A Midwinter's Night Wet Dream: Fullstop's "Foreplays" in the Galapagos, Feb. 8 - 23

“They be scared and lonely. “

So says Michael Micalizzi as the thug wannabe Mikey in Patrick Shaw’s “Mad Twitterpated,” directed by Alexandra Bassett. He pleads this in reference to the orphaned bear cubs he has been cluster adopting over Facebook on behalf of Cliff Campbell’s character Clifford. But his observation goes far beyond its immediate context.

(l to r:) Caroline Calkins as Girl, Michael Micalizzi as Mikey; Cliff Campbell as Clifford in Patrick Shaw’s “Mad Twitterpated,”
all photos by Brian Hashimoto

It seems to be a (mostly urban) jungle out there for most of the young lovers, or rather love aspirants and acolytes, who strutted their hours upon the stage, screen, aisles, balcony and waters of Galapagos Art Space in February in Fullstop Collective’s Foreplays. The eight brief plays, two short videos, and live musical interludes that comprised this showcase on the Mondays bracketing Valentine’s Day, provided a mid-winter night’s scheme of the trials and tribulations of romantic love among a certain slice of the population in a highly mediated age. If most of the characters find themselves lost in the woods and among the thickets of hook ups and hang ups in a bewildering array of polymorphously perverse potential permutations, then perhaps we can sympathize with their desire to hang on to the cuddlier, if stuffed, versions of lions, tigers and bears with which they grapple, even as they long for each other.

So if Cliff and Mikey’s play within a play involves dream visualization projected via, uh, Droid, and ends with kids and a mortgage, their confusion cannot be considered uncommon. Consider the women in Lillian Meredith’s “there is no part of me that wants to have sex with you right now and yet here we are.” They confide in one another that they have never had an orgasm during sex, simulate coitus with their giant teddy bears, have trouble deciding whether they want it “hard” or “soft,” and rant about being insulated, via Midol, from the emotional roller coaster of their own natural cycles. They ponder existential and psycho-political questions around penetration:

(Above r:) Sarah Ann Masse posts her panda in Lillian Meredith’s “there is no part of me..."

After admitting to her friend that penetration is what she wants from her lovers, Lauren Weinberger’s character frets that, “maybe that’s scary. Maybe that’s not the healthiest way to have a permanent and meaningful relationship with someone – to have them constantly be inside you but you’re never inside them. I mean, … the problem I keep running into is how can I ever have an equal un-patronizing, non-sexually frightening relationship with a man when I really really want him to dominate me and pound me into tomorrow?”

Sarah Ann Masse’s character thinks her friend may be, “doing [her]self a big disservice thinking this way….

“Well, I mean, you’ve just completely negated for yourself the possibility of ever having a permanent, sexually satisfying relationship with anyone….
“including yourself.”(l to r:) Laura Wiese, Lauren Weinberger, Sean McIntyre and Sarah Ann Masse

The expectations and the etiquette of politically correct sex in an epoch of texting, drinking binges, supercharged sex toys, internet porn, post-feminist and post-Freudian politics, and pop psychology emerge as preoccupations in Brian Hashimoto’s “porn.edu,” and Bassett’s “Lust Trust,” directed by David Jaffe. The latter two of these themes also crop up with less contemporary reference as kinky Viennese proto-fascist subtexts in Benjamin Smolen’s “The Lewis Family Waltz,” directed by Shaw, with its dancing couples stuttering and undone over the name “Germany,” and Lucy Gillespie’s mock-historic “Fore-Shadow-Play.”

Louiza Collins and Conrado De La Rosa with other cast members in Benjamin Smolen’s “The Lewis Family Waltz,”

The first three of these have all been created with imaginative theatrical conceits and hint at the range, if not always the reach, of talent that Bassett, as artistic director of Foreplays, has deployed in challenging her collaborators to bring this showcase to life. That talent achieves its fullest realization in her staging of Anton Handel’s “Analogue,” which uses the formal stage, the exposed areas of wading pool over which Galapagos has suspended its orchestra-level booths, and the railings and ledges of the surrounding balcony to weave an Avatar meets Matrix style videogame fantasy into a family sitcom all within a theater artist’s restaurant day job narrative. Here the spirited performances by Celeste Arias, Analise Hartnett, Meredith, Scott Morse and Brenden Rogers meet Bassett’s creative handling of Handel’s script in the evening’s most ambitious spectacle.

