Photo credit: Duhaime Movement Project
Writing on Dance: A Response to Molly Heller’s “very vary” in Berkeley, California
December 2, 2017 at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center
By Michelle LaVigne
Salt Lake City-based choreographer Molly Heller’s very vary felt much like a love letter or poem. Developed over a year-long collaborative process, this deeply thought and intimate dance work explores the fragility and vitality of human nature. In an interview with KUED, Heller suggests that very vary “delves into the remembered, imagined, and future lives of the six performers.” The dance work is presented in 14 chapters; each was like a secret note passed to the audience. The stories that emerged - past and future - were snippets that slipped easily in and out of the momentary present. I felt like I was peeking through holes in a wooden fence or the cracks of an almost-closed door, never quite seeing the whole picture or getting the full story. Yet, the evening felt beautifully complete with a fullness that is hard to capture in words.
Heller identifies her movement quality as “impact-driven.” The dancers’ movements were punctuated with bursts of distortion that often seemed unplanned. One step might not easily lead into another, and at times the movements did not quite sync up or seem awkward in transition. This aesthetic - of falling into, around, and out of moments and movements - articulated the inside-out quality that held steady throughout the hour-long performance. The dancers also spoke, sang, and yelled, filling the aural space with interruptions, questions, and emotions. This highly sensorial framework eloquently framed the choreography to reveal each of the six dancers not as they were, but as they were trying to be or become. How do we want to be seen? What parts do we conceal or reveal? Do we ever tell the “real” stories of who are? Can we?
The dancers never wavered in their commitment to laying open parts of their stories with the fullness of their bodies and their ways of looking (at each other and the audience). Whether moving softly or forcefully, each step was executed with precision and purpose. Whether looking to each other for comfort or defiantly at the audience, their gazes emoted clear, unquestionable expressions. This commitment was underpinned by Michael Wall’s musical composition and live accompaniment. More than just an accessory, Wall’s mix of live and recorded instrumentals participated in how the 14 chapters unfolded from and connected with each other. The program, an accordian-folded zine designed by Kate Thomas, reflected the haptic nature imbued within every aspect of very vary. The traditional dancer headshots and bios in the program were replaced with sketched portraits and personal past, present, and future affirmations: “I was quiet, but courageous,” “I am curious,” “I’m going to be loud.” In the printed program, each dancer was likened to an animal (deer, monkey, bee, etc.). To further this spirit-animal framing, paper-mache animal heads designed by Gretchen Reynolds sat atop tripods at the back of the stage. They provided another point of contact for the snippets of past-present-future selves danced and voiced by the dancers throughout the performance.
The end was poignant. The dancers repeated their opening phrases, but instead of dancing the same ones, they swapped. The subtle differences were insightful and some were funny. They then carefully helped each other put on their paper-mache animal heads, and danced quietly together before exiting the stage in a marching band manner. I thought: What does it feel like to live a different life? How might our differences connect us rather than divide us? The connections between ourselves and others are what enable us to keep moving, and marching onward to our futures whatever they might be.
The very personal parts of very vary added up to create a most exquisite whole that displayed the beauty and pain of being human, and of living in a world that might not always want or understand us.
-----
Michelle LaVigne is a dancer, writer, and teacher. Currently she teaches rhetoric at the University of San Francisco. Her writing/research focuses on the intersections of dance, rhetoric, and performance. Michelle is interested in how practices of rhetoric might be rethought from the movements of dance and choreographic praxis. Her current project on The Nutcracker explores what its multiple repetitions over time say about the cultural present and contemporary ballet. Michelle often presents at national and international conferences and has published reviews in the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Text and Performance Quarterly, and Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. She was also a guest writer for the ODC Theater Writer in Residence Blog, Triple Dog Dare, in 2014 and 2016. She blogs about dance in San Francisco at sfdancematters.
-------------------
Comments