Ruminations on We Are All Friends by Molly Rose-Williams
By Melissa Hudson Bell
Delightful. That is the word that continues to come to me as I ruminate on Molly Rose-Williams’ latest show, entitled We Are All Friends.
And I mean delightful in a certain sort of way…
Delightful in a substantive, engrossing way, rather than a fleeting or flimsy way.
Delightful in a transporting, life-affirming sort of way.
Delightful in a lift your spirits, tickle your funny bone, get coerced into giving yourself an impromptu rub down, sort of way.
Delightful in an all-consuming first crush, first romance, first meaningful hand-hold-with-a-sweetheart sort of way.
Delightful in a balloon-dropping, clowning around but only kinda joking sort of way.
Delightful in a still-comforted-month-later-by-the-feelings-the-show-evoked sort of way.
Delightful in a way that reminds me why I first fell in love with live performance.
Delightful in a way that stops time.
Delightful in a way that excites.
Delightful in a way that, well, delights.
As I venture to dissect what exactly delights about the whole experience of attending this performance, I offer up three concrete, delightful examples from the show. I owe much of my understanding of delight to the reading and rereading of Ross Gay’s 2019 Book of Delights (if you haven’t read it, go get a copy). It is clear that what delights varies from person to person, and in this show delights were so plentiful that I imagine that if you asked a different audience member what delighted them, you’d get a slew of other possible answers. Key to delight for me is some element of unexpected pleasure, some pocket of joy in which I can nestle. Delights also seem somehow to linger, sticking around even as they morph with the passing of time.
Example One: Build-a-phrase
This first delight may be especially delightful for folks, like myself, who are well-versed in techniques for crafting contemporary dance phrases. One tried and true choreographic technique is to build a phrase by creating a gradually increasing chain of gestures or movements. The original gesture gets revisited and elaborated, often becoming the audience’s anchor in a sea of sometimes seemingly unrelated movements. When well executed, the watcher gets to see a dancer deepen in their embodiment of the chosen movements, and the movements themselves get richer through repetition rather than expected and dull.
Molly Rose-Williams, the sole performer in this show, has undoubtedly had countless experiences with this build-a-phrase choreographic technique. She also (lucky us) possesses exceptional prowess as a performer. She is grounded and articulate, and somehow both generous and sly. She is expressive in a way that belies her training in the circus arts, which attends acutely to the experience of the audience. It is clear that she yearns to connect, and the distinct ways in which she holds time and space invite this connection.
So, when she employs this build-a-phrase choreographic tactic early on in the show, (arcing sideways, turning around herself, reaching downward) it is a pleasure to watch her move through what is an identifiable technique… AND the pleasure is doubled by how she complicates the mechanics of it with a gradually building urgency of purpose, as well as the inclusion of language, namely “I” (hands to her chest) and “you” (pointing to the audience). One of the repeated gestures is a full bodied wrestling with some heavy object, some weighty concern, that it is necessary to lift up, and presumably, to examine more closely.
The full effect, which I’m finding it hard to capture in words, is that of watching someone struggle to unearth something that resides not just in the mind, but in every cell of her dancing body. She employs the sequencing technique to communicate something that is still somehow forming, somehow just bubbling to the surface.
What, you may ask, is it that is laboriously being unearthed, worked out through repetition, pulled up from the depths, patched together?? The icing on the cake, and somehow the cake itself. It’s an admission of the heart, followed by a bashful, but not coy, sort of gaze around the space. A whispered “I have a crush on you” (hands on chest, hands pointing at person in the front row). It’s delightful.
Example Two: Unexpected Paths
“I’ll be right there,” or perhaps “I’ll come to you,” Molly stage whispers to the person seated in the front row. Molly is standing upstage in the corner of the charming black box space of NOHspace. She has just announced that she has a crush on the person seated next to the individual she is now addressing, and she is suggesting she approach the seated pair for intel about her new crush. The obvious thing to do, of course, would be to walk downstage to the front row, a feat Molly could undertake easily, in probably 10 or 12 of her huge, grounded strides. But, who actually ever finds out information about a new crush in a direct manner?? So, in a moment that got me actually laughing out loud, Molly drops to the floor and “climbs” her way horizontally across the base of the scrim that lines the back wall. She then plasters herself to the bricks of the side wall, shimmying along as if precariously balanced on the edge of a building ledge at great height. Then, she somehow melts into a puddle at the corner of the stage and propels herself across the floor on her stomach before casually standing as though it all was the most natural thing in the world. The epitome of cool. It’s clowning, but only sort of kidding. The circuitous path could not be more appropriate, the trajectory was utterly unexpected, and expertly executed. Net effect - delight.
Example Three: The Balloon
I should start by saying that I am not a person who necessarily delights in balloons. They are not eco-friendly and whenever my kids are in possession of them they fight over who gets to play with them and how. (Sidebar: my children thoroughly delight in subjecting me to “balloon squeal day” - thanks, Trolls Holiday Special - wherein they blow up balloons and then pinch the neck of the balloon so that the air passes through slowly, generating an obnoxious squeal. For them, delight. For me, torture. But, I digress…)
In We Are All Friends balloons seem to be everywhere, a whimsical symbol of relationships or, rather, our initial feelings about relationships that inevitably don’t last. There is a surprise balloon drop after Rose-Williams professes amorous feelings towards her chosen audience member. They fall from above, floating to the ground only to be kicked and hit and blown around by Rose-Williams’ ebullient dancing. She also hangs some of the balloons on the side of the stage somehow, where they remain throughout the performance, tauntingly magical as the mystery of how they hang there, suspended with no strings attached, lingers at the edges of our view. At the end of the performance Rose-Williams offers a single balloon to her crush in a gesture that ends up being both heartfelt and mischievous. But, the most delightful balloon moment for this audience member was when Rose-Williams herself embodied the character of The Balloon. The Balloon was the last in a line of four characters to whom we are introduced (Hands, Heart, and a teacher or leader of some sort being the other three). The Balloon seems to be the cynic of the bunch, or perhaps she is merely a realist. She has a heavy East Coast accent, and a demeanor that seems both sage and resigned. She quips in with one liners that effectively undercut any potential for sentimentality as the four characters stew over their own experiences of, anxieties about, and hopes for love relationships. She reminds that all balloons, while seemingly glorious in flight, are eventually grounded, losing their luster and creating a problem that we humans have to clean up. The character “The Balloon” cleverly renders what could be a simple metaphor into a multi-dimensional stand-in for the complexities of the show’s subject matter. This is a feat made delightful by Rose-Williams’ attentiveness not just to the idea of The Balloon, but to its embodiment. Complex, clever delight.
This experience of delight is feeding me as I enter what is already feeling like a tumultuous new year. I feel comforted in knowing that works like We Are All Friends are being made and supported by entities like Shawl-Anderson Dance Center, FACT/SF, and others. I am attending to the ways that the initial delights of sitting in a room with others at the show still echo in my body. When the world seems to tighten up around me, and when I find myself tightening up to ward off the world, I’m trying to check myself and instead lean into the lingering sensations of delight… and then to dare to risk connection and vulnerability, to show up as the show encouraged.
Melissa Hudson Bell is a dancer, choreographer, teacher, researcher and writer who lives and works in Oakland, CA. More info at melissahudsonbell.com
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Related posts:
- Preview: "We Are All Friends" in the Studio
- Modern Dance Fan Club: RAWdance’s CONCEPT series: 28
- Blog Series: "Why improv?" (with Molly Rose-Williams)
- Review/response: We came, We saw, They conquered
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