Dance 3, Presence 10

She’s not all that technically brilliant, according to my Middle Eastern Dance Research Team (yes, I have one, doesn’t everyone?). But what she has is presence – she’s obviously having a great time as she dances and entertains, and it’s contagious.

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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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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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They didn’t win the entire competition – Champions Andrei Gavriline and Elena Kryuchkova successfully defended their title – but it’s nice to see that innovation is appreciated by even the most traditional forms.

Now, back to watching “Company”…

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I have to thank Lynn over at DanceWatcher for taking point on the new dance show, “DanceCrew“, and risking the chance that it would be another Dancewar. She happily reports that “We’ve got a winner here!” and I’m looking forward to checking it out for myself.

Also, I chatted with Douglas Rosenberg about the censorship his piece “Screening the Body” (suddenly an ironic title, that) got in during the presentation in Utah. Apparently he not only was forced to change the cosutmes of the dancers, but also to re-edit his video, one of which did, in fact, show the dancers in skirts and no tops. How anyone could find this stylized video to be erotic is beyond me, or why the backs of the dancers were for some reason more acceptable than the fronts…but that seems to be the case.

If you’d like to see the offending video – and I warn you, not only the women, but the men too are topless! – it is available, along with many other examples of Doug’s great work and writing, on his site.  Look under “Video Dance” and then select “Dances for Television.”

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“Elam garnered the support of the ideablob community for his idea to establish an interactive web site for performing artists. His plans for the web site include innovative online features such as live rehearsal streaming, instant messaging, virtual theaters where viewers can watch performances from multiple perspectives, and tools to measure online audiences so production companies can geographically target upcoming performances.”–IdeaBlob

All I can think of is, “Score one for the good guys…”

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…we are currently competing as an Ideablob finalist to win $10,000 to develop web tools aimed at helping performing arts groups to build and broaden online audience involvement. The prize goes to the idea that receives the most online user votes.

It’s too late to vote…but I confess to finding a bit of tension as I check the site and wonder if they won? Here’s their idea, in case you would like to join in the suspense…

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But it was exciting to be part of the change. Now that Clash of the Choirs is done, I feel like perhaps there is a new change here – a change started by reality shows like Survivor, and which led to all kinds of foreboding that we were going to end up having something like Stephen King’s Running Man all over the place. People thought that there would just be bread and circuses – myself included.

Watching Clash makes me think maybe we’re smarter than that. Maybe, somehow, we are realizing as a culture that it’s as entertaining to watch people work together and lift each other up as it is to watch Simon Cowell reduce them to tears. Maybe this, like the new “Celebrity Apprentice”, is what we need to have – people using the format to bring each other closer together and celebrate their talents.

Likewise, it was thought that to do dance on video would be the death of the live performer. Instead, concert sales are way up, and while dancers aren’t exactly making it “big”, there is a resurgence of dance on film (“Take the Lead”, for example) and people are using the web to express their art and make the creation of the dance as much a part of the audience’s experience as the actual performance.

Case in point: Third Rails Project blog (part of the Great Dance Blog), where you can see video of rehearsals, learn about the travels of the group, and hear first-hand what’s going through their minds:

“I looked at Liz and said with complete satisfaction, “this is my life right now.” Choosing a creative path in life, I find that I often have these moments when I am tickled (and at times relieved) by the fact that I get to do things that are normal to me, yet completely absurd to most people.”–Tara

Or, watch the video. This is work in progress; you get to watch a real dancer working on his performance in a place (probably) very far from where you are now. For free, and unconstrained by time. This is miraculous. Don’t you think? Aren’t you excited? We are part of the change, and rather than fear it, we should embrace it. It will be, I suspect, more wonderful than we can imagine.

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