Life as a Modern Dancer

Juilliard’s “New Dances” Showcases Strings and Socks

Juilliard’s “New Dances” Showcases Strings and Socks

By Garth Grimball

Alicia Graf Mack, dean and director of Juilliard Dance, introduced the department’s “New Dances” program with now-familiar caveats: dance rehearsals followed public health guidelines; in-person and Zoom process; casts of no more than 8 dancers; no touching or partnering; lastly, within restrictions creativity flourishes. If only that were true of this program. The dancing is virtuosic and passionate. The dances are bland and long.

Four choreographers, Tiler Peck, Sonyah Teh, Bobbi Jene Smith, and Matthew Neenan, created original works on the students of the Juilliard Dance Department. Are there obstacles this new generation of dancers can’t handle? 

Dancing for camera - check. Creating work under the confines of health precautions antithetical to dance making - check. Ignoring the swamp-face from strenuous activity in a mask to the point of seeming like it’s totally natural - check. Their verve and commitment to dance inspires.

Peck’s “Broad and Free” builds vocabulary out of attitude turns, enveloppé​, and port de bras above the head. The choreography follows Caroline Shaw’s piano and violin composition, never going against the music, but cruising in the wake of its melancholy. The structure and staging have the forward-facing unison common to competition dances. At one point the music slips into a mazurka and Peck quotes Balanachine’s “Stravinsky Violin Concerto.”

For “End, Middle, Beginning” Sonya Teh brings the viewer into the piece with cinema-verite-style filming. The camera moves through the wings onto the stage and out into the audience. For the rest of the piece the viewpoint is mostly static with crossfades as transitions. Group floorwork interrupted by standing solos define the dance. The interruptions lack the punch of creating a ceiling and breaking it, feeling more like a knock on the attic door. The somber music of Son Lux dulls Teh’s creative ideations on the Graham-Gaga lineage.

Speaking of Gaga, Bobbi Jene Smith’s “Ways of Listening” is a parade of solos overflowing with the pelvic floor and energetic mania endemic to the technique. Smith’s choreography and staging is the most dynamic in its use of the theater space. Thankfully she goes against the Nico Muhly cello (more strings) solo played live on stage. “Ways of wanting to be heard” is a more apt description of the dance. Soloists center the action while the rest of the cast stand still observing. The lunges, turns, gestures, and leaps become shouts into the void because of the static listening. Smith breaks the only-8-dancers rule in her climax. Twenty one bodies fill the stage in a tightly structured mix of unison and variations.

Matthew Neenan’s “The Solo 7,” set to String (!) Quintets by Mozart, has the idiosyncrasies of a dance made 10 years ago. Remember between 2009 to 2013 when every contemporary dance had the “flick” gesture (arms unfurl out and snap quickly at the wrist)? “The Solo 7” is of the era when ballet choreographers decided to incorporate the “flick” and other contemporary dance gestures into classical vocabulary. The dance has three costume changes: muted pedestrian, monochrome floor-length dresses, unison brown and black ensembles. The sartorial variation has little effect on the mood or tone of the piece.

Other than being set to strings, all of the dances have one commonality: socks. When did the mid-ankle length sock become the contemporary dance uniform, like pointe shoes to ballet? Each dance used the exact same type of socks, no variation in length or material. I love dancing in socks. It’s comfortable. Socks signify a coziness that contradicts the groundedness of modern dance, the connection to the earth. The Juilliard dancers move with precision and abandon. But through the screen and through the socks, the weight of a body floats away.

New Dances: Edition 2020-21 is available to stream for free on the Juilliard YouTube channel for 1 year.

 

Garth Grimball is a dance writer and artist based in Oakland, CA. He hosts the Reference Desk podcast and is the co-director of Wax Poet(s) performance collective.

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Gestures and Dreams at Queer Date Night

Octavia Rose Projects in "bodyfabric II" with Jhia Jackson (left), Heidi Cash (center), and Noah James (right). Photo by Kim Anno.

Image description: Three dancers pose in close proximity in a space with light wooden flooring and white walls. Two are standing and one is seated in a power wheelchair. Each dancer is frozen in a gestured position. The stage lighting is a warm orange and pink tone. The costumes are white, grey, and orange.
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Gestures and Dreams at Queer Date Night

By Garth Grimball

Does anything scream “queer!” more than descending a staircase with drama? Well, Octavia Rose Hingle knew what they were doing to open Queer Date Night, part of Shawl-Anderson Dance Center’s Queering Dance Festival. 

Due to COVID, 2020 festival artists are finally given the chance to share work in 2021. Shawl-Anderson is producing small festival events throughout the year instead of a week of consecutive performances. Queer Date Night took place at 2727 California Street in Berkeley (CA), an intimate arts and education space in a converted corner grocery store.

In Hingle’s bodyfabric II they score the dancing of Heidi Cash, Jhia Jackson, and Noah James with live piano playing. James kicks off a suite of solos from a spiral staircase. Hingle smartly makes use of the quirks of the venue. A support beam centers the stage space, and the dancers utilize its dimensions rather than pretend it’s not there. Much of the movement concerns surface, its presence and absence. Each dancer takes time to assess walls, floorboards, and the piano with intimate grace. Hands caress bodies like fabric then reach and embrace the surrounding aura. 

bodyfabric II shifts abruptly from interiority to exteriority. Hingle stops playing piano. A club beat by Octo Octa drops the gossamer vibe into a party. The trio come together to move freely, outwardly in gaiety. Their energy feels genuine. A more developed tonal shift would release that energy into the ether.