To be sure, the allure of ambition and energy emerge as the hallmark of this long evening even if the short videos “Hobo Proposal” by Ironic T-Shirt, and the satirically sharper “Call My Boyfriend,” by Diana Wright, as well as the soul cover sets by the quartet Quiet Loudly might have been more imaginatively integrated to facilitate the flow of events and interactivity. Bassett and her collaborators sometimes betray a literary and theatrical reverence that smells more of the perfume of a fine liberal arts education than it does of teen spirit, but the strength of their cooperative rests in a sense of shared adventure and risk. The more they continue to challenge each other, and to raise their realization to the level of their ambition, the more Fullstop will distinguish itself as a collective not only worth watching, but dating long term.

(Above:) Celeste Arias and Scott Morse in Anton Handel’s “Analogue,”

Three places in the Art world - "Denim" at 80WSE

When I think back on Denim, the exhibition curated by David Rimanelli, NYU visiting assistant professor of art history and Artforum contributing editor, February 2 - March 12, at the University’s 80WSE gallery, a couple of images, a film and a bowl of chocolate coated raisins leap to mind. And then I think of the people. Context is king.

The first of the images happens to be one of the late Karlheinz Weinberger’s gelatin silver prints, a set of which took up an entire large wall in the first interior gallery. Titled Männlicher Akt, the image in question dates from around 1975, and depicts a somewhat hairy 20’s something male nude, glancing offhandedly towards the camera/viewer. His tattooed arms and hands frame a slouched torso and his flaccid, ample cock and balls rest within the V of his thighs, which spread to straddle the platform, covered with a striped fabric, on which he sits.

I had just come from the large gallery 1, its picture window looking west across Washington Square, where the growing darkness of the winter evening seemed to mimic the sky-to-midnight blue shadings of Jack Pierson’s or for mercy, a more than 30 square foot folded pigment print from 2009. This piece fairly dominated a room in which Tom Burr’s construction Slacks, from 2008, and Rob Pruitt’s pair of blue jeans and concrete benches from his 2006 Esprit du Corps provided counterpoint.

Right below: Jack Pierson's "or for mercy" 2009

The gallery’s press release had offered the following:

“Denim’s cult status as a rebel uniform emerged in the public mind largely through classic Hollywood cinema—for instance, Marlon Brando in The Wild One, James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, and Marilyn Monroe in The Misfits, and later as the preferred style for certain subcultures, for example gay subculture, as can be seen in Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising and Kustom Kar Kommandos; or, returning to Hollywood, William Friedkin’s controversial Cruising.

“In DENIM, these cinematic references commingle with denim’s “high-art” associations, which have become ingrained through the ‘60s image of the “artist-worker,” exemplified by minimalists like Robert Morris, or by Carl Andre, habitually attired in overalls. Andy Warhol is a key figure in this respect, both in his own sartorial inclinations but particularly in his art and films.”

Rimanelli’s exhibition seemed to trade on these juxtapositions while implying and perhaps provoking a series of questions using our familiar relationship a fabric as a point of reference, or, if you prefer, departure. Hell, the jeans encasing Burr’s bent kneed concrete represented the only real denim in the show. Meanwhile Warhol, represented at the Gallery by his early film Blow Job, (1964), and a framed 1971 record jacket sleeve for the Rolling Stones’ album Sticky Fingers, complete, we’re told, with working zipper, made his cameo count with only a practical picture of pants on a commercial art product and a hint of no pants in action. Warhol at NYU? What a way to make the most of your Lady Gaga moment.

A concern with fashion, in fact, both actual and artistic/cultural, lay just below the surface in this runway of art featuring work in many media from 11 artists and ranging over the last half century. That would place the work in response to the “emergence” referenced in the press release, but squarely inside the “ingraining.” Said to have been originally inspired in part by the guns prominent in the Export performance artist’s work of the late 60’ and 70’s, the show veered instead towards the spectacle of artists’ depictions of our meta erotic fascination with what we wear and how we let it represent us. Thus we have Valie Export's gelatin silver image Genital Panic, 1969, from the Action Pants series, in which she has photographed herself with her crotch partially exposed while holding a rifle – a proto Patty Hearst.

Talking ‘bout a revolution, well, you know, the press release mentions that, too:

“The artists in DENIM explore the multifarious connotations of a material that began its life as a fabric for work clothes, but has become, over the past few decades, a material for fashion, both instant and high-end couture. For Rimanelli, denim not only refers to fashion but also functions as a psychic material, sheathing ideas that range from the erotic to the implicitly revolutionary.”

Multifarious connotations sheathing ideas? Sounds erotically revolutionary to me. But then again so do work clothes, at least in this context. Standing among the elements of Mike Smith’s single channel video installation Secret Horror, 1980, I found myself dipping in to the bowl of chocolate covered raisins and coffee beans, thoughtfully provided as part of the piece. Yes, Virginia, you can eat art, even as you begin counting the patrons at the opening decked out in denim, and beginning with yours truly.

