Dance in the Bay Area

Finding the Frontier

2012-02-12T20:35:00.001-08:00

I love the story of the 1913 premiere of Stravinsky and Nijinsky’s Rite of Spring. Whether the riot that followed the premiere can be blamed on the dissonant arrhythmic music, the pounding tense choreography, or the political and cultural times, it seems as though there was a clear frontier where art had never dared go before, and when Stravinsky and Nijinsky dared cross that frontier, all hell broke loose.

Are there any more frontiers left in art? At least in San Francisco in 2012, artists of all disciplines have been freed from many cultural and societal shackles that once bound them. The more dance (and art) I see, the more I sense that there is nothing artists can’t and won’t do.

I recently saw Macklin Kowal’s Divine Light at the Garage, which featured, among other things, nudity, screaming, minimalistic movement, repetition, and speech. I was not surprised or moved to riot by any of this, for I was in the Garage Theater, where I wouldn’t expect to see anything less. Similarly, I recently saw Theater of Yugen’s Sound is the Movement series at Nohspace, which featured the Scottish convulsing contortionist Iona Kewney, as well as Daria Kaufman and Bianca Brzezinski engaged in a dance dialogue about getting epilepsy medication while accompanied by the scattered electronic sounds and music of Richard Warp, all elements I was adjusted and excited to see in the Nohspace setting.

Places like the Garage and Nohspace have flung open their doors to the multitude of avant-garde artists, the result being a climate where audience members are prepared for anything and everything. However if Kowal were to set his choreography on a company like Lines Ballet or ODC, the reception might be something entirely different. And then consider the reception of Kowal’s choreography in a place like Provo, UT. The context a piece is presented in greatly effects how it is received.

But what really got me thinking about all this was Matt Ingalls and Ken Ueno, the final performers of Theater of Yugen’s Sound is the Movement series. Their music, to my ears, hurt. I found it screeching and dissonant to an extreme. I literally covered my ears the whole time they played because it evoked such a strong physical reaction from me. But at the same time, I was excited. Here was music I wanted to get as far away from as possible. I wanted to leave. I wanted to scream, “Stop!” I was beyond fazed; I could have rioted.

I don’t know if new frontiers in art lie in content, context or simply in audience reaction. It’s difficult to define exactly what a frontier is and when it’s being crossed. Nevertheless, I did not think there was anything a performer could do in a setting like Nohspace that I would be surprised and appalled at. And yet I was. So while I may have abhorred the squawking sounds of Ingalls and Ueno, I am encouraged by their trepidation to push the extremes of what is acceptable art to present to an audience, just like Stravinsky and Nijinsky 99 years earlier.

To My Fellow Dancer:

2012-01-30T20:41:00.000-08:00

What do you want? Yes, we all want to be able to practice our art form and hopefully get paid to do it, but what do you want beyond that? What kind of relationship do you want to have with your choreographer and fellow performers? What kind of process do you want to be engaged in? What kind of work is meaningful to you? What do you want out of this practice that you put so much in to?

I dance with Malinda LaVelle’s Project Thrust because I believe in Malinda’s choreographic vision and because I am honored to be able to help her build that vision. I relish in the process, am challenged by the content, grow in my understanding of dance, and nourish a deep love and respect for everyone involved. I could recount how Malinda builds choreography off of her dancers’ abilities and personalities, or how she creates pieces that feel socially and personally relevant, or how she creates episodes that are at once poignantly funny and profoundly sad. But at the end of the day, more than writing about how I believe in her work is the simple fact that I choose to work with her.

After seeing Project Thrust, people regularly remark on the commitment and investment of us dancers. And while it is flattering, I am always surprised. Why wouldn’t we be invested? This is work that we choose to be a part of, that we want to be a part of. Malinda and the other dancers are my good friends, and I feel inspired to put as much of myself into the work as they do. They are my community, and we all want to make Project Thrust the most it can be. Why wouldn’t a dancer be committed and invested in the choreography that they willingly chose to partake in?

