Step Afrika is home this week. Catch this show!
Just as I sat down to get into it, the two hours were over. The whole evening moved and stepped from one piece to another. And, ATLAS is my new favorite theater to watch dance. If you haven’t been, you should experience it.
Step Afrika is at ATLAS - 1333 H St NE Thursday 5/31, Friday 6/1, Saturday 6/2 at 8pm and Sunday 6/3 at 4pm. visit Step Afrika for tickets and more info. Check out the review!
well, i’m about to head off for vacation–a little beach, a little family, a little this, a little that. can’t wait!
i probably don’t have time, but i had wanted to write about auditioning this week, what it felt like. i auditioned my solo on wednesday night for dance place’s new releases show, and boy am i glad that’s over! i barely ever get nervous before group pieces, even duets, but a solo is something different. i was pretty damn nervous, and sort of dreading the whole thing.
i walked in feeling prepared, but what worried me were a few technical parts that were a little tougher than the rest. in fact, though, they didn’t wind up being the main issue. what was an issue was my sense of presence. i really had felt that having a present, meditative style while performing would make all the difference, esp because that’s how the dance was created, with that feeling in mind. but i’d forgotten how difficult it is to be present performing in a new space, to two quiet people, all alone on a big stage and feeling anxious. it’s just hard to convey a sense of peace–esp with very little music! yes, there were long periods of silence in the piece; it had seemed atmospheric and peaceful and meaningful, somehow, during rehearsals. but when performing it in that daylit space, the whole thing suddenly seemed empty. not meaningful–rather, missing something.
i actually feel ok about my performance now, but i didn’t walk out feeling great. nonetheless, though, i do feel good about the whole experience. the original point of setting the audition date was to give myself an incentive to create a full piece, and i did. and i still like it. and, more important, i learned a few breakthrough things about my choreographic process and what i have to say. and all told, i somehow feel more like a dancer than i did a month or two ago. so all’s well.
but it still would be nice to hear a yes, rather than a no.
i just spent a bit of time on doug fox’s great dance blog. it is such a good site! right now he’s got articles up from the new york times (including an interesting one on what a dancer’s body “should” look like), and a link to a blog about a recent merce cunningham performance where audience members all listened to different music on provided ipods while dancers performed in front of them. interesting.
doug also features info on the dance exchange’s recent downtown performance, “pas de dirt” and an interview with peter di muro and lucy bowen mcauley. check it out!
this looks like a very cool blog on dance in nyc: http://danciti.com/. i haven’t yet had a chance to peruse it too much, but they linked to one of our posts and it looks like they focus on some similar topics.
also, i was forwarded 2 different emails about dance goings-on in nyc recently.
first, nyc’s first ever dance parade! yes, check it out at their website, http://www.danceparade.org/, or read the new york times article about it. it took place last weekend, and according to their website, had 8,734 dancers, 157 dance groups, and 49 dance styles participating. i love it!!! even though i probably portray myself on this blog as a modern dance snob, i’m not at all, and i love the idea that all kinds of folks who want to move their bodies in expressive ways came together to do something so exciting and so fun. why does nyc get all the cool events like that? can we in dc create something similar, or does this city just not have the creative capital, so to speak?
second, movement research is having their annual festival next week, may 29-june 7. info about it is available on their myspace page. frankly, i find the page a bit overwhelming and hard to navigate, but it seems to be the primary source of info on the festival. and what a festival! i haven’t had too much success yet in absorbing all the info in order to get a clear sense of what it’s about or what the themes are, but it looks intriguing as hell. it seems that a bunch of eclectic and lively dance and performance groups have come together and suggested performances, discussions and classes that they’d be interested in, and the result is a bunch of wild and unpredictable happenings all around nyc’s 5 boroughs. maybe i’m missing something, but it looks very exciting.
it’s these kind of events that i’d LOVE to see more of in dc. yes, it’s true that the artists and groups that seem the most fresh and “cutting edge” can also be the most flaky and unfocused–and unable to deliver–but i’m still deeply attracted to the energy that comes with fresh art and new ideas. i confess that i’ve had something like that in mind for the dc improv festival, but so far it really hasn’t come together. it’s not that people here don’t have the energy or interest in something new and different, but there just aren’t that many artists here, and for many reasons it’s not a great town for new and different art. i’m still hoping, though, and trying…anyway, folks will be performing outside of theatres in various places downtown, and that should definitely be cool.
i’m still thinking about modern dance and why the public’s interest in it has been waning over the past decade or more. there have been some good points posted here by a number of folks. one that i’d like to highlight was put up by micky w:
I think more modern dance choreographers have to start remembering that there is an audience out there without 20 years of modern dance watching under their belt. Much of it is so dang obtuse.
