The Magic Bird of Cannes

By Marina Shron

The 64th Cannes film festival is drawing to a close and the award ceremony is to begin in two hours. From the crowd that densely packs the square in front of the Palais des Festivals, I am watching the clusters of celebrated guests ascending the red -carpeted stairs towards the entrance, patiently posing in front of cameras pointed at them from all directions, waving and blowing kisses to the crowd., smiling – always smiling… From where I stand, the parade seems endless. And surreal – and not only because it comes as a culmination of my three (only three!) sleepless days in Cannes – days filled with at least four screenings a day, lots of wine and hardly any food, not to mention my (meager) attempts at schmoozing. There is something surreal in a huge camera floating in the air above the red carpet. Held by a long robotic arm, it moves up and down, right and left, tilting and zigzagging and taking dives -– scanning all that is there, capturing only what is worth seeing. As a charmingly disembodied voice announces one by one the names of the stars and their entourage stepping on the red carpet, their oversized images appear on a gigantic screen overhead. Jane Fonda, Rosario Dawson… Robert De Niro, surrounded by “eight graces”- the members of the Jury. The projections accompany the guests all the way to the entrance, magnifying their presence and capturing their faces and bodies from a variety of (flattering) angles — wide, medium and close-ups… The images on the screen are mesmerizing and overwhelming. The actual life-size figures ascending the stairs are less impressive. They look small and ordinary next to their glamorous shadows on the screen. The originals are dwarfed by their reflections, eclipsed by them. The real people walk on the carpet virtually unnoticed -– everyone’s eyes are glued to the screen.

Watching this parade from the crowd, I can’t help but think how aptly this visual metaphor describes the festival as a whole — at least from where I stand. Like The Wizard of Oz, Cannes hides its “true” self behind many screens — of smoke and silver. It surrounds itself with walls of (fun) mirrors and (distorted) reflections. Behind these ephemeral walls, it’s easy to miss the festival’s real magic — ordinary, human, vulnerable magic of cinema. Perhaps this magic needs the disguise of showmanship to protect itself… And no physical body can exist without a shadow. As long as the real thing is still there, I don’t mind the distortions of mirrors.

This is my first time in Cannes. Before I came here, I imagined it as a place of “pure” cinema – a measure of all cinematic measures, free of vulgarity, commercialism and politics. Well, it is not that pure. Perhaps it once was. But since its inception in the late thirties, the festival has grown many limbs — and many skins. There’s the Main competition, Un Certain Regard. Critics’ Week and Directors Fortnight. Etc, etc. And then, there’s Short Film Corner (which brought me here – and for that I’m grateful) and Marche du Film (Feature Film Market). Not all the filmmakers come to Cannes to compete. Many come in search of their audience, future collaborators… distributors. Mostly distributors. And producers.
I met quite a few business-savvy filmmakers who were SO successful at networking – they didn’t have time to watch films. I admire these people, their focus and determination… I envy them. But I also miss the obsessive selflessness of cinephiles who can dissect for hours one particular shot, a camera movement, a fleeting expression on a character’s face… I don’t see too many of these types around. I don’t hear too many conversations about the “art of film”. Perhaps understandably so. These days, Cannes is hardly a place for a cinephile. It’s not easy to find your way around the Palais and the nomadic village surrounding it. Simply getting a pass to “the right” screening or an invitation to the “right” party requires superior survivor skills. Young filmmakers with a few films under their belt don’t come to Cannes to simply watch films. They have more than one bird to kill. They come here to network and watch films, yes — so that they could learn the new winning “techniques” which can secure them a place among the forerunners… Next year.

