#movement description

[bakeitmakeitshakeit]

Troika Ranch's "Enter Comma Prepare"

First, small note:  quotation marks are not the proper way to denote an evening-length piece of work.  Just like you would for a movie or novel, that should have been Enter Comma Prepare, but I can't do that in a title.  I don't think.  Another note is that I should have written this way before--in general, you want to write up movement description and other things the second after you get out of a performance (which started at 8:00 March 2nd).  Dance and theatre both are under both the blessing and curse of being ghostly, ethereal performances.  It's there and then it's gone.  Video has done a lot to improve this, but not all performances are videotaped. 

And now: Troika Ranch's Enter Comma Prepare

Right!  This performance took place in several parts of the Kaul Auditorium on the Reed College campus.  To begin, the audience entered and mingled in the first part of the lobby.  Then doors opened to another part of the lobby, further back, where there are normally couches and chairs (removed for this performance) and we all shuffled in.  There was a moment's hesitation when we realized there was no seating and we had no idea of how to orient ourselves other than noting that the six dances were all facing the back wall.  In a sort of, "well I guess this is what I'm supposed to do" we lined up against the two longer walls. The room was lit only in UV lights, and the dancers were wearing decidedly home-made costumes that were faced with white and backed with black.  It was eye-catching, definitely.  The dance then consisted of, oh, a plethora of many dance styles.  This is why I should have written this sooner.  There was a lot of partnering and weight sharing, and occasionally the dancers broke to embrace or welcome an audience member.  The movements themselves were deliberate, neither slow nor fast, and performed with a blank, passive expression.  At one point near the end every dancer, linked in pairs (holding hands, I think), started kicking about in a 1920s Broadway showbiz sort of deal with manic expressions on their faces, the sort of crazy glee that lindy hoppers possess.  It was like they were meta-dancing.  Hmm.  Some other particularly interesting parts were when the dancers moved toward the audience--not particularly to interact with the audience, but instead to move past them to the windows, which they started kissing.  The intent on the part of the choreographer was to have the audience feel free to move around (hence no chairs) and thus not feel trapped by the advancing dancers, but that didn't quite happen--an audience member near me was buffeted between two dancers and was clearly uncomfortable with the interaction.  Personally, I thought it was awesome.  Performer/Audience interaction is like candy for me.

Soon after the window-kissing section, the ushers open the doors to the auditorium and a big, booming, god-like voice goes, "Audience: Enter.  Audience: Enter.  Audience: Enter," repeatedly.  As I do so, I notice that the chairs are arranged in groups of two, three, and four, facing all different directions.  The dancers are standing on the floor, not the stage, and are in similarly random positions.  There are many different pieces to this performance, and each slight change is marked by a "beep" in the soundtrack.  I would probably misinform you if  tired to remember them all in order, so I'll just give samples.  A computer-generated voice, assumedly randomized, called out a performer's name and a direction:  "Carla, northwest.  Jonathan, south," etc.  The performers then had to dance their way in that direction in a rapidly moving yet still performative way.  Another section:  Three dancers read into a microphone about Plato's cave, interspersed with a mechanical voice continuing the reading, while three other dancers worked about the southeast corner of the auditorium with movements ranging from rolling around on the floor to climbing five feet up on the rolled-back auditorium bleachers.  During another piece, ever dancer--scattered about the floor in different orientations--performed exactly the same movement sequence, though each one seemed to add in idiosyncratic slow or fast moments.  Another time, the beep sounded and all of the dancers jumped up on the stage, performing on the stage just as they had performed on the floor or in the lobby.  Up there, they had different group titles, such as "Royals," "Peasants," "Ladies," etc, and movements titled "Protect," "Disappear," "Enter," "Exit," etc.  "Enter" and "Exit" were particularly interesting--at first, before any dancer had "Entered," they all stood with their back to the audience, black clothing visible.  For "Enter," they walked in a circle to face forward, white clothing showing.  At least, they did for one section.  In the first section on stage, every dancer/group had the same movement sequence for a command (different sequences for different commands), but in the second section, after a beep, the dancers had a choice of the original movements, or their own interpretation.  This change was particularly interesting, because at first I thought that the dancers were basically told to dance when their name was called, and the verb after their name was irrelevant.  However, as time progressed, I noticed that the actions repeated, and knowing that the movement was still limited was much more powerful and interesting than removing most of the limits on this dance.  