While I believe it is healthy and important for dancers to experience a broad scope of choreographic exchanges, as it expands not only dancers’ technical understanding but also their artistic understanding, I think there also comes a time when dancers can take inventory from their experience, evaluate it, and choose what kind of process they want to be a part of. Dancers can be just as discriminating about dance as choreographers, presenters, and audience members, and yet we’re often expected to take anything that comes our way and be thankful for the opportunity.

There are a million ways to be a dancer. Whether it is in a company or freelance, contractual or merely consensual, every day or once in a blue moon, strenuous or relaxing, classical or avant-garde, abstract or explicit, the ways we can pursue dance are myriad. However, how we choose to pursue dance is also a reflection of our values. Because most of us will seldom be handed dream opportunities and ideal situations, what matters is building and cultivating a dance environment and community that facilitates our dreams and ideals. I daresay that those choreographers and dancers in ideal situations more often than not sowed the seeds for making it happen.

I encourage every dancer to cultivate an environment for them self that goes beyond money or opportunity but that considers what they want, particularly with regards to choreography and community. Let’s move beyond waiting for any chance to be on stage. We do care about content, and we’re not replaceable. In the end, we make the dance possible.

So, my fellow dancer, what do you want? Go and make it happen.

Lost and Found

2011-12-10T11:44:00.000-08:00

I think it’s really exciting when people get up and leave in the middle of a performance. It shows that those people felt so strongly that sitting politely through the end was no longer an option, decorum be damned. It’s the kind of discourse I wish happened more often: discourse based not on politeness but on engagement. People get up and walk out of performances when they are engaged in disliking a work. Art is meant to be viewed, shared, received, discussed, and even criticized, and it falls short of any of those things if the audience isn’t engaged. Far from boredom, in which people obligatorily sit through shows completely disengaged, the act of walking out of a performance signifies care and discontentment. While I’m not advocating people get up and leave during performances anytime they dislike something, I am saying that when it does happen it indicates that those viewers were reacting to the work from an alert, honest, highly invested place.

Pina Bausch’s Danzon recently toured to Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall via Calperformances. One of the most highly anticipated dance events in the Bay Area this year, expectations ran high of Bausch’s legendary Wuppertal Tanztheatre. By the end of her life Bausch had acquired a reputation for creating quite epic pieces. While a fair number of people in the audience walked out of the show and some in the dance community expressed nonfulfillment, others have reported feeling overwhelmed and overcome. Wherever the audience fell on the like-dislike spectrum, the level of engagement was high.

I am still trying to comprehend what transpired through the course of the evening. It made no sense. It seemed to hint at everything but say nothing. It reminded me of things I don’t remember. It challenged me to hang on, seeming to intentionally lose me. At the same time it was so soft. From the naked women squirming in their bathtubs and the woman taping her thighs together to trap the man’s hand, to a camp telling jokes in tents and a padded fat woman spiraling around the stage to Saint-Saens Dying Swan, the piece felt like a series of random recollections. In its primordial sexual playfulness, it defied my attempts to make something out of it, contradicting my desire for order and purpose.

At one hour and forty-five minutes with no intermission, there was only so much time I could spend trying to understand what was going on before I simply had to sit back and watch. And when I finally stopped trying to thread it all together, it began to slowly thread itself. Toward the end Dominique Mercy, Bausch’s longtime collaborator whose simple human stage presence was powerfully affective, held a bag of dirt and threw handfuls in a perfect grid charted across the stage. Eventually I forgot he was there, as other action onstage grabbed my attention. And then just when I’d ceased to notice his presence completely, he burst forward into a wrenching solo to operatic music, catching my heart in my throat with his suddenness and heightened emotional drama before going back to mundanely throwing his handfuls of dirt. At another point a woman shoveled dirt on another woman as she danced, showering the whimsical whirling dancer in dark grainy earth. Things grow in dirt; it’s a fertile substance. Yet we shovel it over our dead too. Growth, death and fertility all came to mind at once. Yet instead of feeling like a forced image, it felt more like a suggestion. All of it felt this way, softly hinting at emotions and memories. In this way I felt like Bausch took me by the hand and led me around the neighborhood, and when I stopped worrying about where we were going and simply allowed myself to be led, I found myself at home.

