From Blog Director Jill Randall:
It has been a wonderful experiment throughout the past year, diving into dance criticism and reflection on this blog platform. What are the various new angles and approaches to writing about performances - before, during, and after? We are exploring this with artists, audience members, and writers alike.
This week you can read our latest take on dance criticism. Two writers share their reflections on the four pieces of choreography in the 2019 FACT/SF Summer Dance Festival. How might the same performance be viewed through different eyes? How might their perspectives layer to offer a unique opportunity for reflecting on and celebrating the work they write about?
Please join us! Today let's explore Dazaun Soleyn's piece "a message of truths."
Claire Fisher in "a message of truths" by Dazaun Soleyn. Photo courtesy of FACT/SF. Photo by Robbie Sweeny.
Take 1 - From Molly Rose-Williams:
Dark stage. A single figure entered in low light walking slowly upstage. A recorded voice began to speak: “Damn, you stuck dodging the devil the older you get.” There was liquid power in the language, words rushing forth like a coursing river or rich soil. “Here come the Devil, talking to you with a smile and shovel, ready to bury you and your lil' hustle.”
Onstage, as the light continued to rise, I realized the figure’s head was covered with a mask - a beanie hat pulled low with two eyes and a mouth cut out and two horns sewn on top. Their face anonymous and shrouded, I felt as if their humanity itself was obscured from view - the buried figure the poetry alluded to. But burial is not the only fate possible, the speaker insisted: “You do get to decide if this tide will capsize you. The Devil can die, too.”
As the poem made way for Coltrane’s saxophone ringing out, the piece transitioned into what became for me a physical representation of the poem’s words. Dancer Claire Fisher moved upstage left for a sensual, tortured solo while standing in a pile of red leaves. Her transformation continued as she travelled downstage right to a pile of flat blue marbles, where she rubbed her body with them as if anointing herself, or cleansing some residue of the past.
The symbolic landscape introduced by the props and the promise of the words was so powerful, I found myself seeking the same clarity, nuance and dynamism in the movement language - a physicality that could both interpret and surpass what felt clearly portrayed through the other production choices. While the movement was stunningly executed, articulate, embodied, and evocative, I felt it didn’t develop as far as it could over the course of the piece. It stayed roughly the same, even while Claire interacted with the strikingly disparate piles of red leaves and blue marbles.
I found that the props were also such striking images and so clearly full of symbolic significance that I was distracted by my impulse to interpret their precise meanings. I eventually landed on a rough heaven/hell interpretation, but only after considering a number of alternate options (paper and glass? autumn leaves and winter snow? fire and water?) that prevented me from fully sinking into the physical experience of witnessing her transformation. The poem primed me for a narrative experience, and I became quite literal in my viewing of the work.
Eventually, Claire broke free from the mask. She launched into bigger dancing that plunged her into an arabesque, flinging her to melt against the wall. This movement, such a departure from the relatively contained movement in the rest of the piece, provoked a satisfyingly visceral response in my body. The opening track had made me hungry to not just witness, but feel the transformation they spoke of. I did in that moment - I wonder about the experiences of my fellow audience members.
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Take 2 - From Todd Courage:
A figure appeared in a white mask that enveloped her head entirely save holes for her eyes and mouth. Her long curly black hair hung loosely from under this spectral shroud. She shared the performance space with “rooms,” territories delineated by either a pile of fallen leaves or a glistening pool of beads. Her introductory movement was small, circular, and gestural. She seemed to be distantly responding to a poem we were hearing. “The piece of peace that you release in the world will be a poison to the devil,” the voice said. The dancer touched the earth as if to ground herself to something real, something she might be sure of. Before long the concealed dancer stood in the center of the leaf pile. At times she appeared to represent the trunk and bare branches of what had once been luscious and green. Maybe this was one truth, I thought. Maybe enough brutal hardship renders us conciliatory, bare, and wanting to hide. In spite of the cheerful pinks, reds, and oranges of the leaves, a sadness prevailed.
To the sultry music of John Coltrane, the dancer interacted with the leaves, moving on and through and with them, occasionally sweeping at them, or grasping handfuls that slipped from her grip, wafting back to the floor. Another truth: death is final, its own absolute. “The devil could die too,” the poet reminded us. Is hope a constant truth all its own?
Watery movement brought the dancer diagonally downstage. There, she stooped before a collection of glass beads resembling a small pool where a washing ritual ensued, efficient and purposeful. This cleansing necessarily enabled Ms. Fisher to remove her mask, revealing a lovely young woman glowing in moonlight. She tied her hair back; another transformative pivot.
The next section was made up of a more recognizable vocabulary but was no less beautiful. This is the result of the diverse training of the dancer; for her, an arabesque turn was as familiar as a fluid floor slide.
The end of the piece involved the soloist picking up the bygone mask, bringing it back to the scattered leaves where she would bury it. She walked away from that agent of soulful compromise whole and healed.
Molly Rose-Williams is a Bay Area artist and writer. mollyrosewilliams.com
Todd Courage is a dancer, choreographer, teacher, and dance scholar. He is currently artistic director of courage group and continues to build a diverse repertory of work in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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