Had I seen Chunky Move’s special effect heavy Mortal Engine in a hotel in Vegas, I would have been blown away by its artistic integrity. At BAM, I’m blown away by the way that its artistic integrity is lost in an extravaganza of moving projections, laser lights and fog; smoke and mirrors so to speak.

The piece is built around technology that uses an infrared camera to locate bodies in the space, allowing projections and sound to follow and respond to their movement. The stage, and surface for projection, is a stark white slanted platform. Following a spectacle of geometric projections and electronic sound, a human form magically appears on the surface, a soft fleshy being left in the aftermath of a light and sound attack. Her sinuous articulate body flows though beautifully strange animalistic contortions.

On a whole, the performance of the dancers is impeccable, but often lost in the projections. I feel very little empathy for the human characters in the piece. More so, I feel empathy for the dancers since their brilliant and physically laborious performance isn’t always visible.

A blob of bodies emerges from the horizon at the top of the platform and slithers its way down the slope. Projections cast a dark cloud, a murky growth which distorts the human form. The eye confuses limbs with torsos and human with monster. The monster blob repeatedly engulfs the solo performer and she proceeds to escape it. An underlying theme of good and evil, darkness and light, pretends to give the piece depth and a purpose beyond spectacle. Regardless, isolated, these disturbing moments of looming darkness offer an abstract emotional power.

A brilliant effect of overstimulation is the acute focus which lingers in its absence. Silence is amplified and the tenderness of the human hand is exaggerated. One of these moments leaves a man and a woman holding hands, resting against a vertical wall as if lying in bed. Their shifts in position cause a sloshy sound, and produce a black visible aura which leaves trailing ephemeral stains. This is powerful, but the sad beauty of the scene is eventually undermined by its monotony as its predictable pattern carries on.

It’s ironic given the visceral quality of the dancers that my most visceral connection to the piece involves no dancers, only light and sound, the very thing that I’m criticizing.

Approaching the end, the entire stage and house is filled with smoke. A mesmerizing display of green laser light emanates from the distance and extends out into the air above our heads. Moving walls of light leave psychedelic swirling traces in the fog, and all of this massive visual stimulation corresponds directly to intense electronic sound at a volume which vibrates in my chest. It’s a physical experience which evokes a very human emotional response to something which is not at all human.

My tone is shifting and I’m no longer disappointed with fact that this is all spectacle. Instead, I’m completely invested in the spectacle. The question arises; where does art stop and entertainment begin? And why does it matter if I’m affected by the experience? Once I let go of my expectation placed on BAM events, and view it for what it is. I admit, it’s pretty awesome.

iDANZ Critix Corner
Official Dance Review by Julie Fotheringham
Performance: Chunky Move, Mortal Engine 
Venue: Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York City
Date: Dec. 10, 2009  
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Tere O’Connor is known for being hyper-articulate. He’s good at talking about dance, talking about his work, and talking about talking.  But ultimately it’s the effect of the work which matters.  A piece must speak for itself without any supplemental commentary. O’Connor’s last piece, Rammed Earth did this brilliantly, but for reasons I’m still attempting to identify; Wrought Iron Fog leaves me dissatisfied.  Perhaps it’s the curse of creating something brilliant that makes it impossible for the following piece to live up to it.

I’m surprised by many of his choices in Wrought Iron Fog.  From the very beginning it reeks of concert dance.  Warm, flattering side-light fades up to reveal five dancers dispersed in the space like trees in a mystical forest, their feet planted in place, their bodies doing googley articulations a la Forsythe.  Is it this?  Or a parody of this?  It’s hard to guess his intention.

It doesn’t stay here for long.  Instantaneous shifts from one ambiguous thing to the next are a constant.  The change is clear, but what it was, and what it has changed to, leave a lot of space for interpretation.  Dance phrases of arabesques and relevés spontaneously become static bodies with just twinkling fingers or gyrating pelvises.  The new thing is layered on top of the last thing with seemingly no connection beyond the fact that they are next to each other.  They are only related by proximity.

The cinematic shifts in perspective which were characteristic of Rammed Earth, and what made it so visually captivating, appear only rarely here.  I see it once clearly when Hilary Clark falls back away from the group, reaching out with both arms the whole way until she hits "bottom."  It’s as if we’re above the scene looking down; the "camera angle" is from above.  The comedy and the drama of this moment work like magic.

I connect most to the piece in the more physically rigorous sections:  the animalistic crawling on the floor, the whirling, spiraling movement, or the repeated running out of control until they fall to the floor, and I hear the squeaking of flesh skidding across marley.  It’s here that I’m completely engaged, experiencing it viscerally.

