Continuum
Saint Mary's College MFA in Dance Program, Cohort 2 Concert
Lincoln Theater of Napa Valley
Saturday, January 30, 2016 at 2 pm (with a post-performance discussion)
By Sarah JG Chenoweth
Saint Mary’s College MFA program presented a special show on January 30 at Napa Valley’s Lincoln Theater in Yountville. The production proposed a specific opportunity for its first-year students to showcase works in progress. For most of them, it was their first time presenting work as grads with particular research concentrations. The cohort undertook such varied topics as Latin American folklore, African ritual, and the hassles of baking a French pastry. Each artist showed clear conviction to the topic at hand.
The outlook that follows is calculatedly descriptive and inquisitive. In description, I intend to illustrate what endured as the most salient aspects of the works. With this, I hope the makers can decide if there were largely unintended impressions, and/or if there are aspects that went unnoticed and need more prominence. With questions, perhaps the makers can consider new angles from which to tackle their work as it evolves. It all comes with the assumption that these works, or at least some element of each work, will be further developed. It all comes with the understanding that sharing dances is often the best way to learn about them.
Desiree
The show opened with a dance film by Zaquia Mahler Salinas. It features a single dancer and her passage from a situation of restraint to a state of freedom and abandon.
She begins pressed into the corner of a fully concrete walled space, with each end of a wooden stick tied just above her upturned elbows. They are consequently affixed in a gesture of pleading, of glaring exposure. After spending some time twisting and wringing there against the unyielding concrete, she stumbles out and looks up in wanting. She drapes herself over her own torso, and plays out a moment of deprivation and disturbance. As she continues to heave her inhibited body around the space, the camera gives us extended close ups of her neck, the tendons in her hip-flexor, her agile feet and ankles. Our experience is both intimate and distanced. She is far away, in an unknown location and behind a lens, yet we greet her personal body parts and grasp her defenselessness.
There is some struggle, or at least we understand that some facility has been taken away from her. But we also see her absolute mastery as a contemporary dancer. What she cannot do with her arms, she redeems with the adroitness and might of her legs, spine, torso, and solar plexus. The stick doesn’t restrain her enough to disable her from spiraling, leaping, swishing in and out of the floor, fulfilling robust leg extensions and turns. I wonder how much more ruin we would sense if the limitation increased. Or, if the movement she’s assigned is movement that normally requires the arms.
The piece is, enjoyably, as much a study of the camera as it is a portrait of this affected and effective woman. The camera slows her motion every now and again, or it blurs, or cuts to repeat one movement several times, like a skip in a record. At one point it holds a duplicate image of Desiree in a corner of the screen, facing her own dancing self, back in the middle of the room. It’s ghost-like. It splices her, as if she is able to separate her consciousness from her confinement. These cinematic elements, impossible in material reality, combine to make the film’s impression non-narrative, experiential, and outside of time. Without it being situated in regular time, it feels possible that the experience encompasses people outside of that one cell. Maybe it represents more than one person? Or, maybe the incarceration is singular, but is so dislodging that it cannot be understood in the straightforwardness of evenly measured progression.
Either way, we are transported with her to a second space. It isn’t much different visually; still an empty concrete chamber, but larger, and maybe lighter. Here Desiree loosens, both emotionally and in her movement. She no longer has the troublesome stick. She still flings and spirals, possibly repeating some material, yet she is more allowed to follow the momentum of her autonomous body. She is even free to reveal mistakes she’s made in the phrasework, and we get to see her laugh about it. The mood is lighter and honest, uncontrolled. The music in this section carries another possibility that the film is imparting the idea of wider-ranging suffering vs liberty. Maybe even a political or civil struggle. The lyrics sing of “laughter, witches, shaman women, displeased by their own perfume, white blood, goddesses, blue night.” It conjures in me kaleidoscopic images of powerful, ancient, dark, earthly women who once ran the world and who are the mother goddesses of this wild and candid behavior. But while these images of humanity or history-at-large come in, we still watch a simple, single girl. She is connected to these forces and fantasies, and also she is just a person. She looks up again, elbows upturned and floating; what can she do?
