro Variations at Portland’s TBA (Time-Based Art) Festival.

Hoghe and Jaffe cover an array of topics, including Hoghe’s admiration for ice-dancers Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean (whose Olympics performance to Ravel’s Boléro was a key inspiration for Hoghe), and the ways in which great singers are also great dancers (he mentions Callas and Piaf and Peggy Lee, among others). About his process, Hoghe says, “I’m fascinated when I feel that a little movement can tell a big story. If I could express it with words I would do it but I can’t—and therefore I do my work with dancers. Otherwise I still would work as a writer.” Read the full interview here.

Speaking of Hoghe’s work as a writer, well before he created his first dance pieces, Hoghe had developed a journalism career that included celebrity profiles for the German weekly Die Zeit as well as pieces on avant-garde or “fringe” artists—including Ana Mendieta, whose rarely seen films screened here last March. Bringing things full circle, it turns out that Walker director Olga Viso—curator of the retrospective Ana Mendieta: Earth Body, Sculpture and Performance 1972—85, author of the recently published scholarly tome Unseen Mendieta—is an admirer of Hogue’s writing and referenced it in organizing the Mendieta exhibition. No doubt she will be in the audience this weekend, perhaps looking for parallels between the Hoghe’s choreography and Mendieta’s performance pieces, both of which have strong links to ritual.

On September 18th and 19th  the Walker kicks off its performing arts season with something special: the opportunity to experience a direct line to the origins of Tanztheater (Dance Theater) in choreographer Raimund Hoghe.

A few things that peak my interest in Bolero Variations:

• Hoghe was Pina Bausch’s dramaturge in the 1980’s when she became arguably the most influencial choreographer in Europe, maybe the world.
• Dramaturgy is at the heart of his choreography.  He says he finishes dramaturgy then rehearses once or twice before performing. (The closest local comparison might be MadKingThomas).  What is dance dramaturgy?
• Hoghe’s irregular dance body (hump and rickets) AND this quote “His intelligence is more disturbing than his ugliness.” - Tiago Costa.
• Hoghe’s work is entertaining for a three year old.
• His dancers are also: a jock, not at all a jock, a martial artist, and a doctor.
• Finally, in everything I have read Hoghe appears appreciative, inquisitive, and humble.

Also, this work in the McGuire seems perfect: a very formal space where the audience can get close to the performers.  Personally I’ll be in the front row trying to get on top of a work described as minimalist, ritualized, expressive, precise, intelligent, fascinating, repulsive, boring, inspiring and always extraordinarily dramaturged.

Check out these Hoghe links:

An Interview

Some Background

His Site

Over the past few days, several staff have been writing on their memories of Merce: Julie Voigt, Senior Program Officer for Performing Arts, recalls working with him here at the Walker, while Phillip Bahar, our Chief of Operations and Administration, tells how watching Merce’s performances over the years totally changed the way he thinks about dance. Finally, watch for a tribute by Philip Bither, McGuire senior curator of performing arts, in the upcoming issue of Walker magazine (out in mid-August).

Julie Voigt writes:

I am one of the lucky ones to have had the extraordinary pleasure of working with Merce and his company over the years. I will never forget his grace, generosity, and strong yet quietly humble presence. I have many fond memories of Merce, but my favorites ones are of some of those unusual small moments that engaged my artistic imagination and gave me a glimpse into this man’s spirit.

There was Fluxarenarama in 1993, where we turned a downtown health club into a performance site to wander through and experience chance performance. The Merce Cunningham Dance Company (MCDC) took on the challenge of performing in the workout area, with their final dance presented on the basketball court.
There was that moment of joy on Merce’s face when he and his company first walked through Art Performs Life: Merce Cunningham/Meredith Monk/Bill T. Jones, a Walker exhibition that recognized the critical contribution he and the other artists made to the history of 20th-century performance.
There was also the 10^th anniversary of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden in 1998, when MCDC performed a special Event for the Garden on an unusually hot fall day. The company’s shoes were literally melting onto the scorching dance floor, but they continued to dance beautifully across the stage as Merce proudly and calmly looked on.