After all, ain’t it the people with their romantic hopes and dreams of better living through cotton and commerce that make all this worthwhile? Mind the gap, and while we’re counting, recall that old perhaps apocryphal slogan of the French Situationists from roughly the same time period referenced in the emergence and the ingraining: “Désirs érotiques saper les fondements de l'ordre établi [Erotic desires undermine the basis of the established order].”

I slipped in through the curtain cordoning off the gallery screening Blow Job from the one containing Secret Horror. I tuned in to the small gestures of both the movie and the mostly student/academic crowd. In the few times I’ve visited 80WSE, I’ve become impressed with it as a jewel box for quirky and provocative little exhibitions introducing the younger artists now making their way through the academy to Denim, Stuart Sherman and the like, even as it adds its soft spoken voice to the loud and crowded New York art circus. Now it stands to serve in turn, in its current annual MFA show, as these student artists’ portal opening on to this fabulous fashion city’s art scene.

Wandering back to the first interior gallery, I encountered the publicist Deborah Hughes and the two women from her firm helping her handle PR for the opening. All exuded a cool and casual elegance in their no-nonsense pony tails, figure flattering sweaters, and heeled boots under, you guessed it, well fitted designer jeans. These women service the real fashion world and their presence and their attire (their uniform; their work clothes, actually) seemed to point many of the questions the show begged to ask. If anything comes between them and their [you name the designer], it would truly have to be a work of art.

Studies in Whimsy and Flesh: dear peter, love nora @ 100 Grand, August 28

The first hint of whimsy arrives in the form of the riot of old fashioned table lamps, complete with shades, hung upside down from the ceiling and replacing the normal lighting in the main dance space of the second floor loft at 100 Grand St. in Manhattan. Chairs for the audience have been ranged along the windowed wall overlooking the eponymous street, and at a ¾ angle in the loft’s southeastern corner. Facing this latter quadrant after the lights dim and then resume their warm glow Peter Chamberlin begins “19/20,” a 6 minute solo that sets the tone for an engaging evening of dance exploration.
 
Peter Chamberlin in "19/20"
photos by Hope Davis

Chamberlin’s work features the focused miniaturized quality of etudes. But these studies exhibit technical and compositional acumen of a budding master.  In “19/20” he appears to lay a repeating series of 19 patterns for the upper body: head, torso, shoulders, arms, hands , over 20 variations for the legs and particularly the feet. The shifting transitions from one combination to the next steadily increase in tempo to match that of the quickening staccato thump underpinning Sam Crawford’s chordal accompanying recorded score.
 
“Untitled” pairs the radiant and articulate Shayla-Vie Jenkins with the coolly articulate Hsiao–Jou Tang in patterns that go from head and shoulders to feet in poses and walks shot through with swift silent and limber side falls and rises. The dancers provide such a visual and kinetic feast in the robust suppleness of their realization of Chamberlin’s choreography that even the simple crisp change of a walking pattern from vertical to horizontal orientation across the stage registers with the force of revelation.  Like the dancemaker, these women make maximum use of their fabulous feet.
 
Having watched with interest Nora Petroliunas’ work as a principal in the artistic directorship of the collective pocket engine, I stood unsurprised at intermission as the audience received square pieces of scrap paper from her dancers along with instructions for rearranging itself.  Pocket engine’s piece(s) had included roles for the audience and innovative use of the space. 
 
Once the chairs had been replaced in a U-shaped, ¾ in the round configuration; the curved end facing 100 Grand’s mirrored wall, the question of a vantage point became an intriguing one.  I determined that a standing spot next to the full-sized litter basket at the bottom of the right hand arm of the U allowed an excellent view of the space including the entire audience with and without the use of the mirrors.  It also took in the full span of the windows above Grand St., one of which promised to figure in some way in what would come.
 
Almost directly in front of me, at the edge of the main performance area, stood a decorative cast iron coat and hat stand with a yellow cotton rain coat hanging from one its curved prongs. In the far right corner, similarly situated, a four foot tall artificial Christmas tree festooned with ½ pint lavender milk cartons awaited its cameo.  Three large cereal boxes occupied the opposite corner.  Origami cranes strung in spiral climbed the floor stand of an empty hanging bird cage by the one open window.
 
(l to r) Peter Chamberlin (obscured), Tess Igarta, Sarah Bodley, Hsiao–Jou Tang
The six dancers, 4 in white dresses or skirts, 2 in white pants and shirts stand in the space facing in several directions. First 3, and then 2 more fall into motion as Saul Simon MacWilliams' recorded score brings the opus “goose” to life. Throughout the first musical segment, Lesley Garrison stands her ground while Sarah Bodley, Tess Igarta, Tang, Julia Burrer, and Chamberlin fly through a series of backwards, forwards and side runs and falls, turns, and twists in patterns that remind me of choreographic palindromes.
 
