It’s only a preview, but it’s a breath of great things to come: the review of the premiere of “Another Evening: Serenade/The Proposition,” by Bill T. Jones seems to hint at a magnificent work to come. Commissioned to create a work celebrating the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth, it’s a pretty tall order for anyone but Mr. Jones.

He assembled, along with his usual fantastically talented company, an amazing creative team: Janet Wong on video, singer Lisa Komara, score by Jerome Begin and Christopher Antonio William Lancaster, Liz Prince’s amazing costume design and a set consisting of moveable columns by Bjorn G. Amelan.

The review describes some tricks not working so well – video flames on the columns, for example – but on the whole it sounds like Jones once again is exploring a subject that seems so incredibly overdone in new and amazing ways. It’s a disjointed but serious look at war, racism, and other themes of the day, and his choreography, always pushing the limits of the human form, addresses it like a hologram – in pieces, but each piece containing suggestions of the whole.

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I feel that – it warms my heart, actually. At age 18 I started on what I thought was going to be a career in musical theatre, but got a bit sidetracked, and didn’t end up getting my degree in dance until the venerable age of 29. Ten years later, I have taught ballet to three year olds and the rumba to 70 year olds, worked with world-class dancers like Heidi Latsky, presented before World Dance Symposiums, and danced on stage to “Let’s Get Physical” with Foxy Veronica’s Peach Pies at a goth club.

Because in the end it’s not about the movements or the technique, Milia. It’s about your movement, your technique, and your body moving. You want to dance? Dance, then. If you make the movement authentic, it will be good.

Pina Bausch and Tanztheatre Wuppertal

I’m having trouble finding the documented evidence, so this is anecdotal, but when I was at one point doubting my ability to dance when compared with the 18 and 19 year olds I was training with, my mentor Douglas Rosenberg told me about Pina Bausch. Aside from being a fantastic dancer and choreographer herself, he told me that at certain points in her career she’d refused to have any dancers younger than…oh, 35 or 40, I don’t remember which…in her company. They hadn’t lived enough life to put the meaning that she wanted into the movements.

Now, this may be an unfair comparison – many young dancers are exquisitely expressive, and age is no virtue – but it has served as inspiration to me as my movements change with age. The legs do not lift me as high, but the intention behind the leap has more depth now than it did before. And in the end, there is always a new Spring in my step.

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Making the Dream Real

Much to my joy, I find that Jeanne is making the dream real, putting Stardance into movie form. The complications of choreography in zero gee are immense, and not the least of it is the problem of, well, getting into zero gee in the first place. However, she and her main choreographer, Kathleen McDonagh, managed to get up in one of the zero gee planes and…well, they did it. They danced. They began a zero-gee movement vocabulary. And I can’t tell you how amazing I find that. It’s the most inspirational thing I’ve seen…well, ever.

Thank you, Jeanne, for making me believe in dreams yet again.

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Li Chiao-Ping is a choreographer and dancer originally from San Francisco, now living in Wisconsin. Her dance company has toured all over the world, and she has dedicated her company to “offering programs of emotionally charged and athletic works, with striking visual design and the music of contemporary composers.” She has been the chair of several dance departments and is the wife of award-winning video artist Douglas Rosenberg.

The auditions will be held June 6 from 9-11am at Dance New Amsterdam, Studio 4, which is at 280 Broadway (2nd Floor) in New York, NY. Dancers need to have strong contemporary dance skills and be willing to relocate to Madison WI – which is not so bad, as it’s only a couple of hours from Chicago, and the home of a very friendly performing arts blogger.

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A large part of that piece dealt with John Henry’s experiences as a combat soldier in Vietnam. He integrated those experiences into the piece, combining video of combat footage with live onstage dancing. You can see several videos of the stage performance here; as the piece toured, however, the performance was required to change to accommodate John Henry’s declining health as AIDS took his body.

While they knew that the live performance piece would die along with John Henry, Rosenberg and Bromberg wanted his legacy to live on, and therefore began working on a documentary (also titled Singing Myself a Lullaby) that would talk about the creation of the stage piece and the issues as he prepared himself for death.