Danzon made me smile and laugh and cry. It left me lost and found at the same time. I stand in awe of Bausch’s prowess in making me feel so much. But as I watched the man in front of me or the people behind me walk out, I marveled perhaps even more. This was a piece that elicited response. While mine happened to be incredibly positive and theirs seemingly negative, I think both have validity in that they were strongly felt.

The Trouble with Expectations

2011-10-24T22:46:00.001-07:00

I once got in a bit of an argument with a friend of mine about expectations. He claimed we should never have expectations because they only lead to trouble. I claimed that expectations are ineffaceable. I am willing to concede now that perhaps he had a point: while we can’t eradicate expectations, they do seem to lead to trouble. I recently attended Night Falls at ODC Theater, a dance-theater piece created by Deborah Slater and Julie Hébert that addressed aging. I had expectations. Because of the term dance-theater, I expected it to be dance-based with theatrical elements. I also expected the piece to have a moral of sorts about coming to terms with the aging process and finding the rewards in it. While I don’t think these are unreasonable expectations, the juxtaposition between my preconceived notions and the reality of the piece was a bit troubling.

The narrative of the piece is about a woman about to turn 60 who has to give a speech and is grappling with her own personal frustrations and disillusionment at this life juncture. With her are three permutations of herself at different points in her life, two younger and one older. She is soon joined by her ex-husband’s brother and his younger self, and together they all engage in an extended discussion on what it means to grow older.

I’m 25. I’m young. I think about aging here and there, but I don’t worry about it much. I expect aging to be a trade-off of sorts. I expect to trade my healthy, muscular, able body in for wisdom, perspective, and maybe even some inner peace. I expect it to be challenging and relieving at the same time. If Night Falls is any indicator of whether my quixotic idealism is correct, I’m way off the mark. In Slater and Hébert’s eyes, aging is a process fraught with dismay and disappointment, regrets and nostalgia. Reacting purely to the content of the piece itself, I was discouraged by how dour the aging process is looking from the onset.

Along with my expectations regarding content, I had expected the piece itself to be equally rooted in dance and theater, perhaps dance more so, as it was performed at ODC, a venue typically reserved for dance productions. However I felt the piece was guided almost completely by the spoken text, leaving the dance to feel gestural, decorative, and not completely integral to the piece. One of the younger women never spoke, and I understand she was a designated dance component in the piece. However, with so much dialogue between the other performers I missed her voice. Vice versa I missed seeing the other performers move more. There was so much text about the changes wrought to a body as it ages, but it was never fully manifested physically: the younger and older cast members often did the same movements.

Thus my expectations led to my dissatisfaction. Had I no preconceptions about how much dance versus theater the piece would have, or what the message about aging would be, I might have come away from Night Falls much more enthused. Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s a way to rid one’s self of expectations.

Forever Incomplete

2011-09-15T20:53:00.000-07:00

Can process and product be mutually exclusive? When does something cross from process to product? Is it possible to present process as something distinct from product? Charles Slender’s FACT/SF sought to explore these concepts in its recent residency at CounterPULSE, which culminated in four performances of Pretonically Oriented V.3 this past September 8-11. I don’t know if Slender succeeded in presenting process, but his attempts leave much for consideration.

I recently finished reading The Price of Altruism by Oren Harman, which had absolutely nothing to do with these concepts of process and product, but which ended with a quote I find interestingly relevant: “What makes great works of art complete is that they remain forever incomplete. Explanations for events are at once myriad and mysterious; putting down a book, or walking away from a painting or a sculpture, or finishing listening to a piece of music, one always leaves with lingering thoughts that are neither questions nor answers.” I am struck by the notion that a piece of art cannot be completed or finished, as its reception is often just as much a part of the art piece’s history as its process leading up to its presentation. Rather, there is only the current evolution of the art piece at the time of presentation.