The piece develops in trios, duets and solos in a poetry of earnest playfulness. Petroliunas proves as masterly in presenting each of her dancers as individual movers as she does in compositional craft.  She also displays a penchant for whimsical distraction and displacement.  After Burrer and Igarta have engaged in a solo-duet-solo sequence the rangy Burrer dons the rain coat and begins pulling a seemingly endless supply of stainless steel tea spoons out of various pockets.  These she hands to individual members of the audience.
 
We’ve come to a pause. Tang and Bodley ask us to take out our scrap paper and lead us in an attempt to create origami frogs. The others collect them in the cereal boxes.
 
Chamberlin and Tang dance a charming Fred and Ginger style duet, complete with soft shoe.  The milk cartons come off the Christmas tree to be distributed to the audience members lining the windows. Inside each, they find a note instructing them to go to the fire escape window and look down. Several climb out onto the balcony. One later informs me that she watched four dancers perform in sneakers on the opposite sidewalk of Grand Street.
 
The dancing progresses with a steady and formal attention to its compositional development.  Figures I recall from earlier work come and go in lines of dancers, designs for soloists, duets, trios, ensembles. Bodley, Burrer and Tang mount the fire escape and “release” the origami cranes from their string. Garrison pulls individual members of the audience out to shadow the dancers original positions onstage.  Each time she finds herself hurled aside and displaced by another dancer. When all the doppelgangers have taken their place, she can rest at last, secure in her own.  The "goose" comes home.

(l to r) Julia Burrer, Tess Igarta, Hsiao–Jou Tang, Lesley Garrison (in silhouette)
 
Petroliunas has achieved a remarkable balance between challenge and accessibility, formal rigor and serious play, and a sense of intimacy within an experience of community.  With “goose” she has also announced her arrival in Manhattan as a choreographer of daring and whimsical imaginative gifts.

Dumb Show Smarts: Lucy Gillespie's "Driving: a Lesson"

photos by Brian Hashimoto
“Fucking Paki driving instructor!” 
 
Lucy Gillespie, as the character Julie, spits out these words in the climactic and penultimate line of her 15 minute Driving: A Lesson. The play premiered on the program of Riant Theatre’s Strawberry One Act Festival at the Theatre at St. Clement’s on August 15.
 
The minute long denouement that follows takes place in silence as Julie and Ranit (Fawad Siddiqui), the older man she has sworn at, exchange places in the learner vehicle they have occupied.  The only glances they have cast at each other during this uncomfortable interval have been sidelong, as they both regard the precipice of the chasm that has loomed up between them.
 
Siddiqui mimes the re-attachment of his shoulder harness and the re-engagement of the car’s ignition, while Gillespie’s Julie sits motionless.
 
“Seatbelt,” Ranit reminds her.
 
The driving instructor’s warning might have served for the audience as well.  Over the course of their interaction we have had ample opportunity to watch Julie’s sense of outrage build at the casual cultural sexist arrogance of this family man, who thinks nothing of speculating on the menstrual status and practice of this suburban London university student:
 
“I bet you use a tampon during the day, and a towel at night.”
 
She has retaliated by suggesting an appropriate intimate location in which he might bury the former. 
 
He has also revealed the humiliating frustration inherent in his servile role as driving tutor, despite his advanced degrees in Economics, English and European Literature, placing his own car at their service in the bargain. Julie’s major in History will not save either of them from that which they find themselves destined to repeat.
 
Siddiqui imbues Ranit with a convincing sense of moral myopia inside a physical presence that suggests a full communion with his character’s body.  When he lays his arm along the seat behind his charge’s back he creates a vague sense of casual creepiness only heightened by his character’s apparent lack of awareness of, or concern with, boundaries.
 
Gillespie’s Julie seems much less at ease.  She hunches forward at the wheel; her voice strains, rises and falls in pitch as much as her arms do in the mime sequences in which she turns an imaginary steering wheel.  I wonder how these two smell to one another.
 
Director Brian Hashimoto seems to have striven to heighten the intimacy of the situation by enclosing this pair behind 4 black theater set cubes stacked to create a kind of dashboard square.  Unfortunately, this cuts off the audience’s view of his player’s bodies below the ribs, forcing us to work with only half the physical information. 
 
The lack of a practical steering wheel created a distracting sense of struggle in the mime.  And although the sound cues for door openings and closings came off perfectly, the attention afforded their frequent repetition made them appear precious. The director, however, has a good eye for movement and the right ear for silence.
 