Here’s the kicker: after he died, in the process of doing research the documentarians discovered that John Henry had never actually served in Vietnam. All of his stories, his richly evocative dancing, the tremendous emotion he engendered in others as they heard his tale and watched the videos with the movement – all of it was a lie.

At the same time…there is something to be said about the fact taht when one touches that many people, when such a powerful work is created, it takes on its own kind of truth. And that ends up being the subject of the documentary, which has excerpts here and can be purchased here.

I’m more interested in the fact that John Henry found it necessary to take on the trappings of his generations’ biggest tragedy. He didn’t pretend to be a fireman or a doctor or a speedboat racer. No, he found something in the miasma of war that seemed necessary to him as he performed in the final days of his life. He’s not around to ask if he’d convinced himself of what happened. Isn’t it interesting, though, that out of all the common experiences that our culture shares, we keep coming back to war as the defining factor? Even me – I spent two years as a Marine, twenty as a father, ten as a dancer – yet when I talk about my life, it’s the Marine that people latch on, assuming that it changed me and formed me more than anything else.

And the thing is, I can’t really argue that. I didn’t even serve in combat, but every day I think about something I did in the Marines, and as recently as six years ago I was walking out of a grocery store as a colonel in uniform was walking in, and my hand was halfway up in salute before I caught myself. Perhaps because it’s such a movement-based discipline, it resonates with dancers, who also find things burned into their bodies as they perform.

Whatever the reason, while not the truth he was telling, John Henry’s story tells a deeper truth about us all, I believe.

images used courtesy of Dziga Vertov Performance Group

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Why not up close and personal? Why not a special show, every now and then, when we could get to watch one or two Ailey marvels dancing something small and intimate in a setting where we might actually be able to track the thoughts crossing their brows, the nerve synapses firing in their muscles, the divine flow of their breathing?” This quote by Eva Yaa Asantewaa got my brain working today.

She was talking about the unfortunate necessity of dance companies such as Alvin Ailey to book large venues to get huge audiences in – to then see the tiny ants on the stage. It limits choreographers, it limits audiences’ ability to appreciate the dance, and it limits the number of performances due to the cost of actually dealing with the sizeable venues.

Alternative Spaces, Alternative Audiences

A few years ago I was a part of a performance called “50 Chairs” by dancer/ choreographer Jin-Wen Yu. He has always been something of an unusual choreographer (I’ll never forget the ethical dilemma of whether the goldfish he was dancing in the tank with could really consent to participate) but for this particular evening he had a fun idea: To sell 100 tickets to the performance (in the Spotlight room of the Madison Civic Center) but only provide 50 seats.

Where would the rest sit? Well, that’s their problem! Actually, we did seed each audience with a few people who knew that the floor, the walls, the rest of the room was available. Only a few brave souls (myself included) actually sat on the floor as the dancers moved around – and oh, what a magical experience it was.

Intimate Arts

I could see the folds and texture of the costumes. I could see the flex of foot as it hit the floorboards, sometimes next to me, I could hear the sound of the panting breath as the dancers moved around and beyond me. I was also a part of the performance, and so I got to feel the heightened tension as I juggled close by the audience members, twirling flags in a purple light.

Most of all, what I remember was the eyes. Both in the performers and the audience, there was a heightened awareness of the space we were in, of the fact that we were a limited run, an ephemeral quality, and that this performance would not be known by many – but would be more appreciated by the few who were there.

That, in my view, is the benefit of the intimate spaces. More than just the increased richness of the experience – it is the creation of a magical space, hearkening back to the first social storytellers in the firelight.

What are your favorite up-close performances? A friend of mine who reads this blog got a chanceto see Suzanne Vega in the same space…but I can’t think of many more that I’ve been privy to.

Image Courtesy of Newscom

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AILEY II GEARS UP FOR PERFORMANCES AT THE JOYCE THEATER: April 30-May 8, 2008, the Ailey II company program will include four New York City premieres including Fragile by French choreographer Stephane Boko, The External Knot by Ailey II’s Associate Artistic Director Troy Powell, Christopher Huggins’ When Dawn Comes and Requiem by Chang Yong Sung.

