Dance Performance Review Crowd-Sourcing (19.2 - Whitney)

**Apologies for the slight tardiness of this post.

TRUE: I’m attempting to cull quotes from my peers that construct “true” in terms of brutal honest. The moments within these reviews that seemed to unexpectedly reveal an honest statement about the reviewer that maybe otherwise wouldn’t have been revealed. Things about ourselves that we discovered or were forced to discover because of the experience of the dance performance.

Kelly: “Perhaps there is this joy I find in bodies that celebrate how ugly/disturbing they can become rather than pleasing to the eye.”

Jess: “Every time I see feats of physical prowess and athletic ability, I feel a kinesthetic response that I place somewhere in the area of longing.”

Cody: “Rather than enjoying the dynamism of the dancers’ bodies, I found myself questioning how these specific movements related to the overall narratives of the dances.  Perhaps this reaction is merely symptomatic of myself being pedantically cerebral and not being in tuned with my emotions.”

Iris: “…there was a point in ‘Esplanade’ when one of the dancers went running across the stage on a diagonal, with an enormous smile on her face. I burst out laughing, and immediately covered my mouth, embarrassed.”

Jenna: “After the exercise of recognizing the dance alums and current students of dance in the audience, I clearly felt my position in the audience as one of interloper.”

MEANINGFUL: The quotes I’m pulling here focus less on the reviewer and more on unexpected and thought-provoking elements of the dance performance that emerged from the reviews. The “meaningful” works on a deeper level of analysis than the surface of the dance performance itself allowed for – the not-so-obvious trajectories of feeling and analysis that it prompted, thinking beyond dance as simply the movement of bodies in space.

Courtney: “Decentering the significance of the dancers’ skills and physical virtuosity, Taylor choreographs a dance that is about movement itself and the beauty of “everyday” movements.”

Courtney: “Perhaps one of the few viewers excluded from this reconfiguration of “I could do that myself” is the entirely immobile one…”

Justin: “…moments of differentiated movements called body ownership into question, as they were typified by the sharing of weight and absolute trust in another’s physical strength.”

Sara: “There is no beauty much less propriety in the tumble on the mattress without first witnessing the beauty in the walk for the bus.”

Blog 19.1 Gala Review (Jenna)

My initial response to the dance event is mixed. I greatly enjoyed the moments of actual performance, but was quickly irritated by some of the managerial conventions of the form. The intervals between dances were inconsistent in length and in lighting, which boggled my mind. Why, after one dance, should we have what seemed to be an interminable intermission in full light (which, I could imagine, might signal the conclusion of the entire event) and after another a incredibly quick one in half light (which might suggest that the two pieces on either end of the break were actually from the same piece.) I suspect that my confusion about the intervals stems from my unfamiliarity with performances of dance. There may be legitimate reasons, probably involving the dancers’ need for rest, for bizarre interval patterns, but I could not understand their logistics.

Additionally, as this was a celebratory program for the 85^th anniversary of the dance program, it was understandable that various functionaries had been designated certain speeches before some of the dances. However, their appearance and length of speech was similarly inconsistent and provoked a comparable level of irritation. The presence of the functionaries divided the audience into insiders and outsiders, those who attended the gala for celebratory purposes and those who simply came to view a performance. After the exercise of recognizing the dance alums and current students of dance in the audience, I clearly felt my position in the audience as one of interloper. Even though the audience was of such a significant size that I doubt all of the people gathered there were associated with the dance program, so many of the viewers immediately surrounding my seat stood for recognition when prompted that I felt lost in the sea of expert dance spectators. After that point, their incredibly enthusiastic hoots and applause made me wonder if I had missed something. Was their appreciation, like mine, given for the beauty of choreography and the astounding skill of the performers, or were these dances somehow transcendent in a way I was unequipped to realize? Might these have been merely adequate performances that were overly celebrated by the audience for nostalgic and sentimental purposes, or had I missed the introduction of the next dance star of the western world? While I thoroughly enjoyed all four of the dances performed that evening (Esplanade!!), I left the auditorium questioning my response and therefore did not fill out a survey.

Dance Review (Derek)

IU Dance Theatre 85^th anniversary celebration gala was held November 4 and featured four pieces: Esplanade, Rite of Summer, Straight Duet, and Nascimento Novo.

Choreographed by Paul Taylor in 1975 and performed to violin concertos by Bach, Esplanade consisted of four distinct parts, each with a different feel. The first part was dominated by bright colors and a light atmosphere generated by the playfulness of the dancers’ geometric movements. Particularly notable was Miss Lalah Hazelwood’s smiling exuberance, which set the tone for the piece. The dancers engaged in domino tag, touch-falling and rising, leaping into the air, and I could not help smiling in pleasure at the joy they exhibited. One of my favorite moments was when they moved in circles and spirals, expanding and contracting, occasionally exploding outward like a starburst. The second part of Esplanade was more serious, reflected in the more somber music, lighting changes, and movements of the dancers. Four dancers stood off center, two taller (a man and a woman) and two shorter (two women), which made me think of a family. Miss Hazelwood was again a key dancer in the piece, seeming to float around the other three members of the family unit, hands pressed to one thigh as though signaling some injury, yet ignored by them as evidenced by their non-response to her movements and her hand waving. The end of this part was the most poignant, with the mother figure extending her arms with hands clasped, pleading and crying, before sinking to the floor as the lighting faded and the ensemble dancers crawled ever closer, circling around and enveloping her as the lights went out. The sadness of this part was cast off in part three, which began with bright lights, quick cheerful music, and more exuberant running and smiling dancers criss-crossing the stage. There was again the sense of playfulness exhibited in what might have been a game of tag. I was struck by the image of one of the male dancers running across the stage, taking long strides with his chest thrust out, smiling broadly; watching him, I felt the joy of unencumbered movement, of running freely through the warm grass in an open park.  As the final pair of dancers met in a leap caught deftly on the left of the stage, another pair of dancers entered from the right, mirroring the pair exiting to the left. This transition marked the beginning of the final part of Esplanade. This was marked by a great deal of physicality between dancers. I particularly enjoyed the twin rolling, which reminded me of wrestling.