Gillespie’s Driving, in its first incarnation, stands as a lesson in theatrical shorthand with hints of full-fledged brilliance.  She has sketched the essence of characters whose spirit seems willing to emerge, but whose flesh will require work to shake us as profoundly as they do in that silent minute. 

Technique courts Bliss in its dance: making love and art in lead/ follow

by guest writer Liz Miller: author and blogger of Dance Is Love

photo by Mike Howard
The genre of dance I love best involves leading and following. It is a partner dance called the lindy hop, which can be roughly described as an intense form of swing dancing. Despite the terms, leading and following do not denote dictation of the dance by one person and compliance by the other. A good leader generates power and direction. He may provide acceleration or deceleration while suggesting trajectory. A good follower stays true to these parameters, which may shift unpredictably.
 
Artists understand that diligent study of technique sublimates the tools necessary to create powerful expression. However, disproportionate focus on mechanics can obscure or cancel the overall effectiveness of a piece. Ideally, a command of technique simultaneously removes it from view and facilitates the experience of seamless and shining truth.
 
Mainstream culture tends to emphasize a dichotomy, particularly in dance, between practice and abandon. “You can’t think too much. You just have to let it flow,” runs the conventional wisdom, particularly in regard to following in partner dancing (usually the woman’s part). This idea covers half of the story at best. My study of and devotion to dancing has taught me that greater skill enables greater passion and fulfillment. Although I am a professional, I know many hobbyists who have experienced the joyful moments of expression and connection for which we all pine; for which we all live, as a direct result of studying dance technique. 
 
On the social floor, dancing may appear as a specific sequence of rehearsed moves. Most likely, the dancers have not practiced the sequence together but rather the mode of communication - leading or following or both - with other partners whom they encountered in the social dance scene. Leading and following may be compared to conversation. Most of us don’t rehearse dialogues or speeches before we go out to meet with friends. At the same time, we know that the more we practice language, the richer our conversations become. After lindy-hopping with an almost perfect stranger in a bar somewhere not my hometown, I usually hear someone ask, “How long have you two been dancing together? You just flow so well.”
 
The word flow is used consistently to describe even the most ordinary of social dances. Fancy tricks and footwork have no impact unless under girded by solid partnering. People talk excitedly about the flips or the kicks they saw, but they might not have enjoyed watching these moves without the snap, crackle and shape shifting energy of lead/follow.
 
The following excerpts from my memoir, Dance Is Love, illustrate different ways in which leading and following heighten the experience of life. The book is about my passion for and compulsion to dance. Partner dance can highlight sensuality and sexuality. Other joyful and even transcendent emotions - those that pave the way for personal growth, learning, and understanding - can be felt as well. Read additional excerpts at www.danceislove.com. `````````````````````````````````````photo by Mike Howard
 
Lead/ follow in lindy hop can be...
 
...a crucial component of art:
Kendall and I have worked considerably on the entrance into tandem Charleston - that favorite lindy hop move in which the leader dances behind the follower, both of them doing the Charleston. At the snap and direction he provides, I back into him. His hands connect to mine and our arms become springs through which his body can incite the next variation.
 
When we do this entrance correctly, he can lead turns or jumps at the same instant that his hands catch mine. All the while I must actively integrate the connections within my own body, and between my feet and the floor, so as not to lose a drop of that precious, exciting, thrilling momentum. Ideally we are like a machine in which no energy is lost to entropy. He is the dreamer and I am the dream; he is the driver and I the perfectly tuned sports car on the mountain road.
 
We need each other to make the ephemeral, spontaneous art that has claimed our lives. Even during previously determined, arduously rehearsed choreography, I must still follow his lead. Otherwise power is lost, little mistakes become deadly, and worst of all, the feeling is all wrong.
 
...a transcendent experience:

Jake led me in the most melting, slow, perfectly timed dance of my whole life. Literally and figuratively, he cradled me, supported me through every single little ball-change, pirouette, or twist I felt like doing, added his own brilliant lock steps and drops, dragged me around, dipped me, bumped me into the air and braked my landing. My dewy eyes tracked over a green line painted on the floor as I focused on following, and I felt something I never had before. I felt truly full. Hungry, overtired, but absolutely full.
 
The ever-present internal void was gone. This is the void I face when attempting to surmount even small obstacles in the artistic process. It threatens to engulf me in emptiness, in feelings of worthlessness and despair; it drives me to fill my life with distractions. I am so used to it being always there that its absence gave way to a completely foreign joy I will never forget. In a few minutes this experience was over: the fate of all dances.
 