Queer Date Night shifted from live to digital with the screening of uuu_prelude: wet dreams of J.A.P.A.N pt. 1 & pt. 2 by Estrellx Supernova. The 21-minute film is a meet-dirty of Annie Sprinkle’s eco-sexuality and Nijinsky’s Afternoon of a Faun. Supernova and Tina Wang grind and undulate amidst the National AIDS Memorial Grove in San Francisco, while Zoe Huey draws non-figurative interpretations of their grooves.

Screenshot from the film with Zoe Huey (left, drawing), Estrellx Supernova (center, red shirt), and Tina Wang (right, in pink wig).
Image description: Three dancers are in a wooded area in the daytime, on the ground. All three are wearing wigs. One dancer is drawing on a scroll of white paper with a black charcoal or pastel. The other two dancers are on the edges of the paper, posed on the ground.
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Directed by Supernova with videography by Chani Bockwinkel and Ainsley Elizabeth Tharp, the camera’s primary focus is the pelvis. Supernova and Wang’s faces are obscured by bright wigs and COVID-era fabric masks. A pithy means of disidentification. Without visible faces their bodies abstract into the wilderness. The hypnotic quality is undercut as passersby enter and exit the frame. This happening in the woods is glanced at as just another day in the Bay. There’s little variation in the content of the film but it doesn’t feel long. Its intent is opaque but its impact lingers.

Electronic music from six different artists soundtrack the dancers as they undress into thongs — red lace for Supernova, cotton for Wang — allowing more coupling between nature’s debris and skin. Orgasm defines a wet dream from a dream. The film ends with the duo snaking their way towards a grassy meadow. The final shot is of Supernova face down on the ground. It feels less like a release and more like exhaustion from an abundance of foreplay. But, then again, who doesn’t love foreplay?

Screenshots from the film with Tina Wang (photo #1, left image) and Estrellx Supernova (photo #2, right image).
Image description for photo #1: Dancer is outside on a dirt path amongst tall trees and rocks. They are standing, facing away from the camera. Their legs are twisted, arms outstretched to the sides. They are arching back, and their long dark hair drapes down the back. They wear a white sports bra and white booty shorts.
Image description for photo #2: Dancer is stretched horizontal in a bright green grassy area with white flowers in the grass. Their head is turned away from the camera. They are only wearing red thong underwear.

 

Garth Grimball is a dance writer and artist based in Oakland, CA. He hosts the Reference Desk podcast and is the co-director of Wax Poet(s) performance collective.

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In "Bacchae Before" the Reveal is in the Subtext

Silk Worm as Dionysus, center, with Belinda He, left, and Karla Quintero as two Bacchae. Photo by Robbie Sweeny.

Image description: A very dark theater space with black background and black marley. Three performers are on stage - one standing in the center dressed all in white, holding a microphone. Two performers flank the center artist, kneeling and facing back with heads turned towards the center person. Their hands are up applauding.

 

In Bacchae Before the Reveal is in the Subtext

By Garth Grimball

How interesting is it to watch others party? The fun in revelry is the absence of ego as you get down, boogie, praise, or exhale deeply. Being outside, watching the party, it’s easy to feel like Jay Gatsby staring through a window waiting for the party to become something or someone. Ego held strong. Depending on how much you enjoy watching others party will determine your response to Hope Mohr Dance’s Bacchae Before. Mohr and Maxe Crandall co-direct this dance theater adaptation of Anne Carson’s Bakkhai, a translation of the Euripides play.

Performed by Belinda He, Wiley Naman Strasser, Karla Quintero, and Silk Worm, Bacchae Before opens with all four in low-key orgy mode—groans and heavy petting—and uses the mode as transition between most scenes. Euripides’ Bacchae dramatizes the conflict between Pentheus, king of Thebes, and Dionysus, a newish god flexing their power, over influence on the female citizens of the kingdom and the power of faith writ large. Carson updated the language to better reflect the humor of the tragedy in our modern tongue. Mohr and Crandall use the text as a foundation to build a loose narrative around the tragedy of gender reveal parties. The adaptation is largely a performance of Carson’s text with scenes by Crandall interspersed.

Silk Worm and Strasser do double duty as Dionysus and Pentheus and a contemporary hetero couple expecting a baby. They slide easily between mythic authority and Instagram banality.  He and Quintero are the Greek chorus dancing and assisting throughout. The pair have one extended dance break. They ratchet up the energy with unison choreography of weighted centers and thrown limbs. Otherwise their dancing is a direct extension of the text. The stage is bare except for the characters and clusters of props. The props become more than costumes or scenery as the narrative switches between Carson’s and Crandall’s texts. Fondled or thrown aside like a quick joke, the objects are signifiers of class, gender, and temporality.

Bacchae Before is dance-theater. The text defines the work but dance is given its due. Mohr and Crandall wisely have the actors do the most acting and the dancers do the most dancing. I wish that dance was used as a connective tissue between scenes and time periods beyond the aforementioned writhing and improv-ecstatic dance. The body and gender locate the concept yet the body isn’t given much to do conceptually.

The program makes a point of noting, “the moment of reveal is a cornerstone of classic tragedy.” This recognition, combined with gender reveal parties, leads one to believe a reveal would be forthcoming. Not so, at least in the narrative sense. The reveal in Bacchae Before is in the subtext not the text. Silk Worm as Dionysus asks rhetorically, “How do I look? Convincingly human?” The text is telling us a god is in human drag. The subtext points to the absurdity and violence of how much being “convincing” within a gender identity is predicated on external forces rather than internal truth.

Death of Pentheus. Object animation by Mike Chin. Photo by Robbie Sweeny.

Image description: Photo of a small plastic brown toy deer. Next to the deer is a pool of red spilled paint to simulate blood and a crushed pine cone in it. The surface is wide stripes of light pink, light yellow, and grey. The background of the photo is blurred with small toy trees.

