Performing Arts

A post show discussion on gchat between Kate Strathmann and Galen Treuer about Heaven. Coffee and a baguette were consumed.

• 10:48 AM kate: Good morning Galen
• galen: Good morning Kate
• 10:49 AM Let me begin by sharing something with you. It is from 1986 and comes up when you search Lo-Fi Dance.

• 10:50 AM kate: This is Japanese.
• and kind of amazing.
• galen: Note the lights.
• 10:51 AM kate: yeah, kind of like some of the lights in Heaven
• galen: The 80’s lights that popped up towards the end?
• kate: and now we can use the title “when slowcore meets lo-fi”
• maybe we’re getting ahead of ourselves?
• galen: Yes we can. Heaven: when slowcore meets lo-fi
• 10:53 AM kate: I’m not really sure where to begin. I should say that I saw this piece in January at PS 122 in NYC.
• and you should probably explain Lo-Fi choreography.
• 10:54 AM galen: Or we could begin with when we first heard about this piece, what 2 years ago?
• People after the show were talking about how long this piece has been rumbling around in the Twin Cities dance communities consciousness.
• 10:55 AM kate: A long time; I think it’s great…there aren’t many opportunities for long rumination.
• galen: There aren’t, but it is also a struggle to do the planning, stay focused, and produce the show.
• 10:56 AM I felt that with My Father’s Bookshelf and that process was just over a year.
• kate: however- since I saw the piece in January, it got better.
• galen: A benefit of touring. I’m very excited for Morgan and crew to have multiple opportunities with this piece. Dance benefits from repetition (often not always)
• 10:58 AM kate: I agree. And also with the Dance and Music collaboration- this is definitely one of the most successful examples I have ever seen…and I can’t imagine that success given a short development period.
• but tell me more about LoFi choreography
• 11:01 AM galen: LoFi Choreography – a style of movement vocabulary employed by some contemporary choreographers notable for its pedestrian derivation, specificity of movement, and technical approach that refuses to be pretty and polished.
• There is a serious LoFi choreo crew in the Twin Cities.
• kate: and I think allowing for a breadth of dancer-types and movement.
• galen: Yes.
• 11:02 AM kate: One of the things I loved about Heaven was the number of different kinds of dancers, bodies, the gender ambiguity- and the duos
• 11:03 AM galen: It also seems to come with a focus on conceptual processes to function in the same space – something present in Heaven as well as the many bodies/genders/hair cuts.
• 11:04 AM kate: Fresh cuts!
• galen: Fresh and Clean!
• 11:05 AM kate: (is part of LoFi dance that we always end up talking about the hair?)
• (is that a Twin Cities thing?)
• galen: (Yes! or No!)
• (It’s a specificity of design thing!)
• 11:06 AM Hair is political
• kate: yes- and there was a lot of gender ambiguity in this piece
• and you know how society uses hair all the time to denote gender
• galen: Chris Schlichting’s hair was very short and conservative.
• 11:07 AM kate: except that he kind of had hipster bangs or something…
• galen: Elliott’s was amazing. I watched it a lot. I know others who did too.
• 11:08 AM kate: There was that gorgeous moment when Elliott Durko Lynch and Karen Sherman hit the back wall, and Elliott’s hair splayed out on the wall. I loved that.
• 11:09 AM galen: I loved the back wall. I was surprised by how hard it was. It looked soft and then BANG.
• 11:10 AM There was a very definite sense of a White Box.
• kate: the ripples were really striking though.
• but not a solid box- there was a lot of movement and fluidity I felt.
• 11:11 AM galen: Yes it was fluid but viscous.
• kate: viscous?
• 11:12 AM galen: It kind of flowed over me.
• kate: the whole piece?
• or the set?
• galen: The aesthetic definitely.
• 11:13 AM But it was also contained. It flowed but was in the space of the stage. I was an observer, a voyeur even.
• I felt this voyeurism that I’ve felt in churches as a non-believer.
• 11:14 AM kate: I was sitting in the first few rows, and felt really immersed at moments- it felt more intimate to me. But I agree with what you’re saying about churches and outsiders. Like you’re watching all this ritual and belief, but it’s a bit opaque.
• But then I think the music is really significant.