At one point all five dancers stand still in formation waiting for the music to come in, and for the first time in James Baker’s sound score, it sounds like a song.  The dance is frontal and presentational, and their faces are sexy and expressive as they mouth secret messages.  Here he’s clearly criticizing this, but I’m enjoying this.  If they were doing it seriously, I would think it cliché, but knowing that they are making fun justifies my indulgence.

A prolonged sequence of unison movement signals that it’s the climax and it’s moving towards an end.  But isn’t this the standard formula?  Is O’Connor commenting on the standard formula, or using it?  Maybe claiming to criticize something is just an excuse to use it.

Tere O’Connor’s ideology of dance attempts to diminish the expectation of representation or underlying narrative.  As he puts it, dance is "sub-linguistic."  I agree with this approach to dance completely, but if you’re not going to use narrative or language, then the movement, sound and visual aspects of the piece better speak.  Parts of Wrought Iron Fog do, but much of the work’s ambiguity leaves me disconnected.  Perhaps if I didn’t already view Tere O’Connor as such a genius, I’d be thrilled by the piece. That’s the curse of reputation.

Photography by Yi-Chun Wu

iDANZ Critix Corner
Official Dance Review by Julie Fotheringham
Performance: Tere O’Connor Dance, Wrought Iron Fog
Venue: Dance Theater Workshop, New York City
Show Date: November, 10, 2009
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Timmy’s Idea, Mina Nishimura explains, is inspired by a mocking bird that sings in her yard every night until 4am driving her crazy.  She says the bird uses a different voice every ten seconds.  It’s obvious this shaped the structure of the piece.  It’s composed of short, disconnected blips of text and movement that give the viewer little to follow.

Midway through, dancer, Kai Kleinbard, tapes a giant arrow in masking tape on the floor.  It’s the most gratifying part of the piece because it’s actually going somewhere, moving towards an end, as the arrow itself suggests.  Nishimura’s piece has a similar effect on me that the mocking bird does on her.  I am left driven crazy and a bit confused.

For her solo Fields of Ida, Ursula Eagly chooses to use her lamps from home rather than the fully equipped, high-tech lighting system at DTW, and the piece isn’t lacking because of it.  The lamps provide a dark, somewhat stark atmosphere, and the task of periodically turning them on and off creates an overall coherence which Nishimura’s piece lacks.

Eagly’s long limbs and hyper-mobile joints make her movement fascinating to watch.  There’s a moment when she looks out at the audience, as if about to speak, then collapses to the floor in a full hinge, an instant transformation from erect human to contorted creature.  At the end, a man and a woman enter and take a pose.  I recognize them from the piece Eagly did at Fresh Tracks three years ago.  Based on the giggles from the audience, I’m under the impression that they make reoccurring cameo appearances in her work, a signature of sorts.

Ori Flomin’s Toronto, the most developed piece of the evening, is based on recently discovered super-8 footage of his early childhood.  It’s projected in a video installation designed by Carlos Moore which delivers the footage in a contemporary way, splitting the image at times, or floating it in spiraling geometric shapes.

Flomin, joined by Antonio Ramos as his brother, and Colleen Thomas as his sister, recreate the playfulness of youth.  Some movements are taken directly from the video, corresponding enough to make the connection, but not so much that it becomes just literal mimicking.  Their grownup interpretation of a child attempting a handstand is both comical and adorable.  Aside from moments like this, much of the piece consists of continuous, typical modern dance vocabulary which after a while becomes monotonous.

I wonder if it isn’t the fault of the three-way program which makes this evening less than fulfilling.  It’s true that a split program offers the opportunity for more choreographers to show their work, but it does not allow for the development of a complete piece.  It’s possible that each artist did not approach the work with the same seriousness they would had it been their own evening. Maybe sticking to one dance for the price of one is the way to go.

iDANZ Critix Corner
Official Dance Review by Julie Fotheringham
Performance: Mina Nishimura, Ursula Eagly, Ori Flomin Venue: Dance Theater Workshop, New York
Date: October 8, 2009
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iDANZer Julie Fotheringham Performs at the 
New York Electronic Art Festival!

Hello, iDANZers!

Jarryd and fellow esteemed iDANZ member, Julie Fotheringham, will be doing a performance followed by an artist talk as part of the New York Electronic Art Festival on Saturday, October 10.
The performance will include an excerpt from ‘Stress Positions’, as well as ‘Transference’, a new work which utilizes a hand-held projector connected to a battery powered surveillance camera, resulting in an entirely mobile set-up.  Conceptually we are dealing with transference and projection in a psychological context while literally projecting ourselves onto each other.

This event is FREE!  Yay! 