We don’t ever really know the meaning of her struggle, other than the choreographic parameter of the stick. We aren’t sure if she is meant to represent others or the depth of personal strife. We don’t know if her original incapacity was self-imposed or externally imposed. We are primed to seek these meanings out, as the work’s description touts the portrayal of the “fine line between the perception and the reality of restraint.” The term “restraint” automatically has me thinking politically. That, added to the drama of the camera editing and the homage to the divine in the last section, excites in me a deeper examination of restraint of the spirits and bodies of many. But, maybe it’s just a movement study. What happens when you can’t dance with your arms anymore?
Vermillion Vento
This piece, by Stephanie Emmanuela Engel, tells a danced account of gods that inhabit plants, a folk story of Latin American origin. It outlines an event during which forces locked within the plants come to life and invigorate the stage.
A male character introduces the setting and tale. He wears a white and tannish costume, from a time or place related to indigenous peoples. He circles his arms, undulates his spine, knocks his fists together, and reaches out to something beyond his peripheral sphere. All these actions appear ritualistic for him, and we infer that he’s done this before, maybe many times. He dances mostly with and in reverence to a gourd, which first he holds, and then sets tenderly on the floor. We know this must mean something to him, by the formality with which he carries out his task. But his response to the events that follow doesn’t offer much insight into his exact role in the occasion. What I mean is, we are never certain if he is responsible for raising the plant spirits or if they have risen by their own will. If he has summoned them, to what purpose? Did he do so by chance? If they have entered with their own aims, to what end?
So the female dancers enter, one at a time, from upstage behind the dancing man. The first is in a full-length red dress, moving diagonally toward the gourd. She sweeps and spirals to a jazzy, rhythm and blues tune. She touches the gourd, and backs way, moves toward it again. She reaches into it and pulls out a few leaves. Another woman enters, her costume exactly the same red dress. And another. All are sweeping and spiraling and outstretching their arms. They emerge like spectral variations of the same source entity. The man eventually leaves, without clear information as to how he feels about their presence. They do not directly interact with him, and the female creatures seem interested only in the gourd and its leafy contents. They do not dance in rivalry, but with shared movement style, focus and intention. They are dancing with one another.
After the fourth woman in red joins the gathering, they each stand still in front of a leaf, creating a half-circle around the gourd. They touch the leaves to their hearts, set them back down, and orbit around them. It has the aura of an incantation. I wonder if they are proclaiming their sameness to the leaves or drawing energy from them. From Engel’s note, I decide they must be human manifestations of the mysterious plant powers. These beings dance together for the remainder of the piece. They dive, arch, and combine contemporary movement with classical modern and African-based movements. The costumes whoosh up and down with the dancers’ battements and surges from one formation to another. This substantial unison section affirms the supposition that they are of one body, or at least of one source, and celebrating their potency. After extensive and hefty dancing, they end up back over by their leaves. And then the most curious moment of the piece: they smile, intentionally and satisfyingly at one another. I was uncertain of any reason for it, or any change in action or plot that would elicit their smiles. The other sections have been mostly sober. Could it be some shared pleasure in just having successfully established their supremacy in the space?
This ambiguity gets at my bigger questions about the events that took place over the course of the piece. I clearly see the symbols of the male and female energy, the compelling natural world, and envy, signified by the color red. But, who was envious? And who did not understand their power? I looked up the title and came to understand vermillion vento to mean something close to “red wind.” While I comprehended the gusting, intoxicating dynamism of the beings’ energy, I saw neither active envy nor change that came about from their exploits. The piece works more for me as a handsomely danced painting – colorful, satisfyingly staged, symbolic – than as an eventful story. Engel hit the mark with these visual and energetic properties, but the resulting storyline lacks perceptible plot and convincing relationship.
Brioche å téte
What if the buttery flakes of a pastry transformed into the wisp of a tour en l’air? Or the heaping, gooey center of it into a widened and exaggerated grand plié? It is exactly these kinds of whimsical translations that Kelsey Bergstrom Young presented in her Brioche a tete. Young has a theater and dance background, and has worked as a chef in her adult career. Back in the art world for her MFA, she is blending her proficiencies within her choreography. It is refreshing to see such a lighthearted composition about a field normally so detached from dance.