But my fondest memory was this past September, when we produced Ocean in the Rainbow granite quarry in Waite Park, Minnesota. This site-specific production was by far the largest and most complex performance that any of us have ever done. Not an easy task to take a completely empty rock quarry and turn it into an outdoor performance site for 1000+ people each night. After months of hard work turning this seemingly crazy idea into reality, on the last few days it poured rain on many of the afternoons. All of us were on the edge of our seats, hoping it would stop in time for us to do the performances.

Luckily it did – until the final night, when, toward the end of the performance rain began to fall hard and we had to make the unfortunate call to stop the event. We were all feeling frustrated and very disappointed that the final night was cut short. But Merce just smiled and said to me – in an almost consoling way – that he actually embraced the uniqueness of that evening’s performance and that is was just Mother Nature stepping in to change the ending for him – a chance encounter with forces over and above us all that made that final artistic call.
I loved that moment. Merce told us that this performance experience was one of the highlights of his career. It was one of my personal highlights as well and I’m so very glad to have been a part of it.

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“A Dancer Breathes”

Merce Cunningham once said that as long as he was breathing he was dancing. I’ve always thought that this was a remarkable way to live in and experience the world. Of course, the dance and cultural community all mourn the loss of Merce, one of the great choreographers of the last hundred years. Merce reshaped modern and contemporary dance: how it was created, how it looked, how it was experienced. He re-envisioned with some of his closest peers—Cage, Rauschenberg, and Johns to name some of his closest associates—how movement, music, light, and décor could come together to create something wholly new, intentionally unintended, and something that allowed each of the art forms to breathe at its own pace within a larger, more complex organism.

My first experience with Merce was through art history — you can’t take a post-war art course without coming across his innovations, often through the lens of his visual arts peers. However, my first true understanding of his work came a few years later. As a new transplant to New York, I found myself with nothing to do on a Friday night. I came across an announcement for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company season at City Center; out of curiosity I attended. I sat in rapt absorption through the entire show; I had always enjoyed dance, but until that moment I had never experienced it in such a visceral and engaging manner. I returned on Saturday. I returned on Sunday. In those three nights, Merce Cunningham changed my understanding, appreciation, and passion for dance, opening me to a vocabulary about which I was uninformed and which I breathed in wholeheartedly ever since.
While living in New York I never missed a season. From that first performance on, if Merce was in town, wherever I happened to be visiting or living, I was there. I can unequivocally say that I’ve seen more performances by Merce Cunningham (well over a dozen) than by any other single performing artist, and over the past few days I’ve been wrestling with what life will be like now that he’s gone. For nearly 20 years I’ve looked forward to my next experience of the athleticism and magic of his work. I never knew what to expect and relished the anticipation. Would the music be ethereal or intense? Would it be Cage, Tudor, Kosugi, Eno, Bryars, or someone fully unexpected? How would he make his own appearance (I remember the first time I saw his “chair dance,” and also the first time I realized that he would no longer be performing in that way)?

I once had the privilege of sitting at the back of an empty theater, watching him conduct class with his dancers — he was at the barre making subtle movements and directing the dancers, who understood implicitly what he was searching for and more often than not delivered it as intended. (The Company began a series called “Mondays with Merce,” which provided enthusiasts and dancers alike an opportunity to see inside his classes and gain insights into his thinking and working process; they are well worth a look.)

A force of contemporary art and performance has left us and all that’s left for us to do is breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

– Phillip Bahar

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More coverage of Merce:

• We just uploaded “Merce Cunningham’s Working Process” on the Walker Channel and on YouTube
• The New Yorker has a dance reviews going back to 1976 on its site, including one on the performance of Ocean, which the Walker presented this past year
• The Cunningham Dance Foundation’s Legacy Plan — the Foundation had only recently established “a precedent-setting plan delineating the future of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (MCDC) and ensuring the legacy of Cunningham’s work”
• Interview with Village Voice dance critic Deborah Jowitt