Soon after that section, a new command, "Perform," was added to the repertoire.  Only two dancers could "Perform" at once, and the movement vocabulary that comprised these sections were much more, well, performative.  They were rounder, fuller, and more energetic than previous movements sequences.  After "Performing," the dancer found his or her way to the walls that backed the stage.  And then, at the very end of the evening-length piece, another beep sounded and all six of the dancers lined up downstage and repeated the 1920 showbiz movements from earlier.  The effect was hilarious--they were mocking, or at least referencing, the truly performative and spectacle-based dance of a previous era within a dance that eschewed all of those ideals.  And then, to signal the end of the show, the god-voice commanded, "Performers, Exit" and "Audience, Exit.  Audience, Leave.  Audience, Go," etc, and the audience, though chuckling, positively fled the auditorium.  I absolutely loved the way the choreographer played with the spaces and the scores and commented on the history of dance and on the audience-performer divide.  Her name was Dawn Stoppiello, and I think she's brilliant, even if this particular dance was not created to showcase her traditional technique.  Instead, it showcased her creativity and her creativity with limitations, which is  the most interesting way to do dance and theatre.  Limitations FTW, basically.

[bakeitmakeitshakeit]

Vertigo's "Mana"

So, I wrote a paper about the last post (Vertigo Dance Company's Mana) focusing on the movement and what it meant in a larger context, which I’ll post below.  I would like to add a disclaimer first, thought.  I am a student.  I am not a professional dance scholar.  There is no one right opinion in dance scholarship.  I am simply using this blog as a forum for my interests, aspirations, and inspirations, and as a way to compile my aspiring dance scholarship.  

Interdependence of Dance and Society at Large

    Mana, Vessel of Light, choreographed by Noa Wertheim and performed by Vertigo Dance Company, was an evening-length performance about interdependence within relationships.  The concert began at 7:30 on Friday, October 14th, at the Portland Performing Arts Center, and lasted approximately one hour.  Sitting in the balcony, I watched as lights went up on a unique set: a floor covered in white panels and backed by a giant white house outline, with a wide door cut into the very center.  The door and the wall were completely mobile.  The interactions of the dancers in pairs, variously-sized groups, and ensembles conveyed the importance of relationships and interdependence within society.

The lights fade up on a soloist, center stage.  He stands in one place, feet planted, and begins with a flowing arm movement—out, in.  Out, in.  While the arm motions grow in tempo and size, the lights spread and we can see a second dancer on stage, another male, who is sitting downstage left and just watching the first dancer.  By the time the first dancer has thrown the occasional side lunge, to facilitate the now large and powerful arm motions, the second dancer stands, reaches a hand out, and walks to the first.

The duet that follows is intimate and fierce.  It is unclear whether the two men are lovers, brothers, teacher and student, or father and son.  It is clear, however, that their relationship is an old and intimate one.  Their dance flows from anger to understanding, anger to peace, and back to anger as their motions go from violent aerials (the first man lifting and throwing the second) to relatively calm, subtle motions with a sidestep base:  weight center, weight left, weight center, weight right.  This is a movement motif seen throughout the men’s dancing.  But even in the midst of the passionate throws, it is clear that these two men rely on one another, for the aerials could not happen without the full and undivided participation of both of the dancers.

The rest of the dancers enter through the upstage center door.  They congregate, center stage, heads together and bodies hunched, like a weary workers’ version of the football huddle.  They turn and separate, arm raised in greeting or farewell.  The piece that follows is a strong ensemble piece, everyone repeating one or two movement patterns.  The motions that compose those patterns are athletic and enduring. Their bodies are strong and unashamed, their motion working motions: up, down.  Forwards, backwards.  The ensemble, as a family, is farming and cleaning and building their world.

Suddenly a girl separates from the crowd, her leaps wild and frantic.  One by one, the rest of the eight dancers follow her lead, until they join, hand in hand, into pairs.  Music reminiscent of traditional Israeli music weaves into the base score as the couples step around the room, shuffling in a traditional Israeli dance step: left shuffle left, right shuffle right.  It is almost a forward version of the side-stepping seen in the first duet.  Life is not just work, the dancers say.  It is release, play, society, and history.  It is the variable nature of relationships.  The dancers soon abandon their calm shuffling and pull one another upstage, again relying on each other in the violent-seeming actions.  But, back to work:  upstage, in a row, the dancers return to their working motions motif.