The most arresting scene is object animation. Silk Worm reads the play’s climax directly from Carson’s text. Strasser, He, and Quintero approach a mise-en-scène laid out on a table downstage center. They turn on a camera with live feed projected on the theater’s back wall. The ensuing minutes see a tracking shot across a miniature landscape designed by Mike Chin. The landscape evolves with the narrative blending mundane objects with fantastical colors and contexts. This scene is a welcome disruption of the binary of performer-director and the trope of livestream within live theater. The cast animate the inanimate. The scene provides an intimacy deeper than the moments of ecstatic revelry. One medium becomes the chorus to another.

Euripides’ Bacchae ends with an exile. Bacchae Before ends with a projection listing all the anti-trans legislation enacted or proposed across the United States. A different kind of exile.

Garth Grimball is a dance writer and artist based in Oakland, CA. He hosts the Reference Desk podcast and is the co-director of Wax Poet(s) performance collective.

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RAWdance’s Portal into (Un)familiar Space

Nick Wagner and Jhia Jackson, foreground. Erin Yen, Claire Fisher, ArVejon Jones, and Juliann Witt (upstage). Photo by Hillary Goidell.

 

RAWdance’s Portal into (Un)familiar Space

By Garth Grimball

Site-specific dance often prioritizes site over specific. And, as a priority, the site often exists as an absence rather than a presence. This site is not a theater. This site is a unique influence on the dance.

The former is arithmetic: non-theater site + dance = site-specific work

The latter is geometry: dance = site/movement + π r ¹

RAWdance’s premiere Portal exists somewhere in between.² Performed at the Transbay Joint Powers Authority’s Salesforce Park, September 3-5, co-director Katerina Wong explores “a space to process and reflect” with a cast of six dancers. Portal begins with a signature RAWdance group number. Claire Fisher, Jhia Jackson, ArVejon Jones, Nick Wagner, Juliann Witt, and Erin Yen pop in saturated colors against the evening greens of the park’s foliage. The movement plays with lines, canon, and balancing motifs.

From there the audience split to follow tour guides around the park to experience 5 performance installations. While the prescripted guidance guarantees a complete viewing of each section, it negates the rare freedom available in public parks. Were the audience allowed to roam freely, the experience of the installations would tune into the frequency of the surroundings. Catch a glimpse of a dancer like a seagull swooping past. Notice the distance between bodies like the skyscrapers cluttered around the elevated park. Instead the work feels very frontal, like being in a theater, but you’re not. You’re outside.

Claire Fisher and Erin Yen. Photo by Robbie Sweeny.

There are moments of eco-bliss. “Kindred,” a duet performed by Fisher and Jones, happens on a hill under fantastical lighting by Thomas Bowersox. Green LED specks shimmer across the trees as Fisher and Jones shift between static and languid. The duet ends with the dancers falling and rolling down the hill, leaping up to roll again. THIS. THIS MOMENT. This moment could ONLY happen in this exact setting. This moment is site-specific. It is breathtaking.

The other installations have echoes of site-specificity. Wagner backs into a tree causing the branches to shake and the tree is part of the dance. The gravity of Witt’s feet sliding against the soil evokes the special meeting of solid and moisture.

The finale happens on the park’s Amphitheater Stage. Michael Wall’s soundscape and Ephraim Colbert’s media projections blend into a calming vibe. The dancers, now clad in white, partner each other in rotating combinations. Jackson stands out in her commitment to the choreography; her focus imbues the weight sharing with an evergreen present. Portal closes with the dancers running in loops down the amphitheater’s stairs. The moment aims for release but lands as a task. Processing and reflecting begets more processing and reflecting. RAWdance continues the process.

Photo by Jim Watkins.

^{1 Note: this reference to geometry is purely metaphorical. Discussing the practical applications of Pi x r-squared to choreography is beyond me.
2 Algebra?}

 

Garth Grimball is a dance writer and artist based in Oakland, CA. He hosts the Reference Desk podcast and is the co-director of Wax Poet(s) performance collective.

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In Batsheva’s YAG, It’s A Family Affair

Igor Ptashenchuk, Yonatan Simon, Hani Sirois, Londiwe Khosa, Yael Ben Ezer, and Sean Howe in YAG.

In Batsheva’s YAG, It’s A Family Affair

By Garth Grimball

“Once my family loved, really loved, really really loved to dance.”

This is the thesis statement of YAG, spoken by each of the six cast members in an exploration of familial relations and heritage. Created for the stage by Ohad Naharin in 1996, this is Batsheva’s first production adapted especially for the screen; presented and streaming via the Joyce Theater. Yael Ben Ezer, Sean Howe, Londiwe Khoza, Igor Ptashenchuk, Yoni Simon, and Hani Sirkis dance with a commitment to those words. Playing family is easy. Moving as an ensemble is tough. The world building in this dance succeeds by the coherence and chemistry of the cast.

The cinematography by Roee Shalti is superb. The entire production is filmed on a proscenium stage. The lighting design is one look. The images move from the screen into the mind without the barrier of showy effects or angles. Each close up is earned. I never felt I was missing part of the choreography beyond the frame even when unseen actions are evident. After a year of reviewing, watching, interacting with online dance, a personal barometer for quality is how often I feel the urge to lift my hand over to the trackpad and drag the mouse to the bottom of the window to see how much time is left. During YAG the urge was absent. For 45 minutes my attention was rapt in the translation of this concert dance to the screen.

On the topic of urges, the sexual politics present in much of Naharin’s work leaves me with a sense of horniness unsatisfied. The choreographic tension builds on hormonal bounty. The dancers’ bodies feint and parry like gladiators commanded to abstain before a match. Simon and Ptashenchuk graze the inner thighs of Khoza with their ears before being pulled into the groin. Simon jumps atop a rectangular orange plank held from underneath by a naked Ptashenchuk. While the work has an arc, there’s an avoidance of climax.