Young endeavors to merge these two distinct worlds through personifying the brioche recipe and preparation, without miming any real baking actions. And though I am not at all versed in the techniques of making fancy French pastries, I can undeniably perceive the sensations of kneading, mixing, rising, falling apart, and stickiness that this process must entail. The piece progresses through a serious of short sections, each eliciting one or more of these sensations. Aproned and determined, Young emotes theatrically – smiling at us triumphantly when things cooperate, frowning hammily at a moment of failure. In another moment, she is taken over by some outward force, tumbling and rolling, arching and stretching. The piece culminates in a humpty-dumpty-like circling and falling, leaving the folly of the whole act to prevail.
We never can quite tell if she is the dough, or if her actions allude to her feelings while making the dough. Either way, she performs an evident curiosity the entire time, as if this time making the pastry was as baffling and staggering as the very first. The piece resides in this light, almost silly, place. Even her frustration and stumbling is toy-like, overstated. It doesn’t deter me from delighting in the illustration, but I wonder if that’s all there is to it. I wonder if the frustration of repeatedly screwing up a delicate good would be more solemn at any point? As it develops, I wonder if there’s an angle that can provide something thought provoking, in addition to it being entertaining.
Finally, while Young’s concept is flavorful and exciting, the ingredients of the piece remain separate, uncooked. They don’t quite cohere into a finished, whole treat. One of those separate ingredients is the choice of musical elements. There was a musician onstage who played multiple percussion instruments and other noisemakers. He watched her, and may have been responding or improvising. She did not reference him, engrossed in her own churning sphere. I question his function on stage and intended contribution to her depiction. He risks distracting us from the world she is so brightly cooking up. His connection to the recorded music was also vague. It greatly varied in style and played for each short section of the piece – from a didgeridoo to classical strings. Her emotional display and movement characteristics changed congruent with the tone of each musical segment, rather abruptly. I wonder, what can bring all the music, each step in the process, and the items on stage together into a solidified whole? How can Young further amalgamate this concept in both composition and meaning?
Nkisi Nkondi
Byb Chanel Bibene presented a sentient living record of his research on the Nkisi Nkondi, a statue that acts as a conduit between humans and gods for the people of Kongo. This duet exists as danced inquiry into details he is still unearthing about the artifact, its meanings and its power. The offering is not just a performance, or maybe not one at all, but a ceremony, during which we share in the discovery of its sacred energy as it comes to life in the dancers. We witness their transformation from people into gods, or at least, people in a profoundly sensorial, transcendent event.
The two African men, Byb, and his fellow dancer, Chris Babingui, begin the piece standing on two sets of cloth. Each on his own. Their backs are to us, and we hear drum beats and night bird sounds. They wear thin cloth shirts and pants, of muted color. They dance for a long time in these spots, articulating precisely, curling their spine and arms, bouncing their entire forms. It strikes me how duration alone can make meaning. Simply, the amount of time spent in a place can demarcate it to the person. Here, the dancers etch out such ownership and identity in these small establishments of cloth and location. So much so, that when they leave their foundations to dance upstage together, and eventually to switch places to the other’s spot, it has great impact. I know they have left their “home” platform, and ventured to a world beyond it, where interaction with another human being can be antagonistic, congenial, facetious, or conversational.
They work through these differing modes of human interface upstage between their two “homes.” At first they don’t touch, but dance around one another, one jumping and spinning while another is frenzied on the floor below him. The drums are still rolling. The dancers' energy is decidedly vigorous. And they begin to make contact. One sits on the other, staring downstage out into our distance. Following that gaze, he trips forward to have a momentary solo of pop-and-lock-like enunciation, which smooths out as he returns to the other dancer. The two begin a unison phrase that is exceedingly powerful and fluid. They jump high, but are eased softly down with their obvious muscular strength. They sweep right and left, undulate to and fro. They bump into one another and pause. One hits the other with a casual flare, seeming to say, “hey man, you’re in my way.” Or, maybe more friendly, “hey man, let’s do this.” The other responds analogously, and they burst back into unison, eventually separating back to their home textile. A last flash of pelvic rotation, joint elocution, and air-bound eruptions lead them to an ultimate drop to the ground on their pile of material. The drums stop.