somehow that keys into a lot of what i think, and have thought in the past, about modern dance. i took a long break from dancing and remember seeing performances at that time that made no sense to me–and yet i kept trying to figure them out. now, of course, i realize that you don’t need to “figure out” a performance–you just watch it and enjoy it for what it is. the problem, though, is that that isn’t particularly clear to the non-dancing audience.
but i’m jumping ahead of myself. what i think about creating good dance is that it’s very hard, harder than writing stories or songs. good dance is about being non-verbal and abstract, and those are tough skills to conjure up in our very analytical, literal society. maybe you could say that it’s about using your right brain rather than your left. i honestly do think that most audiences recognize good dance, even if it’s kooky or trippy, but my feeling is that most dance is not that good. choreographers–who probably could be quite successful if they stuck with pure, meaningless movement–try to get to that abstract feeling by adding elements to their pieces that are non-sequiturs, that don’t make sense. think of the bizarre text or props that are frequently featured in performances, or the ideas that seem to be picked out of nowhere and don’t connect with any underlying themes in the piece. and of course, instead of deepening the piece, these elements just look contrived and self-indulgent, and wind up befuddling the watcher.
i don’t mean to be harsh. i’m guilty of this too. and i don’t know what the answer is–ultimately i guess it’s about the artist developing a creative process that is more successful for them. but it’s also about having more respect for the audience, i think. i know so many choreographers who not only strongly believe that “the audience can’t dictate the content” but seem to feel downright contempt for viewers who don’t ‘get’ them. audience members aren’t free of responsibility either, but they’re an integral part of the performance and whether they are moved by the performance is important. after all, we make dances in order to express ourselves and communicate, right? and if the viewer isn’t hearing us, something critical is obviously missing.
***
now i’m thinking that maybe i’ve been too harsh. maybe nothing’s wrong with modern dance. maybe it’s just become such a conservative country that people can’t appreciate it anymore…
Here’s a review of the Shen Wei performance that I attended with Amanda Abrams last week. (Tone is formal, as the piece was submitted elsewhere for a general audience).
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“Seeing” Stravinsky
You don’t have to drop acid to see sounds. To hear colors, well yes, maybe you’ll need hallucinogens for that, but Chinese choreographer Shen Wei, whose modern dance troupe performed Saturday night at the George Mason Center for the Arts, designs dance that lets us actually see the music accompanying it.
Some choreographers base their art on music, creating dance that moves to, with, against or around it. Others apply music after the fact, using a score that best depicts the general mood or tone of the movement. Then there are those that require no relationship at all between the dance and music. Shen Wei doesn’t really follow any of these approaches, employing instead a relatively novel, almost representational way of integrating music and dance. In “Rite of Spring” Shen’s dancers dance the music. And I don’t mean just dancing the rhythm. Shen’s choreography seems to actually portray both the contrapuntal and chordal complexities found in Stravinsky’s masterpiece. With this, he has achieved a sizeable feat; he has expressed musical structure visually. Windows Media Player screen skins try to do it; light shows at Phish concerts try to do it. But these are typically just ways of enhancing music. Shen creates a visual of what Stravinsky’s music looks like from a compositional perspective.
Like Stravinsky, Shen introduces a number of individually danced themes, both angular and serpentine. The phrasing is strikingly inventive. Throughout the piece, these themes develop and overlap, as solo dance morphs into group choreography, presenting the layers, harmonies, and dissonances that characterize Stravinsky’s composition. At one point, each company member executes a spiraling corkscrew movement, but at staggered intervals, painting a beautiful motion picture of the weaves that typify Stravinsky’s orchestration for high winds.
In another section, half the dancers ebb upstage left, while the other half flows downstage right, and then back against each other in the opposite direction and back again once more, not unlike a tide rolling in against a tide rolling out, and visually descriptive of the fluid collisions that permeate Stravinsky’s composition.
Representing musical qualities visually through dance is not new. As Stephanie Jordan notes of Balanchine’s choreography in Agon (also set to the music of Stravinsky): “the dance virtually begins to sound and music to move.” What’s different about Shen’s depiction of music is that it doesn’t necessarily represent the music that accompanies it during the depiction. The dancers didn’t perform the staggered corkscrew phrases at a point where the score interweaves winds swirling upward. The tidal ebb-and-flow movements that represent musical collision don’t occur at particularly collisional moments in the music. While Shen’s dance is in a sense representational, it is indirectly so.