Sean Howe, Igor Ptashenchuk, and Yael Ben Ezer in YAG.

This is not to say YAG is without nuance. Other than the plank/door/barrier, there is a prop use striking in its simplicity and symbolic effect. Sirkis walks backwards placing fortune cookies like ducks in a row on a diagonal across the stage. Several feet behind, Ezer walks forward crushing the cookies with every step. Fortunes are made and lost passed down through generations. The remains of the sugary prophecies cover the floor adhering to the dancers like inheritances material and immaterial.

The choreography moves within confrontation, slight to extreme. Naharin’s direction confronts the implicit agreement of a fourth wall. The dancers look directly into the camera often, usually when speaking. Are they telling us? Or inside the direct gaze is the internal monologue revealed? Together, Naharin and Shalti, keep the kinesthetic alive on the screen. The edits feature the effort of dancing even if the cast make it look effortless. Wide (almost cruel in their width) deep fourth positions, accumulating gestures, spasms with the intensity of electrical shocks, and caresses that become shoves, expose the relational currents in this family.

Once I loved, really loved, really really loved to watch live dance; to be part of an audience. I am in awe of how concert dance shifted to the virtual stage over this past year. YAG is an exemplary product of the shift. I can’t wait to live in that love again, live. Until then, I know the heritage of dance is alive, on and off the screen.

Hani Sirois, Londiwe Khosa, and Yael Ben Ezer in YAG.

 

YAG is streaming via joyce.org May 27 - June 2, 2021.

Garth Grimball is a writer and dance artist based in Oakland, California. He is co-director of Wax Poet(s) and hosts the podcast Reference Desk.

 

An Afternoon Walk and Dance Through Glen Canyon Park: FACT/SF’s “Diffusion”

Erin Yen and Emily Hansel (background), Samuel Melecio-Zambrano and Katherine Neumann (foreground). Photo by Robbie Sweeny.

An Afternoon Walk and Dance Through Glen Canyon Park: FACT/SF’s "Diffusion"

By Molly Rose-Williams

It’s been over a year since theaters around the Bay Area shut their doors. Like much of the rest of our lives, art-making and performance have migrated online or outside. Last Saturday, FACT/SF’s newest work, “Diffusion,” brought me for the first time to San Francisco’s Glen Canyon Park. The show mapped a 45-minute loop into the canyon and back. Along our walk, dancers peopled the canyon walls, peaks, and pathways like open-armed invitations to notice. Notice the dancing, but also the canyon itself—the plants, animals, red stone and bright blue sky, and the many park goers with whom we shared the experience. 

After the show, I got to chat with Charlie Slender-White, FACT/SF’s director (another novel feature of the COVID-era dance show—small audience sizes that allow the artists to personally connect with everyone who comes!). He shared that although these outdoor spaces have always been available for dancing, it wasn’t until COVID forced us outside that he felt drawn to create in them. “It always seemed too complicated,” he reflected. “What if someone walks through the piece? What if there’s another event that’s distracting? What if a dog won’t stop barking?”

Creating “Diffusion” has shown him that it really isn’t complicated at all. Instead, it’s felt like an opportunity to move with what’s available. As an audience member, this type of immersion in a public landscape feels vastly different than the tightly curated attention of a dark theater. My experience of the show was just as much about the dancing as about the landscape in which it took place. My reflection below responds to this holistic immersion and round awareness. I hope in reading it, you can share even a fraction of the pleasure I found in experiencing “Diffusion.”

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I’m standing on the cement path at the mouth of Glen Canyon Park. It’s a piercing blue day. Clusters of smiling people lounge on the sunny field to my left. Shrieks of glee float from the playground to my right. Other dance-goers gather around me. Charlie, the director, wears a fuschia shirt and bright red socks. He greets us each by name, and checks us in on his phone. On the far side of the field, a raucous yell rises from a volleyball court as one player spikes the ball over a taut black net. 

All of a sudden, six dancers take off at a run across the field. Fuschia shirts bob, red socks pump, in a perfect single file line. A family of picnickers look up from their sandwiches as the runners approach. The oldest picnicker (Dad?) chews slowly as he tracks the runners’ progress around their blanket. The three kids stare, jaws agape, as the runners close the loop and sprint towards the volleyball game. The family dog scoots towards the youngest child’s sandwich, but Dad swats Dog away before it can grab the big slab of bread and meat hanging limp in the child’s hands. The child just stares, hypnotized by the runners’ retreating backs.

The dancers continue to wind across the field, cutting curving paths like neon intestines. Now they come towards us, their official audience. “I have no idea what they’re doing,” a girl announces in a loud whisper behind me. The line of five bobs past her to climb the steep street bordering the park. “Whoa,” she says. We stream uphill in pursuit. 

The street is steeper than it looks. I wonder if the dancers’ calves burn like mine.

“That donut may have gotten me,” a fellow audience member moans as we climb the sun-drenched pavement. He outlines his current dietary allowances to his friend as we turn onto a shady path. “Goat milk, sheep cheese, and RICE. I’m obsessed with rice.”

Six fuschia dancers stand on a grassy golden hill up ahead. Two move with crane-like swoops through the grass. Four stand like sentries on the wood and dirt staircase carved into the canyon wall. With their black masks and matching outfits, the dancers appear almost more archetypal than human. The sentries split, two of them sprinting up the stairs, and two leaping onto the path in front of us in clouds of dust. The pathway dancers swing like a Newton’s cradle, back and forth, back and forth, hips low to the ground.