For more information on these and other aspects of the AAADT, check out their site at http://alvinailey.org/

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“At the moment you see the movement occur, you hear the voice of that dancer talking about what’s in their head or what images are going on for them.” – Elam in the Village Voice

Chris Elam is continuing to make waves with his ideas for the Misnomer Dance Co. After winning the IdeaBlob Contest, his plans to use the internet as a vehicle to deepen the understanding and involvement of the audience are just bubbling.

I’m very excited to see this – most of all because he seems, to me, to be the perfect person to make it actually happen. In the past I’ve known people with the technical know-how to do it, and others with the dance talent and desire – but aside from the folks at Troika Ranch, I’ve never seen anyone do it quite so aggressively and non-commercially. Not that they’re not out to make money – I’m sure Misnomer will happily take any donations you choose to give – but with the $10,000 prize to pave the way, I’m really looking forward to their continuing advancement of the art and the medium.

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She wrote a very encouraging review of the On the Move festival in Toronto, which include this cofee-spitting reference:

“After the warm up exercises, the instructor (Alex Cilic) said, “I feel a grungity.”

“Grungity?” I thought, bewildered.

And then she leaped in the air, and all was revealed. Ah. A grande jettée. And then I knew I was in trouble. My four or five hours of ballet training had not prepared me for this. So I sat the jazz class out and watched some truly marvelous dancing done by the next generation of Canadian performers. This country is in for some great dance. I wish you could have seen these young men and women. They move with such grace and fire. “

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“…I’ve never in my life seen more people with less dance training seeking to become “stars.” They sang their hearts out and wiggled their butts and seemed in all honesty to have no clue that ass wiggling did not constitute dance…and so looked like monkeys.”

I don’t know that I’d go that far – again, this is a show not about dancers but about what kind of team Bruno and Carrie can craft. But I actually came to the review via Natalia of the “Shimmyblog“, and she mentioned another critique that, while accurate for the show, leads into a dangerous stereotype:

“I will just say this point blank: If you are dancing to music, but your movement ignores the music – then go home and work on your musicality. It does not matter how perfect your technique is if you can’t figure out how to fit that movement to your music. And don’t even try to say, “that’s the choreographer’s job” Sure it is, but it’s your job too. “

I’m sorry, but coming from a Modern dance background and training – well, first of all, most of our training was not to music. I recall how uncomfortable I was after two years of Modern dance training to come to a jazz class where everything was right-on-the-beat .

My comp teacher, Jin-Wen Yu, taught me this better than anyone. He had the class sit down and told us he was going to be doing a solo for us. He then stood in the center of the room, full of composure and presence (you have to see this man, if you get the chance, just to feel him on the stage) and signaled for the music to begin.

A guitar started wah-wahing, and a funky little drum beat started, and the class started giggling – it was the BeeGees singing “Stayin’ Alive”. Not what you’d expect a world-class dancer to use in his modern dance composition class.

Then he started to move. I recognized what he was doing right away, because I was also taking an early morning T’ai Chi class from him – he was doing the Yang short form. And the contrast of the slow, deliberate motion to the music was beautiful.  What followed was some very difficult training getting us to ignore the music, no matter how steady or driving the beat, or how to impose our own rhythm on long, sustained John-Cage-type music.

Which is the best argument of all, I think. Merce Cunningham was the king of just sticking dance to whatever music – or noise, even – that was happening, enjoying the happy coincidences that occur, or that are imposed by the audience. The thing is, we are conditioned to want to see those kinds of match-ups, and will put them in whether they are there or not.

Which may be why modern dance isn’t as popular as, say, DanceWar. Because it takes a little more work to appreciate what’s going on, to really find the beauty in dissonant movement. I don’t want to make a value judgement on it – hey, I love rhythmic dancing as much as the next guy.

But just because something doesn’t fit into convention…well, that may be a good thing. It’s part of why I was so disappointed that they let Quandrell go. It’s how people grow. Watching another dance video, I heard a critic talk about how Baryshnikov had added all sorts of movements to the ballet canon that hadn’t existed before, and now all the male ballet dancers did them as if they were no big thing. “But that’s not what makes Misha great,” he added. “What makes him great is that he can stand on the stage doing nothing – and you can’t take your eyes off of him.”

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