...love:
Kendall started with an in connection, coaxing my chest onto his chest. The first time he had taught me that way to connect, we were preparing to teach a blues class that had been requested by some of my students.
 
“First we show them how to breathe together,” he’d explained. This had taken place in my studio at home; Peter had been at basketball practice.
 
“Okay,” I’d said.
 
“You come in. I put you here. We shouldn’t have to use our arms.” He let go of my back as I leaned into his chest. “Now you try following my breathing.”
 
“Meaning I inhale and exhale at the same time as you?”
 
“Yeah.”
 
You’re kidding, I’d thought. The top of my head met the lower side of his jaw and I could feel and hear his gum-chewing. The breathing did help me to follow, though. Even our students didn’t mind tuning in to each other this way, the next evening in class. I chalked up their gameness to the ice-breaking activities I had planned and executed beforehand: playground interactions like pushing on each other’s hands, then one partner moving side to side, trying to prevent the other partner from passing.
 
So, last night, at the Monday night dance, Kendall began with an in connection, walking forward. He moved my legs with his. I love you, I thought blissfully. Oh, the thrill of blues: elongated, melting, yet tolerable: space for strength and surrender, anchored and floating at once, time for crisp direction changes and slowly-unfolding trajectories, for extra spins and for be here on this foot now.
 
Kendall led ochos - in which I swish each leg in turn to cross in front of the other, a difficult move from Argentine tango that all the lindy hoppers try but few accomplish.
 
“Those felt really good,” he remarked, although to me they were just as good as always when he leads them, and I kept going; he lifted me so that my legs swung in a slow 180-degree arc before placing me on my left foot. We’d worked on that one.
 
...a study in finding happiness:
When good following is this important, we girls have quite a conundrum. Trying is not quite the right thing to do. We have to be: ourselves, the moment, the music, the boy’s dream - all in order to fulfill our own. We must detach from the thing we so dearly desire: in this case, the most sublime dance possible. Be now, I ordered myself, willfully shutting out past and future. It became a mantra.

photo by Jaclyn Gavino 
“Pardon me,” the singer crooned, “but I’ve gotta run/ The fact’s uncomfortably clear/ Gotta find that old number one/ And why my angel eyes ain’t here.”
 
One of my best relationships was undone by this song, when, from the back of the Student Center in the fall of 1993, I heard my favorite musician sound check that melodic line on his tenor saxophone.
 
Now, at Blues Cafe, I let Jake do what he wanted. I tried not to try to hard. His low slung West-Coast boogaloo entertained and inspired me, asked much but demanded little. I floated and released into dips. I corralled my center into pirouettes aided by his well-timed hand. After a sweeping dip, I let momentum carry my left leg around his hip and back under me. Then he swung me out and slapped his knees and then the floor as I jumped and snapped my fingers in the air. We laughed. From the corner near stage right, girls watched.
 
...a bad experience
I began chatting with Jonathan about Indigo Swing and how I loved Willie’s piano playing. Jonathan seemed to get what I was saying but didn’t hear the two-against-three polyrhythm I pointed out late in the second solo. I became even more animated when I saw, out of the corner of my eye, an awkward smiling tense suburban guy hopping up and down with one hand stretched toward me. I was hoping he’d notice me absorbed in conversation and give up, but he stepped closer and asked me to dance with him. Well, at least he used his words.
 
“I love leading basics and just watching you do your thing!” he cried. His “basics” consisted of rounded shoulders, tense arms and long uncontrolled steps. I tried to lose myself in the song, singing “I’m just a baby in this business of love,” thinking how true that was, but the yanking and pulling made me wince more than once.
 
...absolutely essential
I stopped short of advancing completely into the double-handed connection during our class at the Dance Complex last Saturday, because I was demonstrating to the class what not to do. Kendall began to sputter, and even as I explained the purpose of deliberately stopping the momentum, he removed his Red Sox cap and threw it on the light-colored hardwood floor. I glanced at my reflection in the mirror as I laughed.
 
“He was about to yell at me,” I explained to the students. “‘Follow, dammit!’ Welcome to practice with Lynn and Kendall.”
 
Then we demo’d again and of course I came all the way in. I know the importance of that by now. If I don’t give everything I get, nothing works.
 
...a fulfillment of childhood fantasy:
Michael showed up to the last event I ran in Boston. I forgot his name three times in conversation before promising to remember it during our first blues dance, at about midnight.
 
I felt grateful for my training as a follower, for he was good. Tricky, in a lovely way. He stretched me, gave me turns down the slot and catapulted me in another direction when I least expected it. He gave me pop turns from his left side, not only his right; and as I whirled away from him with the acceleration he’d initiated, he connected his forearm to my tricep and gave me another turn; some boys call that a crank turn.
 