“C’mon man, it’s a dance,” murmurs a passerby as he tries to coax his lumpy yellow dog past the dancers’ sweeping movements. But the dog winds, as if drunk, directly into the taller dancers’ feet. The dancer leaps with catlike precision over the dog’s bowed back, taking off at a run down the path. A jogger in neon yellow appears like a mirage to follow him. The crane dancers swoop off the hill to follow the jogger.  

We keep moving up the path. Above, the climbing sentries reach the canyon’s jagged lip. They look barely larger than my index finger as they peer down. A pair of hawks soar above them in perfect unison.

Wiley Naman Strasser (left), Eric Garcia (middle), Meegan Hertensteiner (right). Photo by Robbie Sweeny.

Two dancers eat up space on a wooden bridge, spiraling as if hungry for sensation. Their feet scrape out a rhythmic soundtrack on the rocky path and hollow bridge wood. We pass through a tunnel of curly willow that echoes with birdsong. My skin buzzes with delight.

We emerge in a clearing dwarfed by a sharp grey peak jutting like teeth from the ground. Three fuschia dancers wave like synchronous windmills on top of the rocks. A hiker in head-to-toe blue pops out to join them. He whips out his phone with a practiced arm and films their airy movements.

Below them, a little girl in a light pink dress wanders across the scene. “Mommy,” she announces, “I forgot to tell you, this place has lots of pine nuts!”

“Cool,” her mom sighs as she huffs behind her up the path. 

We all chuckle.

I crane my neck like a magnet to the sky as we retrace our steps through the willow tunnel. A hummingbird flits overhead. At the bridge, three dancers bathe us in the sounds of their feet dragging along the path as they make wide, arcing movements over the dirt. Three more dancers join them, balancing in utter silence atop the thin wooden ledge of a retaining wall. They move their arms with blade-like precision, opening and closing their chests as if carving out a novel dimension. 

Three passersby stop to watch. 

“You’re my best friend,” one professes to another as we follow the dancers’ retreat towards the mouth of the canyon. 

We stop at a small lawn to witness three dancers hopping in perfect unison like birds on hot coals. Then we pass a woman who drops a very small piece of paper, bends to pick it up, and then drops it again. I don’t see if she ever manages to keep it in her pocket because a crowd of hikers in leggings and visors tromps between us.

Finally, we emerge at the field where we first gathered. The volleyball game is long over, but the family of picnickers is still there. Dad swats the dog away from the bag of chips slipping off the youngest child’s lap.

Above it all, four dancers climb a set of steep stairs backwards towards the street. They each wave a long streamer as if in farewell. A man at a picnic table on my right gazes wide-mouthed at the image, his neck snapping back and forth between us and the retreating dancers. “It’s a dance,” I consider explaining, but then decide against it. I’m part of this dance too, after all, and I’m pretty sure that’s not part of my role.

Samuel Melecio-Zambrano (left) and Katherine Neumann (right). Photo by Robbie Sweeny.


Molly Rose-Williams is a dance artist, writer, educator and community arts organizer from the San Francisco Bay Area. You can read more of her writing and learn about her work at www.mollyrosewilliams.com.

 

A Moveable Dance from LA Dance Project

 

A Moveable Dance from LA Dance Project
By Garth Grimball

Four bodies appear from the emptiness cast by a building’s corner. They dance in unison. Between them the space stays equal. Faces masked and bodies covered in loose, transparent overcoats, their forms disintegrate before outlines snap into being. The unison ends, the energy diffuses into overlapping mini-events, changing place and changing the place. “The Betweens,” a new work commissioned by LA Dance Project from Jermaine Spivey and Spenser Theberge, questions stability in body and site. 

“The Betweens” is the first online dance I’ve watched twice. One, because I liked it; two, because I struggled to put my experience into words and the internet allows multiple viewings. On theme, by coincidence, my viewings took place in two different states, Florida and South Carolina, 48 hours apart.* In Gulfport, Florida, I watched from my dad’s home office/meditation room. In Charleston, South Carolina, I laid on the guest room bed in my aunt and uncle’s house with my computer on my belly. Because of the internet my change in location changed nothing about the performance. Because of the internet my change in location actualizes the performance’s ubiquity. “The Betweens” remained the same unaffected by time and place. The stability of the medium sharpens the content of the work.

LADP dancers, David Adrian Freeland Jr, Mario Gonzalez, Yusha-Marie Sorzano, and Naomi Van Brunt, perform with remarkable timing in what appears to be a 30-minute single take film. The piece combines Dada playfulness and Brechtian commentary. With a drag affect Freeland shares the throughline of the work: “displacement, replacement, engagement.” The cast interrupts each other in movement and language never settling into a single idea or spot. Words repeated and reformed morph into abstraction. Bodies slide through emotional territories - uncertainty, confidence, neediness, calm - as if a personality test were mapped onto the physical space. The bland parking lot setting could be anywhere except for a few regional specifics: cinder block walls, a glimpse of palm trees, the cotton-mouthed light of Southern California. Whether it’s whale sounds or R&B grooves, Maxwell Transue’s original score folds in between the speech patterns of the dancers. It feels appropriate to detail the contours of “The Betweens” rather than describe beat-by-beat moments. To do that would sacrifice the work’s avoidance of pandering or relying on the meme-ification of discourse. 

I wish I could praise Trevor Tweeten, the Director of Photography, in person. His filming was so thoughtful, so inside the logic of the work. The visual tone shifts from participatory to voyeuristic to omniscient seamlessly. “The Betweens” was commissioned as part of the Drive-In Dances series but the filmed version isn’t a recording of a live event, it is a true dance film.

The piece ends with an opening. Sorzano opens a gate and follows a dancing Freeland out of the space and out of frame. Cars zoom down the road. “The Betweens” is specific and roomy. It is of the moment and it allows an aesthetic distance from the familiar. It will stay with me no matter what state I am in.  