Follow the link for details:
http://www.nydigitalsalon.org/

Hope to see you there…

Much happiness & dance,

iDANZ Crew

http://www.juliefotheringham.org

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MilDRED is introduced to us as a man, so from here on, I’ll refer to her as him.  Confused yet? This gender-bending back and forth is the most fascinating part of the performance.  When he’s a woman there’s still a hint of man, and when he’s a man, there’s still a hint of woman.  He challenges gender stereotypes by demonstrating that it’s possible to be both male and female simultaneously.

Throughout the show he changes costume as he changes personalities.  Each costume waits in its own chair in a semicircle of chairs, a crescent moon of spirits waiting to inhabit the body of the performer.  The transformation takes place in plain view, and we have the patience to watch these onstage costume changes because we’re watching to see what he turns into next.

The characters range from male to female, old to young, and slutty to holy.  Mac Dred wears a comically huge afro that takes on a life of its own as he busts out some super fly disco dance moves.  Mother Dred is an old lady who can still get funky, and Dredisha dresses in a slutty outfit and eats chicken wings with hot sauce.

The final Dred character is a peaceful, holy character dressed in white.  It is the purest character, stripped of all of the extra flair of the previous personalities.  He flows through yoga movements and repeats the mantra, "I am in love with me again, I am in love with me again."  And that is the end.

Although her intentions are noble and she puts on an entertaining show, it serves as little more than her own self-affirmation.  In a brief post-performance discussion, she said that she started to accept herself when she started performing.  I give her credit for discovering freedom of expression and wanting to share it, but the role of art needs to extend beyond self-therapy. Maybe I’m being harsh.  I was reminded to love myself, and that can’t be all that bad.

iDANZ Critix Corner
Official Dance Review by Julie Fotheringham
Performance: MilDRED Gerestant, When She Was King
Venue: Dixon Place, New York City
Date: September 26, 2009
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Not many people choose to do a solo show and there’s a reason for it.  It’s a masochistic endeavor, physically and emotionally exhausting, and if the show fails, there’s no one to blame but yourself.  Perhaps it’s French performer Pierre Rigal’s past as a competitive athlete that has instilled in him the necessary discipline, physical endurance, and appetite for self-punishment to do a solo show.  Factor in his studies in mathematics and cinema, and the result is a virtuosic hour-long performance of meticulously calculated movement displayed in a mesmerizing visual environment.

The entirety of Press takes place within the confines of a box, a small room, a cubicle. Although obvious associations arise, the box serves more as a visual element and facilitator of movement than as a metaphor.  It’s brilliantly designed to clarify focus.  It’s the only space that’s lit.  Nothing exists outside the box, amplifying what goes on inside the box, and drawing us into his performance.

Rigal stands in a black suit, a model of perfection, like a Hugo Boss ad.  The ceiling is just above his head so that he can reach up and touch it to facilitate his spiraling turns.  His movements are controlled, precise, perfect.  Then for a moment he starts to go haywire like a robot malfunctioning.  It’s the first hint of distress.

Nihil Bordures’ electronic sound score creates an eerie mechanical atmosphere, like that of a boiler room.  There’s a feeling of uneasiness and impending danger.  With a thunderous sound, the ceiling presses downwards and stops right at the top of Rigal’s head.  At this point it is apparent that the ceiling will continue to "press" down in intervals until the inevitable crushing end.

Each time the ceiling stops, it’s at a height precisely planned to correspond to the dimensions of Rigal’s body and offer acrobatic opportunities.  With it at head height, he stands on his head, feet on the ceiling, and hands in his pockets.  It’s a surreal image of a world turned up-side-down. Reoccurring clever moments like this infuse the hopeless situation with humor.

The second press stops at shoulder level and with his head bent forward, Rigal creates a convincing silhouette of a headless man.  He’s a magician with movement.  Later he runs frantically in one spot, slipping and getting nowhere, Fuerza Bruta style only without a treadmill, just a slippery floor and a mastery of movement.

The space is compressed further, leaving a horizontal gap, a claustrophobic sideways world. Then the ceiling retreats, suggesting that perhaps he’s not doomed to being crushed.  But how else could it end?  It finally descends completely, and like the lowering of the curtain, the show is over.

Pierre Rigal’s performance is riveting from start to finish.  His movement quality, and maintained intensity is awe inspiring.  It’s not until he comes forward for the bow that he relaxes and shows any sign of being human.  With heavy breath and dripping sweat, it’s like he just came through hell, and in a way, he did.

Pierre Rigal in "Press," Photography by Frédéric Stoll

iDANZ Critix Corner Official Dance Review by Julie Fotheringham Performance: Pierre Rigal, Press Venue: Baryshnikov Arts Center, New York City Date: September 10, 2009 www.iDANZ.com

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