In silence, we see them change into something else, in dress, and when they rise, in essence as well. This simple costume change is the movement of transformation. Of emptiness. Of in-between. The moment of possibility to become, and of creation. These two humans step into the adornment of a god, and go on a journey through its substance. They wear grass-like skirts, a long one around their waist and a short one around their head. With their faces covered, we know this section is not about sight or interaction. It is about sensation. They twitch and stomp and sway their hips, feeling their way to the truth of this spiritual form. The skirts sway and quiver with their own character, offering yet another lifelike extension of the deity. The commingling of their human bodies and this godly representation animates the elusive line between the person and the divine. They continue for some time, staying grounded and moving little around the stage. Their examinations of self as spirit rolls on like vital trance. Even when the music stops, they are not yet complete. They persist for a moment while we clap, before they finally shift back to a perception of the occasion as something presented versus something actual.
Though I believe it is both. I believe their dancing is live research. In this case, dance is utilized and celebrated as the tool for discovery in the moment, versus dance as predetermined product. It brings this historic object into the vibrant present, allowing the Nkisi Nkondi to take on fresh forms and meanings in our presence. I feel honored to have been included in such a genuine and exposed exploration. I am only still left to speculate the relationship between the two dancers. While there was some physical interaction, the core of the dance didn’t seem to rely on it. What makes both dancers necessary? Is it that this ritual must be practiced in community? Is it because the deity has multiple manifestations? What is the link between the two? What is the difference between the two? And how does their coexistence further our connection to this event? How can we gain further insight to the impact this sacred influence has on these/we humans? Does it change them? Or, do they ultimately remain in the god’s form? Maybe the Nkisi Nkondi has yet to reveal the answer…
Bound
Cassie Begley shared a work that appears the most complete, compositionally and production-wise. The piece concentrated around a male/female romantic partnership, in which the female is tortured, definitely emotionally, and maybe physically. It delineates her passion for and subsequent demise by this relationship.
The woman wears a white dress and, from the outset, seems emotionally undone, helpless. Her dance style is predominantly contemporary ballet, which lends her a sense of aptitude despite her vulnerability. The man wears all black and is unwaveringly tyrannical. He strides around, firmly puff-chested. She swoons and debates him, elegant and pliable. They dance a sensual pas de deux. The lighting is very dark, but red glows as he seduces her into a central embrace. (And, yes, it seems he seduces her.) Four more dancers enter, women, wearing black leotards and red skirts. They come toward the cuddling couple, and are repulsed, evidently disapproving of her acceptance of him. With this they suggest solidarity with the woman in white. Lead by their receding guts, they back away to each corner. I conclude they must be embodied actualizations of her emotions; emulating her own internal aversion to the man she is hugging. He exits the embrace to approach each of the other women one at a time, caress her, and then pull her by the hair to re-position her elsewhere. He takes his time. He reigns. He manipulates.
The skirted entourage begins to dance in unison, upstage, as a sort of emotional scenery for the couple’s circumstances. Our lady in white has a solo downstage, and we see her dance fully and flowingly, all the while elucidating her complete distress and confusion. The man, away from her, begins to walk very slowly downstage, facing us and staring, expressionless. Maybe we can read in this some literary effort to render him stagnant. Some way of stating that she, emotive, is deep. And he is cold and comatose. And that therefore her story is more authoritative.
However, our lead is all passion and no power. We pity her and hate the man, of course, but intensely crave her reinstitution of self. If the intention is to paint her as empowered, it is not achieved. If the intention is to further disparage the patriarchal-inspired trauma placed on women, by both men and women, it is achieved. Because as the piece closes, the skirted women, increasingly taken over by overtly sexual movement, hover over her. The woman in white is on the ground and unglued. Instead of aiding her, the red-skirted four seem to torment her further by domineering and glaring over her. It’s as if they have turned against her. I suppose this is the risk of our emotions – that they can harm us. But all of it leaves the women in the piece to be either emotionally hysterical, hostilely (externally) maneuvered, or combative toward one another or self. They do not, by my reading, triumph.
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Sarah JG Chenoweth holds an MFA in Dance Performance from the University of Iowa and a BA in English Education from Illinois State University. She is a co-founder of the Mid to West Collective (midtowestdance.org). Sarah teaches dance to all ages and performs with multiple San Francisco Bay Area companies. She writes about improvisation and new dance works.
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