Shen Wei’s “Folding,” can only be described as epic, but not for reasons normally associated with that characterization. Not a lot happens in the work, but it is this minimalist, spacious emptiness that lends the piece its grandeur. Few dancers fill the stage at any given time and Shen uses this to pull the space wide open. The vastness is reinforced — widened even — by the musical score. Bottom-heavy Tibetan Mahakala chants at high volume merge perfectly with the cavernous hall the dancers seem to occupy, the chanters’ tracheal chambers portraying through sound what the hall conveys through space. Unfortunately, the subsequent music of “holy minimalist” John Tavener oozes a bit much new-age spirituality, ironically detracting from the mystery created by the movement.
The surreal quality of “Folding” is its most obvious attribute. To create this other-world, Shen presents contemplative choreography. The dancers travel the stage like practitioners of walking meditation. (Had I been watching the piece on video, I might have assumed I’d hit the slow-motion button. At one point, I even wondered if this other-world was an underwater one, not an unthinkable possibility given the giant backdrop by Chinese painter Ba Da Shen Ren; the minimalist painting features several fish suspended in air. Or is that ocean?) Some of the surreal sequences effectuate illusions as well. One dancer, lying on his back, curls his uplifted feet sensuously up, over, and around each other, clearly mimicking the way central or East Asian dancers move their hands. Another dancer hunches over face-down, pulls her arms up behind her back, and points her fingers to the sky. The figure’s contortion make it difficult to know if she is bent over or bent backwards; because she’s wearing a sort of flesh-colored helmet, it’s not clear whether we’re looking at a face or the back of a head.
Shen Wei’s lighting is also illusory. Midway through the piece, we are treated to two different illuminations beamed at the same time. One focuses on the soloist, the other a chorus. The soloist is closely lit, while the chorus is presented more warmly, somewhat dimly, and in different hue. The effect recalls a flashback scenario for screen, despite the lack of video technology employed to create it.
in the style section of today’s washington post are reviews of two performances that took place this weekend. one was “dancing henry five,” at strathmore. it’s a show by david gordon, who was once a key member of the judson church scene, and it seems that it was an interesting show. my only problem with the review is that, from sarah kaufman’s writing, it’s hard to tell that it was a dance piece. the only thing she mentions that has anything to do with modern dance is a throwaway phrase that gordon likes pedestrian movement and lots of walking. ok, so was it a a theatre performance, then? this reminds me of her review of lar lubovich’s othello a few months back, which mentioned dance so little–and character development so much–that john was prompted to write a letter to the editor about it.
that’s not to put sarah kaufman down. just to point out that it might be nice if a dance review emphasized the dance part.
the other review in the post that stood out to me was of meisha bosma’s show at dance place, which i’d hoped to see (but went out of town instead). whoa–that was a pretty harsh review. i’m really not sure what to think. i’ve barely seen anything of meisha’s so i can’t respond in terms of substance, but the reviewer’s comments seemed a bit over the top and i certainly feel for meisha.
this is a great comment to a recent post on “dance IS the answer–right?” and is worth posting in its entirety. it also really brings up the question of what the dc dance community is willing and able to do in promoting the art form. definitely worth much more discussion…
–amanda
You are among the first I’ve heard articulate the observation that dance coverage is declining. It’s an issue that I’ve been dealing with for the past few years. And I’m seeing it now on a national scale as outgoing copresident of the Dance Critics Association (my plug here: www.dancecritics.org).
In the major local outlets is dance coverage declining? Yes and no. There is certainly a decrease in the number of articles, previews and reviews, of local companies. In The Washington Post Weekend section for example, as recently as three or four years ago, there used to be an On Stage column every week on dance (43 weeks a year) and invariably local dance companies would receive coverage. The section also used to do a small page three ‘critics best’ blurb almost weekly on a second dance event, often local. That coverage was an interview/preview that went in modest depth asking an artist to speak about process, work, etc. Many companies now garnering national coverage, touring nationally and internationally, were written about first there, among them CityDance Ensemble, Gesel Mason, NY2, Step Afrika, Bosma Dance, and more. But this consistency of dance coverage is a thing of the past, which is too bad.
Dance reviews of local companies and those written by freelancers in the newspaper of record have also been shrinking in the past decade as well: where once they were 400 to 500 words, now they come in at 300 or fewer words. But for non-readers, Style has increased pictures in number and size; often the photo is larger or equal in size to the review. Newspapers have a lack of confidence that readers will read lengthy reviews or lengthy anything nowadays. And, it seems, there are fewer dance reviews as well, and as companies will point out, without the review, how can one report back to funders and board members at the end of the season. Dance of national repute remains well covered by the chief dance critic in Style, so dance audiences should remain grateful for that. Obviously if local dance companies want review coverage, they’ll need to encourage it in other local outlets or online.