I don’t think too many people will disagree with me when I say Pretonically Oriented V.3 was incredibly demanding of its audience. There were times when there was literally no action happening onstage. The choreography seemed to explicitly give the audience nothing tangible to hold onto. I sat in the audience brooding over whether this was pushing artistic boundaries or simply poor consideration of the viewers (Would you pay to watch an empty stage?). Nevertheless we all sat there. No one started clapping or got up and left. I felt that either the audience must be particularly erudite and patient, or just polite and sleepy. The piece was tedious, difficult to meditate on, and generally, dare I say, boring.

However here I am a week later still thinking about it, so it must have succeeded in a way. When I saw the piece in an informal showing about a month ago, I could very well see it was in progress. Overhead lights, rehearsal clothes, and an after-discussion cemented the feeling of showing a work-in-process. When I saw the piece in performance, with costumes and lights and a full audience, that sense of process was diminished by the presentational aspects. For me, the process is in the product, and in a piece like Pretonically Oriented V.3 that had focused so intensely on showcasing process, the finished product felt like it had little to say beyond what its process had been. Although it was an intriguing exploration, I don’t know if process and product can ever truly be distinct. It appears that there has to be more driving and guiding process than just the process itself.

The Art of Wandering

2011-08-09T13:44:00.000-07:00

Dandelion Dancetheater and AXIS Dance Company recently teamed up to present The Dislocation Express on and near BART this past July 24, 27, 29, and 30. They dressed as gypsies, a wandering tribe of dancers. The title itself evokes a sense of nomadism; dislocation is out of place, and express is a fast way to get there. The piece began in front of the Ed Roberts Campus at Ashby BART and progressed to either the Walnut Creek BART station or the Powell Street BART station depending on the evening. Combining dance, theater, voice, and music, the piece altered between audience participation, civil disruption, and good old site-specific dance.

In contemporary culture the term “gypsy” connotes a whole assortment of interesting and not necessarily accurate stereotypes. From romanticized fortune-tellers bedecked in bells, to charlatans and swindlers unwilling to integrate into society, perhaps the most pervasive cliché about gypsies is that they are wanderers, people intentionally always on the move. What does it really mean to have nowhere to go? To choose to have nowhere to go?

I found it highly ironic that Dandelion and AXIS were evoking these thoughts of going nowhere as they shepherded the audience systematically from Ashby to Powell. However, I understand that it was the representation of the idea, not the thing itself, which the piece sought to represent. In other ways The Dislocation Express unintentionally became the real deal. A guard in Ashby BART sought to silence performer David Ryther’s violin playing on the platform. In compliance Dandelion director Eric Kupers asked the audience and performers, all of whom were dancing interactively, to hum loudly. In this way Kupers complied with the letter of the law but perhaps not with the spirit of the law, in something reminiscent of civil disobedience.

I was even more reminded of something akin to civil disobedience when we got to the Powell Street BART. The large rotunda area where Dandelion/AXIS planned on performing was taken by a busker, a young woman singing songs for pocket change. Buskers generally operate on a first come first serve basis, and while The Dislocation Express had permits and had obviously been planning for months, there was still an element of sabotage as the girl stubbornly refused to move and was eventually made to. It made me question who really has the right to a public area, a question well in keeping with space and place in connection to the idea of gypsies.

As the crowd of onlookers saw the busker finally relent and move, the performers paraded into the space, colorfully dressed and bedazzling in bells and ornaments. In contrast to the drab station and the commonplace clothes of the audience, the performers of Dandelion and AXIS looked like something out of another world. In the true spirit of gypsies, they didn’t conform to their environment.

I’ve seen a lot of work by AXIS Dance Company and by Dandelion Dancetheater, and both companies often tackle themes of not belonging and not conforming. Both AXIS dancers and Dandelions are pioneers in many respects in finding their own way of dancing and engaging with art. How very appropriate to evoke gypsies and to have samplings of civil disobedience in The Dislocation Express. It reminded me of a quote by J.R. R. Tolkien: “Not all those who wander are lost.”

Please Sit Back, Relax, and Enjoy the Show

2011-04-28T19:47:00.000-07:00

What am I seeing? Do I like what I’m seeing? What are the performers doing? What are they wearing? How are they lit? What emotions are being evoked in me? What formations, positions, and configurations are the performers moving through? Are they difficult? Are they pleasing? Am I enjoying watching the performers? Which performers stick out to me? Am I entertained? Do I want to see more? Do I want this to be over? What are my expectations? Are they being met? What is the point of this performance? What is trying to be achieved?