• 11:15 AM because often I have had the experience where music brings me in, moves me, breaks down the voyeur wall when I feel like an outsider
• 11:16 AM And when Allan first was singing in the “Bandage section” I got shivers.
• galen: I was sitting further back (row M) and felt outside and living in judgement. But the music pulled me in.
• kate: I mean the “Inside your body” singing part.
• 11:17 AM galen: Before that section when they all faced us singing and lowering their arms I was totally IN. It was a ritual that addressed me directly.
• I could have sat in that silence for 10 mintues.
• 11:20 AM kate: I think for me that shifted the piece- where I started to really have an emotional reaction. I felt very emotional both times I’ve seen it in the end- which also surprised me because it felt sort of distant in the beginning.
• galen: You saw in at PS122 in January?
• 11:21 AM kate: Yes.
• And they didn’t have the full-on white set
• and that space is really small and intimate
• galen: I’d like to have seen it in a more intimate space, but the full on set seemed essential to me.
• 11:22 AM It reinforced the costumes and the lighting – shades of white with texture (except the 80’s lights that popped up for a few minutes).
• kate: I agree. I’m interested though: I’ve seen it really close-up both times, and it felt intimate to me…but I don’t feel like I got the “big picture” that you might have experienced.
• I really didn’t like those eighties lights.
• 11:23 AM I found them jarring.
• and they pulled me out of the piece
• galen: I really liked them at first then started thinking of this light show I saw at Sea World when I was 8.
• kate: Exactly- pulled you away
• galen: So I agree.
• But Big Picture.
• 11:24 AM I enjoyed my focus during the piece. I felt present with it for the most part. The clarity of the scenes was exquisite.
• 11:25 AM During some of the transitions I would drop out though.
• 11:26 AM kate: And the detail- there was exquisite detail…in the sounds, the set, the costumes. I loved that Mimi Parker did needle point for part of the piece.
• galen: I loved the detail – including the felt invitation cards Morgan handed out for the show.
• 11:27 AM Little white felt business cards with “heaven” embroidered on them.
• kate: I’m going to keep mine.
• in a memory box.
• galen: Who are you Joseph Cornell?
• 11:28 AM me: Anyway…
• galen: (maybe we should cut that exchange)
• kate: What about the movement and the dancers?
• 11:29 AM galen: Well the movement was LoFi, really seemed to typify. It felt familiar but different from what I am used to from Ms. Thorson.
• A little more contained.
• Less virtuosity.
• The pairing were very interesting.
• 11:30 AM kate: I loved watching both Max and Justin together, and then Karen and Elliott together.
• 11:31 AM galen: Yes I agree. I also liked the solos that were created for Hannah and Elliott (when he sang into the light).
• kate: (I loved that solo)
• galen: The constant pairing allowed the solos to pop out – isolation in a group.
• kate: But I think the juxtopositions really made me pay attention to bodies
• Corporeality
• 11:32 AM So much of this piece is about ethereal concepts…intangibles.
• but the pairings and much of the movement felt earthbound.
• galen: Last night after the show, someone talked to me about how Morgan’s movement is extreme in its sensuality.
• 11:33 AM The pairs led me to compare bodies.
• kate: Karen has so much tightly wound energy- and Elliott seems so sensual
• I had a lot of thoughts about passion, and containing passion
• 11:34 AM galen: Elliott looked a little wild at times.
• Like making out?
• Physical passion?
• Religious passion?
• 11:36 AM kate: well both- I think a lot of religious structures are about containing and directing passion…and there are a lot of religions that take passion and channel it into moments of religious ecstasy- speaking in tongues, or whirling dervishes, etc…
• Jessica had a solo at the end that seemed to be about ecstasy and losing oneself in a fervor.
• 11:39 AM galen: Yes. I saw that. Hannah’s twitching brought me there too.
• kate: Oh! now you have to go to rehearsal and I have to go to yoga…but there’s so much to say.  So we’ll have to chat more later…there’s so much, this is good- having too much to talk about art.