 

*COVID - era notice: My trip was a family visit. We are vaccinated.

Garth Grimball is a writer and dance artist based in Oakland. He is co-director of Wax Poet(s) and hosts the podcast Reference Desk.

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Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company and Categorizing Dance on Camera

Nick Blaylock in Full View. Photo by Marissa Mooney.

 

Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company and Categorizing Dance on Camera

By Garth Grimball

 

How many categories are there for a dance experienced via screen? Dance film. Screen dance. Live streaming dance event. Previously recorded performance. TikTok. The categories bloom and wilt without capturing the aura of the work. Or do the categories suffice but we critics are still trying to review the dance and not the film/screen/stream/recording?  Daniel Charon, artistic director of Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company, introduced opening night of the mixed-bill program Home Run as a “screen dance, mini film festival” with a “live, durational installation piece.” A lot of categories to contend with, and contend with them I will, categorically. 

Megan McCarthy in Woes. Photo by Daniel Charon.

Woes - Weather Report

The only live piece on the program, Woes, opened and closed the evening and served as transitional viewing between the pre-recorded content. Charon told us we’d be “checking in on them” throughout the evening. The phrase brought to mind a news anchor passing to the meteorologist: And now to Dominica Greene and Megan McCarthy with the improv. Dominica and Megan, what can you tell us?  Choreographically Woes was like a storm brewing. Greene and McCarthy folded and unfolded their bodies, clad in white jumpsuits, on a stage delineated by squares of paint. Smeared, the suits turned from cumulus to storm clouds. At the end the two touch for the first time and it’s like a thunderclap. 

The cast of Winter's Light. Photo by Daniel Charon.

Winter’s Light - Music Video

Oh, the empty warehouse. Is there another location so beloved aesthetically by choreographers and music video directors? The columns, the giant windows, the eerie spareness. In another time Charon’s choice of setting would feel overdone. Now it’s understood as a spatial necessity. The sextet weaves in and out of solos, duets, and group dancing without touching, all masked. The absence of touch and the space between dancers are addressed intentionally, not as an obstacle, in Charon’s deft choreography. Gestures of measuring become a motif. The camera plays with wide angle shots emphasizing an isolation felt inside with others.

Nicholas Jurica and Corinne Lohner in Don't Chew With Your Mouth Open. Photo by Alec Lyons.

Don’t Chew With Your Mouth Open - Mumblecore Indie Movie/American Apparel ad

This feels like those movies that “elevate mood over plot” but are really an excuse to watch beautiful people bump into each other. In this case the bumping is literal. Don’t Chew has the visual vocabulary of Sofia Coppola and the sensation of watching an inside joke. 

Wash created by Stanley and Judith Hallett and directed by Joan Woodbury

Wash (excerpt, 1970) - Experimental, now artistic archaeology

Was anyone else unsettled as a child watching Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory when the boat enters the bad-acid-trip tunnel? Wash has a similar vibe. Footage of a car wash, traffic, and dancer silhouettes are superimposed in hyper-saturated reds and oranges. What was once cutting edge technology applied to “be about something” offers a relativity check on how work made today may be viewed in 50 years.

Bashaun Williams and Fausto Rivera in And Again. Photo by Wonderstone Pictures.

And Again - Dance Film

This duet from Bashaun Williams and Fausto Rivera fits most in the Dance Film category of the program - like a visual essay with a thesis and conclusion. The choreography is mirroring-unison and solos. The camera shifts between third-person and first-person points of view adding intimacy to the duet. The dance ends with an embrace. The camera lingers documenting a sensation we all hope to feel again.

Full View - Teaser from Melissa Younker on Vimeo.

Full View - Video Art

The highest budget work has the most DIY sensibility. In the tradition of Nam June Paik and Meredith Monk, Full View has an elaborate set piece and a relatively fixed vantage point. The overall conceit is a prompt realized: Dance Your Quarantine Journey. Eleven dancers (RWDC + Heartland Collective) perform solos in front of a monochrome avocado green living room set. A cloud floats above changing hue like a mood ring. The dancers wear bright colors adding extra pop to their energetic seesawing. It has the visual flavor of immersive art exhibits but with substance instead of selfies. The creative team, led by Molly Heller and Wonderstone Films, use color to elicit the confinement and mania shared in pandemic living. The dancers provide the personal, the private, the feelings maybe we don’t want to admit even to ourselves.

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Dance online granted me the opportunity to be in Oakland and experience this Salt Lake City based company for the first time. Kudos to Daniel Charon and Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company for curating a program of dance online that considers the medium. Each piece has a different relationship to the lens and therefore to the viewer. As an exploration of dance making and sharing in a time when we’re stuck at home, Home Run lives up to its name.

Home Run is available for On-Demand streaming through March 13, 2021. Tickets available here.

Garth Grimball is a writer and dance artist based in Oakland. He is co-director of Wax Poet(s) and hosts the podcast Reference Desk.

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Related posts:

Woodland Creatures, Summer Dance By Garth Grimball

FINDING (HEART): Practices in Improvisation (& Practices in Improvisational Writing) By Molly Heller

My Dance Week: Daniel Charon, Artistic Director of Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company

Artist Profile: Joan Woodbury

Artist Profile: Shirley Ririe

 

Virtual Healing with RAWdance

Photo by Del Medoff

Virtual Healing with RAWdance

By Garth Grimball

The Bay Area is entering the 11th month of quarantine/lockdown/shelter-in-place/life with COVID-19. At the beginning of this week California Governor Gavin Newsom announced the current six weeks of sheltering-in-place was coming to an end and counties can “re-open” to varying degrees. At the end of this week RAWdance premiered “The Healer,” choreographed by co-artistic director Katerina Wong and co-presented by ODC Theater. The performing arts are so far from reopening that the adventures in internet-as-stage continue to evolve.