But dancers and companies have not made a compelling enough case that they should be covered. And editors haven’t heard much from readers clamoring for more dance coverage either, it seems, so with all the other issues they need to cover, why make space and time for dance. The community needs to find ways to leverage its audiences and participants to make a case for covering dance. First, read the coverage. Many dancers don’t read newspaper dance reviews and articles unless they know they’ll find their name or someone they know mentioned. Provide feedback to let editors and writers know you’re reading. This is relatively easy online with the comments link at the end of the article. This is also easy if you participate or submit in the weekly chats where dance might likely be covered: Weekend’s chat is every Friday at 11:00 a.m. and in the year or so that I’ve been loosely following it, the art-oriented questions or comments are mostly directed to theater, museums and galleries; only twice, maybe three times, has a dance comment or question come up. On Thursday’s at 1:00 p.m. there’s another “going out” chat that also might deal with dance, along with questions on what to wear to what bar or club. The chats are truly reader comment driven.
Finally, the dance community is going to need to find other ways of marketing and promoting itself via social networking, viral marketing, online presence and other print publications outside of the major daily newspapers. Dancers and companies should read and support publications that cover what they want, whether online, like the locally published website Danceviewtimes.com or Dance magazine or Dance Spirit or whatever other publications you find cover the most of what you want covered. And if you see something you like let the editor know. If you see something missing, also let the editor know.
I am convinced that there will continue to be audiences for dance in the future; small as they might be. Popular culture suggests as much: dance is everywhere on television and youtube from Dancing with the Stars to Burger King commercials to the Oscars. And while Anna and Joan might be right about dance as a field lacking in new ideas, they miss the fact that there are always new audiences even for the same old ideas. Generations grow up with no sense that the cool stuff Pilobolus did on the Oscar telecast evolved from an early-70s collaborative choreography collective for example so it’s cool and new to them. Ballet companies know this instinctively from their annual Nutcrackers: there’s always a new six-year old out there to marvel at the wonder of it all from the gracious Sugar Plum fairy to the marvelous mice and magical theatrics of it all. Other forms can heed this lesson: young audiences, new audiences are out there. They just need to be found and brought in for the experience.
If you asked me today about the future of dance criticism, though, I’m not so sure I could be so positive. I’m skeptical that there will be outlets for professional dance writers in the future, save for the very few in New York and, I hope, in DC. Blogging and online publications are fine for hobbyists, but as a profession, just as Martha said it takes ten years to make a dancer, it takes as much as well to make a critic, at least one who writes with clarity, understanding of the past and vision for the future.
I wish the DC dance community much luck and success in the future.
Lisa Traiger
very trippy but very cool. check out this youtube of sankai juku.
this is what i love about modern dance–that it can be so trippy and so varied.
i don’t have too much to say right now, but one thing i’d wanted to highlight was the whole “dance is the answer” program that’s been going on and is sponsored by pretty much all of the main dance studios in town, as well as dance/metro dc. i know i’m late in highlighting it, and in fact i don’t know all that much about it, but what i think is cool is simply that it’s a marketing effort to highlight how great dance is and how much it can add to our lives.
probably just about everyone who’s reading this loves dance in some form and feels like it gives them something completely unique, so i’m speaking to the converted. but i certainly know a number of folks who were previously nondancers but whom dance really spoke to. after all, just being able to get out of one’s head and into the body is such a relief sometimes! yesterday i watched people on connecticut ave and was amazed at not only how out of shape most folks were, but also how terrible their posture was. and how so many of them were leading with their heads, physically, in the same way that most of us do more metaphorically. we’re out of balance, and dancing helps us realign ourselves in a number of ways.
and yet dance coverage in the post and most papers or other media seems to be shrinking. has dance lost its way–is that why people don’t seem to be looking for it or even responding to it? i’ve heard here and there that maybe modern dance has in-accessibilized itself, to the point where the public not only doesn’t “get” it, but also doesn’t derive much satisfaction from watching it. i know joan acocella of the new yorker has pointed out (in paragraphs i’ve copied here, i believe) that modern dance and music seem to have parted ways, and that the public misses that former successful pairing. and anna kisselgoff, former dance critic for the new york times, wrote an interesting article (that i can’t find now on the web) about how there haven’t been any fresh ideas in modern dance in the past decade except release technique and contact improv. is that true?
what i’m wondering is why this is, and what’s going on. is this just a sign of an unbalanced society that expressive movement has little place, or is it true that modern dance has lost it’s way?
image: detail of installation by Bronwyn Lace