Then there’s another mirror – critics, journalist – all those who mediate the festival events to the outside world. Although “the outside world” is hardly the right expression. At a festival as big as Cannes, everyone is more or less an outsider. One simply cannot be at all the places at once; the only way to stay tuned is to follow the festival via internet or press. The TV monitors, generously installed on every floor of the Palais, broadcast the highlights of the festival ( including press conferences) in real and delayed time. But the festival participants have hardy enough time to watch these broadcasts. … I’ve heard “The Tree of Life” was booed by critics during its first screening. I wasn’t there, alas. Neither had I witnessed Lars Van Trier infamous gaffe that got him banned out of Cannes. I watched the clip on You Tube: he understands Hitler, he said. He sympathizes with him… as a man. But so did Chaplin while he was making his “Great Dictator… no? Perhaps, I got the connotations wrong. “How do I get out of this sentence?” He never did. He sounded foolish… He said things not worthy of the man of talent . Yet I sympathize with Van Trier, I should admit. By the time I got to Cannes, the image of him extending his right fist from the projection screen at the entrance to Palais was all that was left of his presence. The fist had four letters tattooed on his finger, right below the knuckles — “f”, “u”, “c”, “k” and was pointed straight at me (or at anyone who would dare to take it personally). The man had been eclipsed by his fist… And the worst of all, I didn’t get to see “Melancholia”! It was screened once again at the last day of the festival – the day of reruns. But the screening time had been changed the last minute, perhaps for the reasons that had nothing to do with his sympathy for Hitler after all…

That last day of the festival turned out to be my favorite day. With most of the buyers and sellers gone, the festival had finally shown its true — its ordinary, human and flawed face. It finally felt like a film festival after all. And that was enough for me… perhaps even too much! I had to make some tough choices that last day – decide which films I wanted to see. I gave priority to “small” films, films I would not have a chance to see back in New York. Some of these small films turned out to be big winners. I can’t say I loved all them unconditionally (except “We need to Talk about Kevin”, Lynne Ramsay new film – I gave myself to it without reservations!). “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia” put me to sleep. It stretched on like the steppe it portrayed – but empty and flat and predictable, not at all infinite. “A Boy with a Bicycle” stalled at the end, turned strangely inarticulate… “Elena” which opened with a stunning almost static shot, seemed to have gone down the hill from there. In fact, in each and every film I saw in Cannes there was a moment — a shot, or a scene of genuine cinematic beauty, a moment of unexpected truth… Those moments are what I carried away with me from Cannes. Perhaps the festival turned out to be impure… like life itself. A mixed bag of inspiration and pretense, subtlety and banality, authenticity and vulgarity… But a few moments of real cinema I witnessed in Cannes, 64th edition, were well worth coming here for. It is these moments I will remember – not the glamorous shadows on the screen above the entrance to the Palais. Perhaps in the Platonic cave we find ourselves today, where reflections often overtake the originals, cinema alone is capable of creating moments that seem more real than life itself?

Popularity: 7% [?]

Culturebot contributor Avia Moore is busily covering the plethora of delights at the fifth edition of Festival TransAmériques in Montreal, Quebec. Here’s what’s coming up in the near future, with particular emphasis on Moore’s top picks: Kidd Pivot’s The You Show and Ballets C de la B’s Gardenia. But that’s just the tip of the ice berg: be sure to check the festival website for the full digest.

Kidd Pivot Frankfurt RM, The You Show (June 9-11). Vancouver, B.C.-based choreographer Crystal Pite is one of the most buzzed about choreographers in North America these days, with a busy touring schedule that will shortly bring her to Jacob’s Pillow to present Dark Matters, the Pygmalion-esque puppet and dance extravaganza that debuted in 2009 and was at Montclair University just this last October, where our own Andy Horwitz was a bit ambivalent about it. I missed Dark Matters, but caught Lost Action, its predecessor, a few years back at On the Boards in Seattle, and recently my Seattle-based intern profiled the company at my old editorial outlet, The SunBreak. Pite’s choreography stands out in large part because it’s deconstructive of ballet, meticulous and technique-based, which makes it distinct from much of the modern dance produced in New York and elsewhere. Based on the description, it sounds like in The You Show, Pite seeks to collapse the theatrical and dance into a single piece, as opposed to the diptych effect of Dark Matters. The work centers on the break-up of a couple, whose story is recounted in voice-over narration even as it’s performed onstage.