Yes! Low is performing here tonight through Saturday evening.

Alan Sparhawk in Heaven. Photo by Cameron Wittig courtesy of the Walker Art Center

P.S. it’s a dance piece.

Choreographer Morgan Thorson has enlisted Duluth-based Low both to dance in the Walker-commissioned Heaven and also perform their music live. How will they transition between these roles?

Alan Sparhawk of Low said in a recent Star Tribune article regarding Heaven that “We’ve put a lot of work into it — probably as much as we have any of our albums.” We await Heaven’s soundscapes with much anticipation.

Thorson has said in recent interviews that Heaven is an exploration of the idea of perfection, of how that idea binds our expectations and even our physical bodies. Bandages are involved.

Walker Photographer Cameron Wittig took these great photos at a Heaven dress rehearsal this week.

Heaven is sure to engage with our expectations of movement and dance-based performance. On MPR Thorson said “I think people come to dance and they want to see the triple back flip, and that’s not what this piece is about.”

And after seeing these photos, thank goodness.

There are many ways to engage with Heaven before (or after) the show. Saturday night there will be a post-show discussion for audience members, which we are calling SpeakEasy. This post-performance discussion will be initiated by Walker tour guide and performer Jessica Fiala and also local choreographer and performer Kristin Van Loon. We had a SpeakEasy after Bruno Beltrão’s H3, and it was an insightful time had by all. We’d love for you to join us up at the 4th floor Balcony Bar after the show Saturday night.

There are some goodies to be found on the Walker Channel, including an interview with Morgan Thorson and local choreographer/Heaven performer Justin Jones, on the process of creating the piece, as part of Jones’ Talk Dance podcast series. Visit the Talk Dance site for highlighted clips from the longer interview. Also on the Channel is a video of the latest installment in the Making Music Series; an interview with Alan Sparhawk of Low and Morgan Thorson led by long-time Making Music host and local musican James Everest.

For further press on Heaven visit the Onion’s A.V. Club or Minnesota Monthly. Or read the Walker’s Q & A with Morgan Thorson on the making of Heaven.

Finally, check out the video interview that the Walker’s Teen Arts Council did with Heaven Costume and Visual Designer Emmett Ramstad, on his “Top 5 Reasons to Work with Dancers”.

Enjoy the show!

Akram Khan—whose bahok will be performed this Wednesday (tomorrow) at the Northrop, (co-presented by the Walker)—explained in a recent Chicago Tribune interview that the idea for bahok came from an experience of being “stuck in an elevator in Japan, surrounded by people from different cultures, in different cultural costumes. I wanted to explore that sense of people trapped and unable to get back home. I travel a lot, and it’s very much about how I feel these days, how we encounter people, how we cross paths by coincidence, and wondering if that crossing was meant to happen, if something bigger than ourselves is involved.”

Visit the Walker Channel for an in-depth interview with Akram Khan, as part of local choreographer Justin Jones’ Talk Dance podcast series.

bahok—for anyone wondering—will be a strongly narrative work. More than any other performance presented by the Walker this season, except perhaps Ragamala’s Dhvee , bahok joins dance together with theater, and in a uniquely modern synergistic fashion. Where Dhvee was a story told through dance, bahok will be a dance piece with story elements. In fact, the Chicago Sun-Times said yesterday that bahok possesses “A brilliant sense of all the essential elements of theater.”

I found an interesting Walker connection with this video:

Akram Khan says that he is influenced by Saburo Teshigawara, whose Miroku solo dance work will be performed at the Walker in April. Even though bahok may not have been the piece specifically influenced by Teshigawara, it will be interesting to compare bahok with Miroku, to see if any traces of Teshigawara’s aesthetic have had a repercussive effect.

Reviews of bahok’s current tour in the U.S. have been overwhelmingly positive: the L.A. Times said that “the dancing contained the veins of gold”, and that “bahok was crafted with such superior quality, it made one believe that anything is possible.”

Tickets are still left for Wednesday’s show. There will only be one performance, so don’t miss it.

from bahok. STRINGER/AFP/Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

H3 began with a prolonged, quite stillness and through angular, yet fluid solos and quirky duets grew into a swirling mass of organized momentum. This final velocity was read initially by some as violent, by others as expressing the urgency of cultural forms born in harsh circumstances. While Beltrão’s piece built to incorporate power moves and freezes commonly associated with breaking, the path to reach this point involved denying the audience a number of expectations. The lighting, jarringly turned on in the middle of the evening, was ultimately panned over the audience, causing momentous power moves to be viewed as silhouettes through squinting eyes. The curtains and wings of the stage were stripped away, leaving dancers exposed as they prepared to begin their movement sequences. The space itself was transformed as the scuffs of the dancers’ shoes seemed to create a graffiti pattern on the pristine black floor. Gone were the driving beat and one-on-one battle commonly associated with breaking, replaced by faint street noises and intimate duets that could be said to queer the stereotype of masculinity seen in popularized variations of hip hop culture. More directly, Beltrão presented this rejection of limitations by establishing one – a thin, glowing demarcation around the main performance area that the dancers kicked, shifted, and ultimately pulled away entirely.
___________________

Thank you to the audience members who gathered Saturday and contributed their thoughtful insights. The above paragraphs highlight portions of our discussion. Whether or not you were able to join us, please feel free to add your own comments and questions to continue and expand the discussion in this online forum. Did you find elements of Beltrão’s work unexpected? How did you respond to his use of the space, lighting, or soundscape?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-Jessica Fiala

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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