Despite the refined timing these sequences required, there was no sense of hurry. We were dancing slowly, merely emphasizing intense sections of the music. He also led turns and drags in closed position, and a bump that sent my feet into the air. There were elaborate dips, too: expertly led outside turns that somehow slid slyly into a connection between the back of his hand and the back of my neck. The way he was positioned underneath me left no doubt as to how much of my weight I could give him. I could feel it; to look and assess would have broken the flow. Dancing with Michael made me feel like a princess.

photo by Mike Howard
_____________________________________
I teach people to dance so that they will also experience these blissful states, moments of self expression and synchrony.
 
Here in Madrid, I regularly coach a dance team. I train the girls to track true, to maintain and return momentum; I help the guys lead with their bodies, allowing their arms to act as springs. Although these concepts seem simple, for most of us they require considerable repetition to be absorbed into the body, to become tools used to serve the greater purpose of creating ephemeral art with another person.
 
“Why do we study leading and following?” I quizzed them, the other day. We were rehearsing, as usual, in the park. In Madrid it hardly ever rains in summer. The rain, in Spain stays …
 
“For communication?” said one member.
 
“Yes,” I answered, “and because good leading and following feels fantastic. The more we study, the better we feel.” The better we feel, the more alive we become.

Girl Gown Wild: Kelly Samara's "Being Patient" at Manhattan Repertory Theatre's Summer Fest '09, August 5 - 7

"I'd rather be in the presence of that painting The Sleeping Gypsy, … and see what that does to me," Kelly Samara’s patient intimates from within her flimsy hospital johnny. Dreaming and dream life, and deep wooded magic mountains indeed represent recurrent preoccupations among several in the inner monologue of this character. And she objects to her one-piece wardrobe, especially as described by the staff:

“’Gown’ is what I fantasize about wearing to the Oscars. ‘Gown’ has the word Versace in front of it,” she declares, later imagining herself more glamorously decked out on the red carpet.

And why not? When we meet this patient, she lets us know that she been haunting the 11th floor, where “the cart squeals as it wheels slowly down the empty, odorless hallway,” for “2 months, 3 weeks and 5 days.” Over the course of 45 minutes, she will gossip, ruminate, yearn, opine, muse, define, philosophize, sing, receive an unseen visitor, and toy with a string in an abbreviated explication of cat’s cradle -- all in a series of episodes that suggest the warp of the time that hangs ever heavy on her hands.

“It’s getting to be 6 months,” she declares, about a third of the way through.

Her monologues, all but one of which address the audience directly, alternate with flashes of fierce, hip hop inflected modern jazz and, at one point, balletic dancing to music ranging from dance/trip-hop to "Teardrop" by Massive Attack. Bracketing the piece, and occasionally replacing the dance interludes, poetic incantations underscored by music pit the patient’s recorded voice against that of a disembodied male-modulated speaker with a robotic quality similar to that of the ALS afflicted physicist Stephen Hawking.

Often director AJ Heekin has the patient literally dancing in the dark, dimming Vadim Ledvin’s lighting to cross-fade with reflections from a disco ball for both the dancing and voiceover sequences. (The latter have been designed by sound architect Dave Abel.) This dark matter reinforces the evocation of both the passage of time and the concomitant chafing and discomfiture of the young woman’s spirit.

Under Heekin’s able direction, Being Patient unfolds as a mini gesamtkunstwerk, showcasing Samara’s considerable talents as a theatrical wordsmith, lyrical and physical poet, actor, dancer, and singer. On stage she reminds me intensely of a young Meryl Streep, in facial resemblance, charm, grace, physical and vocal mannerism, playfulness and dexterity.

Talent, stagecraft and direction can, however, only take us so far into the inner life of this patient. In this incarnation, the piece doesn’t quite add up to the sum of its parts. The choreography seems to stand at times arms length from the lyrical language. Samara dances well, but her dance designs don’t warm to, kiss off of, revel or play with the sound or sense of her word images as engagingly as she does. As perhaps the most potentially exciting and distinctive element in a distinguishing work, the dancing bristles with a broader ambition than illustration or embellishment.

“I don’t like the way this world works. I never have. It makes me sick. I think it’s what made me sick,” she says in one of the voice-overs. But Samara never presents us with the ultimate nature of her malady, whether physical, mental or psychological. In her opening monologue, she appears drunk or drugged; intermittently so later, but less so. The locus of pain seems to shift, from hip to abdomen, maybe to chest.