In the plethora of contemporary dance, dance-theater, and performance art being created in the Bay Area, I often sit through shows of abstract movement-based work asking myself the above questions to varying degrees. This line of questioning feels very cerebral and detached to me, often to the point where what happens on stage begins to feel irrelevant in any context outside of dance. But one piece of the many I’ve seen this past month felt like the antidote to this noncontextual barrage: Deep Waters Dance Theater’s Our Daily Bread, presented at CounterPULSE April 14-24. This show felt communal, tangible, and meaningful beyond a dance context.

Our Daily Bread was about food and the roles it plays in our communities. As each audience member entered the theater our hands were washed and dried by a performer. We were fed ginger, instructed to feed our neighbor angel food cake, and served split pea soup as well. Aside from the culinary perks of sitting in the audience, I also enjoyed that there was nothing esoteric about the show. It was simply about food and community; a celebration of culture and also a somber testament to our histories.

I appreciated the specificity: food. I became passionate about food a few years ago after being introduced to Michael Pollan’s writings. Food inextricably links people with each other, with the earth, and with our histories multiple times every day. It’s incredible. And for awhile during Our Daily Bread the usual litany of questions dropped from my head and was replaced by thoughts of camaraderie, satiation, celebration, tradition, toil, labor, fruit, and replenishment.

While I appreciate performance that challenges me to think in unconventional ways, I don’t think a prerequisite for unconventional thinking is abstraction. Our Daily Bread challenged my understanding of how food, dance, and our bodies are interrelated through completely tangible means. But more important than how I was challenged to think is how I thoroughly enjoyed myself, which I hope is the point of most performance anyway.

An Indictment on Boring Dance

2011-03-13T21:11:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it’s no wonder to me that the public generally associates dance with boredom. Time and time again I find myself bored at dance performances. And I’m a dancer. So I can hardly blame lay people for not actively seeking out dance more often.

I recently saw New York based choreographer Stephen Petronio’s I Drink the Air Before Me at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and although I don’t believe the role of a critic should be to acclaim or disparage a show according to their own personal tastes, I will say the show was incapable of holding my attention. Choreographically there was no arc, no catharsis, only an endless parade of solos, duets, and ensemble dances that went on for too long.

The larger problem is that this is a trend regularly manifesting itself in the dance world. I consistently see boring dance. A huge culprit for this is self-indulgence. It seems few choreographers have the wherewithal to know when their work should be edited. So often I get the gist of what’s going to happen in the first five minutes, and then watch a very predictable dance unravel. Because dance is engaging to create and perform does not make it engaging to watch.

The program notes told me I Drink the Air Before Me was inspired by 'the whirling, unpredictable, threatening, thrilling forces of nature'. If I was supposed to experience a microcosm of a storm onstage this was lost on me. The wholly abstract dance phrases seemed to have little reason for existing beyond demonstrating Stephen Petronio’s ability to create phrases and the dancers’ ability to execute them accordingly. In this light the performance was akin to a talent show. I’m not inferring that dance has to be literal or have an apparent meaning, but it had better have a clear purpose if it wants to hold its audience captive. So often dance seems to rely on the wow factor derived from the dancers’ ability to do things with their bodies the audience cannot. This generally ceases to sustain attention after a few minutes at most.

Thus can we really expect the public to attend dance shows spur of the moment and fall entranced? If I as a dancer and a dance writer regularly find myself bored and wondering what the point is, then I can hardly wonder at the alienating and indulgent qualities that keep audiences at bay rather than attending dance shows for sheer entertainment.

But when dance is good, boring is not even a consideration. While confined to the limits of time, space, and the human body, dance can at once transcend these limits to reveal the raw emotion, energy, and inherent humanity only available from a living, breathing, moving body. For the sake of the art form I hope more choreography begins aiming for this transcendence.