Les Ballets C de la B, Gardenia (June 1-4). I caught Ballets C de la B’s out of context – for pina at the Joyce last year and I have to say, it’s hard not to love Alain Platel’s gentle wit and charm. Without sacrificing technical accomplishment, Platel manages to tell stories through movement that contextualize the performances, achieving a moving and deeply felt connection between audience and performer. In Gardenia, he explicitly evokes the performative self through the story of an eponymous drag cabaret’s closing, which leads a quotidian group of drab folk to perform their joyous cabaret acts one last time.

New York City Players, Neutral Hero (June 4-6). For most Culturebot readers, Richard Maxwell probably needs no introduction. In Neutral Hero, the current master of anti-acting presents the life of a small Midwest town’s denizens as the endless repeat of classic hero myths.

Miguel Guttierez and the Powerful People, Last Meadow (June 9-11). Another well-known and well-loved New York artist, Miguel Guttierez, brings the seemingly endlessly commented upon Last Meadow to our neighbors to the North, which explores issues of American fatherhood through the lens of the short life and brief filmography of James Dean.

MAU, Tempest: Without a Body (June 10-11). A dance piece from an Auckland-based company, Tempest: Without a Body is an exploration of the post-9/11 assault on personal identity and liberty from Samoan choreographer Lemi Ponifasio, performed by his company of Pacific Islanders.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Jay Dodge. Photo: Farah Nosh

I first saw Boca Del Lupo’s work in their production of The Suicide, a co-production with San Banquito Teatro (Mexico). They brought it to our University and blew us all away with their multi-lingual and physical approach to the text. So yesterday, when I went to see Photog. An Imaginary Look at the Uncompromising Life of Thomas Smith, I really wanted to love their work as much as I had seven years ago. Photog. is a different sort of beast and so I shouldn’t compare the two works. But, though the production carries a lot of power, it did not quite sweep me off my feet in the same way. There are two more chances to see Photog. in Montreal – it plays at the FTA May 29th and 30th.

Formed as a theatre collective, Boca Del Lupo has been devising work from their hometown of Vancouver, British Columbia for the past 15 years. It is now run by the duo of Sherry Yoon and Jay Dodge. Yoon and Dodge have become recognized for their physical theatre techniques (that often include harnesses and sudden flights into the air), outdoor productions, and inter/national collaborations. A native of British Columbia myself, it is exciting to see such innovative new work coming out of the province.

Jay Dodge. Photo: Farah Nosh

Photog. was created through interviews with war photojournalists – their stories and disclosures are presented almost verbatim. Rather than lift the texts directly, however, Yoon and Dodge have created a fictional protagonist. Thomas Smith speaks directly to the audience, documenting his memories and revealing his private insecurities. These range from the horrifying to the humorous and the variety is welcome in such a difficult context. It’s a hard subject to tackle and Yoon and Dodge make a brave attempt, working carefully to be witnesses and not judges. Dodge’s performance is subtle and unaffected. He never slips into melodrama, instead using the intensity of withheld emotion, and playing the point just before a person falls apart.

The production is heavily technical. While Dodge is the sole performer, he shares the stage with two audio/visual technicians, one musician, and one tech that operates the harness system. I loved that all of the technicians were visible onstage–it was inspiring to watch that kind of teamwork and it somehow reflected the team machinery that is part of the wars described onstage. Yoon and Dodge have included seemingly every digital trick in the book but the effectiveness of these tricks is uneven. Powerful moments from the projector include phantom children appearing on Smith’s living room chair, ghosts of the children that were photographed but not saved, and captured images from Smith’s cameras. Less effective were the sound effects that accompanied video transitions, and the use of a chroma key technology that inserted live feed of the performer into projected images. I found myself questioning whether some of the effects were being used to augment the performance or for the sake of using the effect.

One line towards the end of the play struck me. Describing the folks at home who carry on as though war is not tearing apart the world, who do not contribute to peace or aid efforts even when able to, Smith says, “it’s because they are not being confronted with images of the war.” Boca Del Lupo makes very sure that the audience of Photog. is confronted by images of the war; there are stacks of photos everywhere, scattered onstage and projected onto the back screen. We are shown the photos that are not printed, the ones not clean enough for the newspapers, the ones that were not the single photo chosen that day for the world to see. Like the imaginary protagonist, each audience member becomes the witness and must navigate his or her own emotional distance to the subject matter.