The piece undergoes a transition.  The men and two of the women repeat slow, careful movements while another woman slips unnoticed offstage and later reenters in a drastically different costume.  All of the dancers, before now, have been in large, flowing, and functional clothing:  sleeves have been at least elbow-length and the pants and skirts have been ankle-length and voluminous.  All colors have been muted: blacks and dark greys, with a few drab browns.  This costume is different.  Though it is still in black, the dancer is wearing what looks like underwear, a tight short-sleeve, button-up shirt, and a huge balloon, attached by strings to her upper arms and floating high above her head.  She looks like a caricature of a 1950s trophy wife.  The balloon pulls her up, uncomfortably: she’s up on tip-toe and her shoulders are raised, her movements stiff and constrained by the upward force.  All of the other dancers leave—except one.  One man stays, at first just watching this strange woman in their house, and then entering in an odd duet.  While the duet is almost a pas de deux, the traditional male support role is twisted.  She holds his head: is she comforting him, or constraining him while he resists?  Is he comforting or constraining her?  Though he does support her, quite literally catching when she falls, they also have separate, solo dances that are not a part of traditional ballet pas de deux.  At one point, he lifts her into a smooth aerial, but she covers his face, smothering and blinding him.  She, in her pantslessness and shiny balloon, is the ethereal, the sylph, in this family’s world of work.

The other males enter.  One takes her balloon and moves upstage to the wall; she wanders through the men, deliberate and sultry, before exiting.  A male quartet has the stage now, and their movements would make Ted Shawn proud.  They are hard, grounded, and virile.  With their heavy steps and long arms, they support one another in anger and violence—masculine is written all over this piece.  The side to side motions mentioned in the first male duet come into play again, and range from taps to leaps, and are repeated both individually and in couples, with the dancers relying one one another the travel farther.  Their motions, specifically the strong movements and their physical support, speak of daily toil and the interdependence life demands.

After a few other separate pieces, including another ensemble’s four-duet piece and a women’s piece made of powerful, masterful movements which the men watched from just beyond the house’s stage right and stage left edges, the dancers enter a unique duet-within-the-ensemble piece.  One man and one woman perform a duet center stage while the other six dancers do small, repetitive, unobtrusive movements while scattered, stationary, throughout the rest of the house.  The duet is violent and sexual, and while the man is usually the one in control, the one dealing out the violence (which is portrayed mainly in the forms of lifts and throws), the woman has some powerful moments as well, such as pushing him away.  The passionate yet shifting nature of the sexual relationship is seen here, represented in their powerful and violent movements, for violence and love are equally passionate.  At one point the woman lies on the floor and the man stands on her stomach, joining in with the rest of the dancers’ motion pattern.  His brief participation in the ensemble, as well as the placement of the duet in the midst of the rest of the dancers, places the sexual relationship in the midst of all of the other relationships, contrasting or collaborating with them.  All relationships co-exist.  The duet ends with movements reminiscent of Bausch’s Bluebeard: he straddles her and they move in pelvic-thrusting jolts stage left.

The relationship and power demonstrations begin again when one woman and four men are onstage.  The back wall, the outline of the house, tilts to run from upstage right to downstage left.  While the world is tilted, so to speak, the woman is in complete control of the rest of the dancers, though she spends more than half of the piece lifted into the air, at the mercy of the men.  When she is on the ground, she leads the group into a wedge formation, in which she is the lead dancer, and initiates a repetitive, cogent movement pattern.  And when the woman is in the air, several items combine to make her the leader of the movement.  The first is her stature:  she is regal, long-necked, and self-possessed.  In addition, the men treat her as if she is in charge, for the lifts and throws are not the violent ones seen in the passionate love-making duet, but are instead assiduous.  Finally, to make the relationship even more apparent, while sitting on one man’s shoulders, the woman leads him to and fro by throwing her arms and leaning in the direction he was to travel.  The woman is in the air on a throne of men, not in the air at the mercy of men.

At the end of this piece, the sole dance where a woman leads multiple men, the wall is returned to its normal, straight position.  There have been dances where only women have participated, dances where the man and woman seemed equally powerful, dances where the woman may have had more power than the man, and dances where the man seemed more powerful than the woman, but this is the only piece in which a woman is more powerful than multiple men.  And, because of that power dynamic, the world was so different that it had to change (portrayed as the wall).  

Soon after this piece, the dance draws the a close.  The dancers move upstage to stand just before the wall and repeat a movement pattern of strong, working motions and the side to side foot movements.  As they continue this pattern, the music fades and the dancers are kept in time by their own audible breath rhythmics.  Then, slowly, the lights fade and it is only after the lights have been out for a few minutes that the performance is at a close.

    Mana, Vessel of Light, is a piece that draws inspiration from the peoples’ daily lives.  These lives, however, are not shown as mundane and pedestrian—instead, the work and toil is important and powerful, and the relationships are especially emphasized.  Ranging from familial recognition to violent lovers to the entrancing ethereal, the relationships within the performance focus on the interdependence of all society members.  In love or in anger, society must work together to achieve something in this life.