Edge 4 - clarity and confusion
It’s a mystery. Why does pure choreography sometimes create its own meaning, and other times leave you craving for context? For many in contemporary dance, the ideal is to let the movement speak for itself.
When it works, it can be ecstatic – identification with the dancers can take you out of your own body. When it fails it can leave you feeling blank. Sometimes a story can hold the movement together, at other times providing context through psychological narrative (as in the ubiquitous ‘relationship’ duet), or through references to familiar gestural codes, can feel like too much information. Edge Four runs the gamut.
Lunar Rouge
Chick Snipper is a master craftswoman. She’s also got the kind of imagination that rejects easy categorization. If she were a furniture maker, you’d marvel at the attention to detail but wonder what you were supposed to do with a dining table raked at a 45-degree angle. Puzzling, but in a phone interview Snipper assures me she wants you to get it. She wants you to get a strong emotional hit from the physical language she has developed. She tries to achieve this through careful engineering: the better the structure of the piece the better your chances of finding suitable access.
In Lunar Rouge, a collaboration with The Tomorrow Collective, Snipper offers a number of entry points. There are beautifully sculptured solos from Katy Harris-McLeod, executed with such precision that even the finest gestures are given startling clarity. Jennifer McLeish-Lewis’ every move is imbued with god-like power – there’s not a hint of self-doubt. This kind of confidence can be felt throughout the entire piece. I’m a sucker for good unison, and The Tomorrow Collective, which includes Mara Branscombe, never falters.
Despite these considerable strengths, I can’t say I got the piece. Snipper does her homework — one of the sources she used was The Red Tent by Anita Diamant, a novel about Jewish women’s lives in biblical times. She liked using this palette because it references antiquity, and because so much of what has survived from those times is fragmentary this allowed her to take a revisionist approach to ancient history. So throw in a few nods to the Greeks and other pro- or anti-feminist markers on the bumpy road to what we call modern feminism, and you have a decidedly pro-feminist statement that Snipper says is a “celebration of women.” But that’s too general isn’t it? Don’t get me wrong; Snipper communicates her intentions to all artists involved with clarity. I know, I’ve worked with her. But besides appreciating the skillful choreography, the dancers, etc, the world that Snipper tried to create for Lunar Rouge didn’t cohere for me.
An opaqueness I’ve felt from her work over the years remains. The piece refuses to evolve. The movement, elabourate and fast-paced, seems to be looping inside a picture frame – the greater the movement, the more I’m aware of an essential stasis at the center of it. Itai Erdal’s sumptuous lighting design reinforces this. Against a backing scrim that has the dimensions of a cinema screen, Erdal literally paints an impressionist sky-scape with his lighting instruments. Clouds in sunset tones (with unlikely blues thrown in) are frozen in bloom. Composer Jessie Zubot creates a gigantic soundscape that comes across like a soundtrack for a spaghetti western on Mars, adding to the weirdness. And who are these fresh young women in short and shimmering garments that evoke both harem girl and goddess? What is the meaning of the ritual scrum they get into from time to time? This is one of those dance pieces that could have made its context plainer. I remained on the outside looking in at something that refused to give up its secret workings.
Status Quo
Of the three works presented, the adrenaline pumping Status Quo by Amber Funk Barton and Shay Kuebler kept me feverishly focused on the physical action. I didn’t need a story or theme spelled out for me — each moment carried its own kinetic significance. Barton, Kuebler, Josh Martin and David Redmond are propelled through the set by a machine-gun scratch-and-static soundtrack (designed by Kuebler), and by the physical vocabulary of hip-hop – a style that remains surprisingly fresh. For the most part, the dancers stay in fourth and fifth gear for this ride, chopping up the headlong rush with characteristic hip-hop starts and stops. The sheer velocity is sometimes punctuated by beautiful lyrical passages. It’s here that Barton is shown to advantage, as in a duet with Josh Martin where the linking and unlinking of arms becomes a graceful dialogue that counterpoints the edginess of the rest of the piece. For the most part Barton can only be commended for her courage in trying to keep up with three explosive dancers that clearly outclass her in the break-dance department.
It’s not often I get this particular kind of charge from a contemporary dance piece (I get other, equally valid highs from other dance works of course). It’s also the first time I’ve felt that a Barton-choreographed piece was driven by any real artistic imperative. I suspect the new creative juice came from the chemistry of working with Kuebler, as well as the inspiration of dancers Martin and Raymond (Farley Johansson is also thanked in the program for his “generosity and thoughts” as rehearsal director). These artists have fused contemporary dance with one of its mainstream cousins in a thoughtful and energetic way. They’ve created a work that builds in depth from one movement exploration to the next, underpinned by a combination of the tried-and-true (break dance) and of the inventive (contemporary dance). And they manage to do this with physical prowess and a surprising injection of self-mockery, as when the three male dancers create a parody of a boy-band posturing for female attention — a highlight for me.
Around the Block
I’m not a fan of gurus. But I can sometimes appreciate the utility of having one. Let me explain. We have a funding situation in this country that forces artists to create product on an annual basis. No new project, no new money; go get a day-job. But what if the work isn’t ready? Well, then you offer a work-in-progress. That doesn’t sound so terrible, but after watching such work for two decades I’ve come fear it. Work-in-progress by a great artist feels like work well done (Picasso said that to complete a work is to destroy it; he was right – a work is always in-progress). Work-in-progress by a weak artist feels like work-inflicted, and why am I paying for it anyway? If I’m going to be used as a guinea pig, shouldn’t the artist be paying me (maybe the funders should consider this)?
So a choreographer whose work isn’t ready, or who simply isn’t ready to create work, shouldn’t be forced into it. Who benefits? From what I’ve seen of Day Helesic’s work, the creator of Around the Block, she doesn’t have much to say as a choreographer. That she is committed to modern dance is without question — she has been co-producing the successful series Dances for a Small Stage for several years. But is Helesic a choreographer? That remains to be seen. Based on her demonstrated commitment to the dance scene, she should be given an opportunity to become one without having to produce work prematurely.
This is where the guru part comes in. I think we need a special funding track for artists like Helesic, one that allows them a prolonged period of non-producing study with a mentor. Maybe this would be in the form of a small yearly stipend. Helesic needs to go to the mountain, and not come back until she’s able to articulate some probing questions. Around the Block is one of the most arbitrary pieces I’ve seen. It’s supposed to be about “a couple that struggles to turn the next corner of their relationship.” The usual push-you-pull-you dynamic common to the plethora of dance pieces created in this vein is there, but the cause-and-effect is absent. How the couple (Helesic and Chengxin Wei) move from harmonious togetherness to mutual rejection is baffling and unmotivated, even from a non-psychological, movement vocabulary perspective. Watching the piece, I couldn’t help feeling that romantic relationship duets are what choreographers make when they have nothing else to say, and that Around the Block was a particularly vacuous example of this. In addition, the movement is largely recycled from previous Helesic work, and not meaningfully advanced in any way.
Disagree? If you find this commentary a bit harsh, I suggest you refer to Andrew Templeton’s review of the same show. In his words, “Helesic handles the material well and deals with a surprisingly delicate transition in the couple’s relationship deftly.” But what the fuck does he know about dance? And if Day Helesic or Helesic fans (or Andrew Templeton for that matter) want to have a go at me, please blog below. Let’s have a good old punch up in the comments section.