“The Healer” sets itself apart from other online dance before the performance begins streaming. Ticket holders can receive a care package of items related to Traditional Chinese Medicine, a source of choreographic inspiration. A bamboo fan, peppermint tea, ginger candy, a sachet of lavender, and wishing tree notes invite viewers to experience “The Healer” with all their senses. Holding my cup of tea I logged on to the streaming site. Digital verisimilitude extends to pre-show socializing. Rather than fleeting small talk with fellow attendees as you find your seat, now announce your presence in a chat window and share an emoji or ten. :) My glasses fog as I blow on my tea and the audience turns into a stream of ink blots.

In lieu of the mixed-bill program planned for 10 months ago, “The Healer” is now experienced in a lecture-demonstration format. Each night a different speaker preambles the dance film. On opening night it was acupuncturist Shawna Seth discussing TCM and the creative process. Informative, persuasive, and aspirational, her presentation had the familiar rhythm of TED Talks. Seth ended teaching an acupressure exercise to relieve stress; bringing us back to our physical selves as we came together virtually.

Photo by Del Medoff

“The Healer” opens with a montage of women opening doors, entering spaces, removing shoes, and washing hands. Considering the critical public health pressure and awareness to always be washing one’s hands it’s uncertain whether Wong is commenting on this collective necessity or encouraging a collective cleansing separate from the recommended 20 second lather. The montage settles on the ODC stage where the dancers, Wong, Michaela Cruze, Juliann Witt, and Stacey Yuen, engage with a set by Chad Owens. In the foreground stands a sanctum. A water source and a medicine bowl center the bamboo structure bringing the outside inside. A bamboo row cascades across the background. My familiarity with ODC Theater as performer and audience member increased my desire to melt into the screen and reanimate on the other side. I know the feeling of my feet on the stage, the daze of leaving dreamy stage lighting to unflattering halogen in the green room. I’m grateful to see the theater used and the stage danced on.

The dancers move with power. Each has a solo within the tightly structured quartet. Daniel Berkman’s original score contains intermittent voice over from a Qi Gong instructor. The dancers respond in kind or let her words float away unanswered. The choreography has a very Bay Area sensibility: a combination of ballet and release techniques with a distinct inspiration source and a judicious amount of throwing oneself to the floor. The sensibility can feel like a flavor profile that’s dulled from overuse. Wong excites when the movement vocabulary leans into her inspirations. One inspiration source is Qi, and as Seth informed us, its movement within the body’s channels. The alchemy of contemporary dance and Qi movements shines brightest in Wong’s solo. Her movements are accented by exacting breaths. The other dancers join her tearing across the stage in unison and I feel the energy come off my screen. Or, I want to feel that energy. At one point the dancers fuse. Hands settle and sense eschewing the grabs, holds, and muscling of dance partnering. The four bodies create a visual embodiment of energy channels.

The screen went dark. My tea was cold. I stared at my three wishing tree notes. Is it ok to write the same wish 3 times? Please let it not be another 11 months before these dancers, all dancers, can hear the applause.

Garth Grimball is a writer and dance artist based in Oakland. He is co-director of Wax Poet(s) and hosts the podcast Reference Desk.

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Related posts:

“Still Dancing”: The Dancers of RAWdance on Working on “The Healer” in the Age of Quarantine

One Good Quote: "The Healer" with RAWdance

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With Appreciation and Admiration: A Few Musings on "Utopia"

Screenshot from Utopia, capturing the 9 actors in the production

 

With Appreciation and Admiration: A Few Musings on Utopia

By Jill Randall

Eight months into quarantine life as a dancer, I have dabbled in a few online art experiments, as an audience member a handful of times and by producing two projects. We long for those moments of escape, of delight, and of a small taste of hope. Cutting Ball Theater’s online premiere of Utopia got me to feel, see, and experience in ways I have not in so long. Thank you.

Utopia is a brand new play by Charles L. Mee. Maximizing the online format - the play is masterfully edited with split screens, Brady Bunch squares, sound effects, and interwoven visual art. The project brought together Cutting Ball Theater with RAWdance and Creativity Explored. 

The vignettes, non sequitur transitions, and patchwork of stories is reminiscent of childhood memories of episodes of The Electric Company and stories of Dr. Seuss. Whimsy, humor, absurdity, and poetic language are maximized here, but don’t be fooled. The deep themes of love, relationships, and dreams are still present. 

Dancer Michaela Cruze. Photo by Hillary Goidell.

The show is 75 minutes in length. For the first 50 minutes, there are a few glimpses of dancers and movement interludes to whet your appetite. Personally, I would have liked these early dancing scenes to last an ounce longer (like 60 seconds versus 30 seconds in length). Around 50 minutes into the play, the dance section kicks into full force and lasts for the rest of the production (nearly 25 minutes in length).

We go from the play (actors, words, and frontal film close ups) to an ensemble of 7 dancers all filmed outside in San Francisco. We move into full bodied movement and filming the whole body. 

The modern dance form was perfect for this play. Abstraction, juxtaposition, and gestures were all totally at home in Utopia. Katerina (Katie) Wong’s choreography brought the themes and characters of the play into the “real world” outside. The dancers scan and see, change directions, change levels, bounce, extend, and spill over into forward spinal curves. The choreographic phrases bring forth the theme of inertia; once in motion, you stay in motion.

Dancer Jhia Jackson. Photo by Hillary Goidell.

Due to COVID-19, the dancers are masked at all times. While this does still feel odd to view in professional performances, even 8 months into quarantine, the audience’s eye gets used to it after a few minutes. This is our true reality and masked existence.