For The Grace of Ralph Lemon

2010-10-25T13:51:00.000-07:00

Ralph Lemon, the acclaimed choreographer/visual artist, presented How Can you Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere? on October 7-10 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. After the Friday show, Angela Mattox, the Performing Arts Curator, led a question and answer session with Lemon and the performers. One audience member asked about a section where video images of animals walked across a screen. First came a dog, then Lemon clad in a rabbit suite, then a flamingo, continuing with an assortment of animals including even a giraffe and a walrus. The question asked about the motivation of the scene. Jim Findlay, the video designer, responded that Lemon’s only direction had been to create grace. At this point Mattox, the curator, began to cry, touched deeply that an artist would strive for grace. The event was moving to witness, but I left with a nagging question: what exactly is grace?

Grace carries a variety of connotations. Lithe ballet dancers are described as graceful. Many religious denominations seek God’s grace. A grace period is an extension of a due date. But grace also seems to be something less tangible, a mixture of elegance, good favor, moral stamina, and honor. I don’t know exactly what grace is. I don’t know what it means to create grace, especially in a dance context. I don’t know if Ralph Lemon’s show achieved grace.

How Can you Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere? featured both a film with live narration by Lemon and a performance with dancers. In the film, Lemon talked about his eight-year collaboration with centenarian Walter Carter and his wife Edna of Bentonia, MS. Mirroring Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovksy's sci-fi romance Solaris, feeble and wobbly Walter and Edna reenacted some of the scenes in their mundane Mississippi home. In conjunction with Solaris’ romance between a cosmonaut and his dead wife and Walter and Edna’s enfeebled restaging, Lemon also spoke of the loss of his partner Asako Takami to cancer. The result was a meditation on love, loss, and reflections at the end of a lifetime.

The following performance component consisted of four distinct sections. The first was a grueling

tortuous dance that lasted 20 minutes. The dancers frenetically pushed themselves to exhaustion, endlessly throwing themselves through space with no seeming order. Succeeding that, performer Okwui Okpokwasili sobbed uncontrollably for eight minutes, her back convulsing as she faced away from the audience. This was followed by the above described animal video attempting grace. The show concluded with a contemplative sparse duet with Lemon and Okpokwasili. These four performance parts departed dramatically from the explicit film section, leaving the audience a performance section of perplexing bare minimalism.

Did this all add up to grace? What perhaps struck me more so than aspirations of grace was the sheer courage involved in presenting this material. It wasn’t created to be liked. It was created as a challenge, not to the audience, but to art itself. Can a twenty minute dance with no form that pushes the limits of exhaustion be sustained? Is it watchable? People walked out of the performance. It takes great courage to present work that is not innately likeable.

The piece was also filled with humility. Particularly in the film section, it was as if Ralph had laid down much of himself on a table before strangers, sharing his intimate experience with loss and sharing Walter and Edna’s lifelong voyage together. Not only does it take courage to make oneself vulnerable, it also demands humility.

I suspect it is near impossible to create work embodying grace, love, courage, or any of those noble themes much revered and venerated. But to paraphrase another point by Lemon in the question and answer session, it’s the struggle that’s important, more so than whether or not we succeed.

In The Name Of Dance

2010-05-13T15:13:00.000-07:00

It’s called Please Love Me. The name of it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, something of vulnerability and humility. A superficial list of its components only serves to reinforce this taste. Malinda LaVelle screams “Fuck You” to hysteria. Starkly naked and utterly nonsexual, Christian Burns duets with Andrea Basile. Kara Davis and Joy Prendergast seemingly combat, dodging and stopping each other’s limbs. But these elements are only a fraction of what I experienced on May 5th at the Headlands Center for the Arts. Watching The Foundry’s Please Love Me is a bit like reading Faulkner. It is exhausting. It is relentless. It is compelling. It demands the viewers’ engagement and delivers such breadth and sweep it is difficult to absorb. It is not akin to reading a gentler author leading the reader patiently through the plot. No, it promptly dares its audience to stay alert, attentive and involved in a highly focused mental state. Its delivery is powerful and resonant. It ends with more questions than answers.