Perhaps its real seat can only be suggested existentially as heart or soul sickness. Could it ultimately lie outside the patient; for example in “all of the emotionally obstructed men in the world” that the author/performer somewhat sarcastically thanks in her program bio? The one monologue not addressed to the audience references an unseen visitor she calls Gabe who has just acquired a dapper dachshund puppy he has named Scooter, along with a new, perhaps problematic, perhaps romantic roommate. Perhaps both?

“Does he scoot?” the patient needles.

Later in the voice-over cited above, the patient, Hamlet like, conjures the release that death seems to offer. But ultimately someone else passes on. She has dreamed of keys, woods, vessels and houses. The yearning and sense of loss remains more hinted at than palpable. “We are porcelain,” the Stephen Hawking voice decides. But hope and longing remain, somewhere inside her doll/patient’s gown “soft, yet unyielding within my desire.” She remains unglued, “unable to mend us in this sweltering air.”

“I have a visitor?” the patient asks/declares at the end, brightening.

Being Patient reveals a theater artist and a team of collaborators replete with fresh talent, enormous energy and interesting ideas at the beginning of what look to be promising careers. If they revisit this patient, perhaps on another floor, they show every possibility of making her whole.

"You're not nice!" : remembering Pina Bausch

I stood in the stage right wing of the BAM Opera House watching the brilliant performers of Tanztheater Wuppertal in their dresses, suits, button shirts and pants slide on their butts through 3 inches of water along a diagonal line from the back to the front corners of this full-stage puddle.

All hell had broken loose. Lively music percolated the scene. Elsewhere on the lake, company men and women ran on and off in dresses piling clothes on a line of women seated in chairs. Two scale model triple-masted galleons sailed towards each other across the water from opposite wings. Coming amidships they simultaneously fired full volleys, and this caused their paper sails to burst into flame.

As the sliders moved and stopped, moved and stop they found themselves constantly splashed by a lithe young woman who ran from one to another with seeming abandon. Suddenly the woman they all called Pina stood at my shoulder.

By the time of this third BAM performance of her 3 hour Arien, I already understood what her presence onstage portended. Something must have seemed off to her from her customary aisle seat in the last row of the house orchestra section. Never one to wait, she had arrived backstage to sort things out.

Taking the splasher aside, she spoke intently and rapidly to her in German, her smokey voice rumbling with low passion and no-nonsense energy. The object of her attention had not performed in this role during the first two shows, and this must have represented the dancer's debut as a torturer. Breaking into English, Pina capped off her coaching. "Remember," she exhorted with a rising emphasis, "you are not nice!"

Philipina "Pina" Bausch would never hesitate to challenge you. She has famously been quoted as saying "I'm not interested in how people move, but in what moves them."

Wild thing, like many others, particularly performers, choreographers, theater artists, filmmakers, and writers across two generations, your evening-length dream scapes moved me. You could be in equal parts inspiring and exasperating; encouraging and intimidating; exhilarating and cautionary; horrifying and incredibly funny.

I remember theater artist Robert Wilson's pithy one sentence appreciation of your poignant and hilarious 1980, the elegy you and your company created in the wake of the loss of your late lover and collaborator Rolf Borzig. The afternoon after we both had seen its opening night in your Next Wave series at BAM, I asked for his reaction. Measuring his phrases, his Texas-sized smile brightening to include wonder and glee, he intoned with increasing volume and incredulity,

"I can't believe how those dancers
could do comedy
in English!"

Truly no language of humanity has proved beyond your reach.

I had already seen your Rite of Spring, and Cafe Muller and perhaps even Bluebeard. (The sequence escapes me.) But 1980 opened a door for me.

Without really understanding why, I had spoken up for another balcony ticket when it became available the night of my conversation with Wilson. As the second 3 1/2 hours of your waking dream began to wash over me, I witnessed the beguiling Beatrice Libonati crouch to kiss the green sod that covered the stage, just as she had several times the evening before. But this time her plaintive and now reliably predictable repeated declaration made me suddenly shiver. For when she looked up as if in wonder at the end of her task to declaim her lilting Italian-accented, "This piece of meadow is six kisses wide," it finally hit me that you had taken us to the grave site. And a piece that had been merely been an intriguing and pleasant semi-comic diversion the evening before now became a piquant meditation.

I watched again one of your achingly gorgeous women -- for no matter how pretty or feminine, your girls, like you, always had steel -- amble deliberately across the back of the green as if reviewing the line of six suited men who had formed up near the left corner. They had all dropped trou and stood, bare ass to us, as she regarded with frank, evident and unhurried curiosity the sexual endowment of each one in turn. "These must be the pallbearers," I told myself, touched beyond tears by the candid humanity of the moment. I stand as one of them today, a witness in honor of you.


More to come.