Wong’s choreography echoes the delight and whimsy of the first section of the play with the cast of actors. But she literally and metaphorically puts the ideas in motion - to keep going, to persist, to find humor and delight and look outside ourselves. The structure of Utopia reminds me of Crystal Pite’s master work Betroffenheit, whose first section is layered with text, dancing, acting, and props, and then section two heads into abstraction and full bodied choreography without text. 

Dance ensemble from left to right: Kelly Del Rosario, Juliann Witt, Jhia Jackson, Katerina Wong, Nick Wagner, and Michaela Cruze. (Dancer Stacey Yuen not pictured here.) Photo by Hillary Goidell.

Logistically, I am in awe of the feat of pulling off this production during our socially distant existence. The craft and blocking of the scenes, building an ensemble, and pulling together so many cast members, props, colors, and throughlines…...I have deep appreciation and admiration for the creative team. 

Diving into this project, taking it on, and pulling it off - a symbol of creativity and the magic that art truly brings to our lives as artists and audience members alike….thank you.

Utopia runs for only one more day via Vimeo. Stream it now! (If you purchase it today, on November 15th, you will have access for 7 days to watch it.)

Jill Randall is the Artistic Director of Shawl-Anderson Dance Center in Berkeley, CA and Director of the Life as a Modern Dancer Blog.

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"State of Darkness" and the Internet of Dance

Annique Roberts. Photo by Mohamad Sadek.

State of Darkness and the Internet of Dance

By Garth Grimball

Reproduction is beautiful. Reproduction is corrosive. The bonding of animals through sex to create new life is miraculous. Copying someone else’s intellectual property is unethical, illegal. The former is a welcoming of the new. The latter is a dissolution of what was new. Dance embraces the duality of reproduction more so than any other art form. How many bodies have inhabited Ailey’s Revelations or Petipa’s Swan Lake reproducing the steps with every performance? Yet unlike live theater and music, there is no artifact to claim as original, to defend as the primary source. Live dance is always making anew. And then, the internet.

From Oct 24 - Nov 1, the Joyce Theater livestreamed seven dancers performing State of Darkness, Molissa Fenley’s seminal 1988 solo dance to Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps. Solo dances are the de facto choreography within pandemic health guidelines, and the Joyce is the first presenter to reproduce an existing solo that dances at the center of the internet, “live” experience, and reproduction. I watched all 7 performances totaling 4 hours and 5 minutes.

Since its 1913 premiere choreographers have wrestled with Stravinsky’s symphonic beast. But the music is saved from oversaturation. Using rhythm over melody in storytelling, the score hasn’t been sacrificed to the gods of capitalism like Tchaikovsky or Vivaldi. No jingle to hawk holiday wares is born out of Le sacre’s polyphony. Fenley’s choreography is similarly familiar and entirely its own. For over forty years she has crafted her own style of movement that reflects her youth in Nigeria and Spain and her ascendancy in the downtown New York dance scene of the 1980s. Her choreography is her: energetic, thoughtful, complex. Movement you can easily put a name to, say a kick or an arabesque, acquires an inflection point or a change of force making it different and unique in Fenley’s vocabulary.

Michael Trusnovec. Photo by Mohamad Sadek.

The seven dancers, Michael Trusnovec, Jared Brown, Annique Roberts, Shamel Pitts, Lloyd Knight, Cassandra Trenary, and Sara Mearns, all have different training backgrounds which makes their relationship to the choreography unifying and not repetitive. Each dancer reproduces Fenley in the choreography. In every performance I see a different element of her and of the performer’s individuality. Like Woody Allen directing every male protagonist to perform him (minus the narcissism and sexual predation). Every dancer is in some way performing the dance and performing Fenley. The rare opportunity afforded by the internet to see 7 interpretations of one dance so close in time transcends the streaming of theater dance to an internet of dance. Like dances on TikTok or Instagram, the viewer can see the dance spread and deepen in the dancers’ bodies and on the medium, the screen, as it transforms body to body in real time. The solo becomes a pas de deux between each dancer and Fenley, balancing integrity and interpretation. As artist Hito Steyerl says, the “aura is no longer based on the permanence of the ‘original,’ but on the transience of the copy.” Dance, the most impermanent of the arts, reckons with transience as the pandemic requires a new mediated relationship with the viewer.

At the risk of reducing the awesome work and artistry to superlatives, each performer has standout qualities in interpreting and reproducing the solo. Trusnovec’s connection to the earth; Brown’s fluidity and storytelling; Roberts’s calm and expressive gestures; Pitts’s looseness and freedom in space; Knight’s internal force; Trenary’s precision; Mearns’s musicality and fire. State of Darkness removes the veneer of dance as effortless. The close-ups available in livestreaming highlight the sweat, the nostrils flaring, the rapid expansion of the rib cage. The camera as intermediary adds a heightened sense of physicality even as it flattens dimensions.

When the last note strikes and the dancer steps into a pool of light the curtain of the Joyce theater closes and opens for a silent bow. Each time I found myself clapping at the screen yearning to shout my enthusiasm from inside the theater. Inside the screen the seven faces are a collage of exhaustion, relief, gratitude. Mearns, the last performer, bowed and collapsed on the floor in tears. The Joyce, Fenley, and the dancers create a new experience of dance, a reproduction that doesn’t dissolve. To an empty theater and screens across the world the humanity of dance is on display.

State of Darkness at the Joyce is available to stream through Nov 7, 2020 at joyce.org. $12 per dancer.

 

 

Garth Grimball is a writer and dance artist based in Oakland, CA. He hosts the podcast Reference Desk and is co-director of Wax Poet(s).

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