Alex Ketley’s The Foundry presents Please Love Me as part of its ongoing project, Theater-Irrelevant, which, with digital media artist Les Stuck, explores putting dance performance in nonconventional dance spaces. An obvious consequence of presenting dance in nonconventional dance spaces is presenting dance to nonconventional dance audiences. This means people who may be unaccustomed to seeing dance and thus may have cultural preconceptions regarding what dance is. Aiming to create a piece that can be ported outside of the confines of the theater, The Foundry could have created any sort of dance piece and presented it in the variety of venues it will be performed in through the coming months and still have adequately explored dance in non-dance spaces. Instead they chose to create a piece that pushes expectations.

Thus perhaps the true brilliance of Please Love Me lies not in its audacious material, but in the dichotomy between the material and the intent of the project. The majority of the audience at the Headlands Center for the Arts was accustomed to and/or learned in the art of dance. Can this be said of all the audiences Please Love Me will reach if it is truly performed in non-dance spaces? And then what will the audiences’ reaction be when on top of seeing dance where they would not expect it, they see dance itself they would not expect? How then will Joy Prendergast’s unusual sounds and gestures read? How will Kara Davis’ and Christian Burns’ dialogued duet be received? How will Les Stuck’s projections be viewed? How will the man Malinda LaVelle randomly selects to dance with react to her?

The dance community probably has only itself to blame for many of the misconceptions and stereotypes surrounding dance. Dance can certainly be boring. I can attest to that firsthand. It can certainly be isolating. Who often goes to see dance but other dancers? I can hardly blame the greater part of the population for not knowing anything about dance outside of The Nutcracker production they saw on a second grade field trip. Thus I commend The Foundry; they aim to do away with both boredom and isolation in one fell swoop. Please Love Me is merciless. “Boring” is not built into its architecture. I am excited to follow Please Love Me into its nonconventional dance spaces and watch it wage war in the name of dance.

A dance about...boobs!

2009-12-14T16:50:00.000-08:00

This past Saturday the 12th I participated in “The Salon”, an informal evening presenting works in progress, hosted by LEVYdance at Studio Gracia. I performed in a piece by Malinda LaVelle, who also happens to be my roommate. Thus I might be a little biased. But I’m not planning on writing about how great Malinda’s piece was and how well it was received (even though these are truths). Instead, I want to discuss choreographic content. Malinda’s piece was about boobs. We danced to gun shots. I’m not kidding. Neither was she.

The piece generated a variety of reactions. One audience member thought it was about breast cancer. Another felt sure we should have performed topless. Many found it funny. A few thought it was ironic. One comment that struck me in particular said the choreography was daring, that it took risks. And I agree. It felt slightly risky dancing in it, standing there with all my ballet training, manhandling my breasts as if they were AK-47s. But I’ve been thinking, what good is art if there are no risks involved? It seems as though without risk, art is reduced to a craft, something to master and preserve. I think my latest definition to the age-old question, “What is art?” is that art has to be DOING something. It has to have some kind of intent, some kind of idea propelling it, something that wants to be shown, manifested, hidden, carried, mapped out. Art needs to arc. Art needs to say “I’m here, but what if I went there?” Did manhandling my boobs do that? Yes.

More absurd than a dance about boobs is the fact that it’s considered absurd. Every female has them. We’ve all noticed them, covered them, flaunted them. They’re there! It’s ironic that art is often about love, war, politics, religion; these nebulous abstract topics. Yet somehow it’s deemed risky to choreograph about flesh and blood, a body part half of the human population deals with.

So that was what Malinda LaVelle’s dance did: it addressed boobs. And she used four ballet dancers, because ballet isn’t limited to pirouettes and tendus. Ballet is a way of informing and moving the body. It isn’t stagnant. It isn’t archaic. It’s relevant and useful to all dances (especially boob dances) because dancers and choreographers continually draw upon training and background to further understand how to move the beautiful human body. It looks like boobs failed to be integrated into the dance syllabus in the past four hundred years (except for maybe Simone de la Getto). However, Malinda LaVelle doesn’t see why they shouldn’t be. Neither do I. So that’s something. That’s doing something. That’s making a statement, putting something out there, making a contribution to that ever elusive topic: art.