The second piece of the evening was Rite of Summer, choreographed by William Evans in 2005 for the Bellingham Dance Gallery. The dancers in this piece were all female. One wore a green slip while the other six or seven wore white dresses. On the far left front of the stage was a white pedestal with a basket of rose petals on top. I felt like the girls in white were spirits or represented the inner emotions of the girl in green. As they danced they often kept their eyes on the girl in green. Overall this piece was very emotional, with the dancers convulsing and twitching with pained expressions, arms outstretched grasping, yet restrained or pulled back by some invisible force. I was really impressed by the controlled body movements and poses that they struck, many of which were quite difficult; for example, they did many lunges and deep squats, which I’ve done in karate, wrestling, and yoga, so I could sympathize with them as they struggled with trembling limbs to maintain their poses. Toward the end of the piece, the girl in green lay on the ground in a near fetal position, and the lighting turned red. The movements of the girls in white became jerky, their arms pushing out in pain and longing, perhaps fighting their desire for the basket, but eventually giving into that desire. They lifted the girl in green and gave the basket to her. She sprinkled flower petals on the girls one-by-one, and then dumped the remainder on the final girl. Each girl upon whom the petals fell sunk to the floor twitching.

The third piece was titled Straight Duet, and it was choreographed by Larry Keigwin and Nicole Wolcott in 2003. Miss Lalah Hazelwood returned to perform in this number opposite Joe Musiel. Both dancers wore plain white sports underwear, and the only prop was a queen size mattress. At the start of the piece, Miss Hazelwood tipped the mattress flat and flopped onto it in invitation, but Mr. Musiel’s character declined to join her, which prompted laughs from the audience. The entire piece seemed to chart the evolution of a relationship, progressing from happy flirtation to angry argument, with several ups and downs in between. I had a lot of admiration for their athleticism, for several of the movements required a great deal of strength to perform, including leaps, catches, and “tension” holds (where one person supports another at an odd angle). The movements of the dancers mimicked changes in relationships, with moments of tenderness, support, tension, and opposition. At the end of the piece, after Mr. Musiel’s character held the wrists of Miss Hazelwood’s character and shook her arms, they went round in circles pushing to spin the mattress before finally Miss Hazelwood had enough, up-ending the mattress into Mr. Musiel’s face, metaphorically slamming the door, which she then turned her back on and stalked resolutely chin-up off the stage.

The fourth and final piece of the evening was titled Nascimento Novo, and was choreographed by David Parsons in 2006 and set to the music of Milton Nascimento. The ten dancers in this number were dressed in white tops and brown bottoms. They performed a hopping dance step with their arms raised and lowered. This reminded me of a dance step that I use sometimes when dancing to techno. At one point they were in a half circle, and took turns leaping into the middle to dance solo. The final song had some English lyrics, “gathering together”, and featured rhythmic clapping by the dancers, which made me want to clap along with them. My companion felt this fourth piece was her favorite, but clearly tastes will vary. I liked it but enjoyed the others more, perhaps because this piece reminded me of going to a dance club. As I exited the building, a man of possibly South Asian origin commented to his family that the music seemed like a fusion of Eastern and Western styles. I also felt that way because of the instrument sounds I heard. Perhaps some of the arm, wrist and hand movements were meant to be evocative of non-Western dance styles, too; however, I am not sure if that’s actually the case.

Prompt 19: The Crowd-Sourced Review

This promises to be a noble experiment.

On Sunday, we will all be attending the dance department performance at the IU Auditorium (the event is unticketed and admission is free, so you should be able to just walk in).

By Monday at midnight, please post a 300 word 'review' of the production. I use scare quotes here because the formal requirements of a review are in flux in our digital age and I am happy to encourage that volatility. Write what you consider to be a substantive engagement with the production that ranges across these three categories: the true/factual, the meaningful, and the subjective (note: they are not necessarily discrete).

By Wednesday at noon, please cull from the full slate of reviews on the blog those claims that seem to you most true and meaningful. Cut and paste them into a separate blog post (you can call it Blog 19 Part 2 or something of that sort). You don't have to offer commentary here, but you should indicate which quotations seemed true to you and which seemed meaningful (or both).

Note: Worth thinking about as you write: Jennifer's critique of the reductiveness of Conquergood's usage of map/text. Can't texts/maps ever let us float free from the hegemony of text as (fixed/fixing) record or documentation? Isn't writing sometimes a zone or a conduit of multivocal open-endedness? Jennifer's fictional example would seem to say yes, notwithstanding writing's powerful inscriptive/prescriptive force. Try working out what this might look like in relation to Sunday's performance.

See you there.

NB: We will post a prompt for your election day ethnography on Monday.