Festival Transamériques, 5th Edition
May 26 – June 11, 2011
Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Popularity: 2% [?]

Israel Galván. Photo: Felix Vazquez

Montreal–Spring in Montreal has been struggling this year, leaving the first few days of Festival Transamériques under cold and wet conditions. While the majority of the performances are indoors, the bad weather drags down the buzz and excitement surrounding the launch of the 5th Edition of the festival. I set out in the rain last night to see the first performance on my list. El final de este estado de cosas, redux, the newest tour-de-force from Spanish flamenco dancer Israel Galván, was worth the trek. El final runs one more night – May 28th at 8pm.

The son of Sevillian dancers, Israel Galván has been dancing onstage since the age of four. Over the past 30 years he has rewritten the rules of flamenco and collected an impressive list of major awards. International recognition aside, from the moment he steps on stage his presence is electric and it is clear that we are in the presence of a maestro.

The solo dancer shares the stage with eleven musicians. At times they are his support and at times they are his playmates, taking a more active place on the stage as they solo and interact with Galván. The musicians form two ensembles, the flamenco jazz band Proyecto Lorca and the heavy metal band Orthodox. Two male singers are featured with Proyecto Lorca and one female singer is featured during the Orthodox set. The singers were all outstanding, with heart-wrenching voices, and I was disappointed that the female vocalist was underutilized. On the flip side, I was glad that Orthodox was only featured during one of the movements. I found that the creativity and genius of Galván’s dancing was far better highlighted by Proyecto Lorca. The same mode of expression, set to heavy metal, felt like somewhat of an overstatement.

I feel as though society’s age-old obsession with the apocalypse has recently seen a lot of love from contemporary dance and theatre. I have at least three performances to see in the next month that are all personal explorations of the end of days. El Final is a dancer’s reading of the biblical text. It is presented in five chapters, each distinct in staging and sound quality.

Israel Galván. Photo: Felix Vazquez

In the first chapter, Galván flirts with Butoh, almost naked, alone, and unaccompanied on a sand-covered surface which muffled the percussive steps. In the third movement, he personifies the Whore of Babylon and the space is filled with the metallic percussion of her rings and heels. In the final movement, he shares the stage with four wooden coffins, dancing on top and inside of them. Perhaps the showiest piece – delightfully so – was the use of a sprung wooden platform early in the performance (see video below) that had the ground literally shifting and clattering in response to Galván’s movement. “I wanted to dance an earthquake,” says Galván in the program notes.

The second movement of the program was a huge video projection of a female dancer, one of Galvan’s students. Overlaid with a letter to her teacher about war in her country, the music for her performance was a soundtrack of explosions and gunfire. I find that one of the dangers in using video in live performance is that the projected performers often upstage the live ones, becoming “more real.” The opposite was true in this case; the dark video paled in comparison to the live performance, detracting from the overall rhythm and energy of the program.

Every artist that explores cultural forms walks a tightrope between tradition and experimentation. Galván has had public success in this regard, celebrated for his stripped down portrayal of flamenco, essential elements stripped of much of the traditional showiness. I was struck by the extremes of the performance: absolute silence vs. ear-splitting noise, anger vs. playfulness, the extended gesture of his kicks and jumps vs. the tiny movements of his fluttering fingers. It is a beautiful paradox that Galván is so vibrantly alive throughout this performance about death.

Confronted with a culturally specific performance, I found myself back at a familiar question: can we ever fully understand a performance without knowing the cultural language? Flamenco is, in itself, a language of hand and body gestures and, while I was captivated by the beauty and intensity of Galván’s performance, I felt as though I was always on the verge of understanding something much deeper – if only I understood the language.

Festival Transamériques, 5th Edition
May 26 – June 11, 2011
Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Popularity: 3% [?]

We’ve already previewed it but it’s worth mentioning again, because it’s a surprisingly special piece of theater: this is closing weekend of Target Margin‘s The Tempest at HERE Arts Center (through May 28; tickets $25), and if you have the chance, you should check it out.

I find it a little odd to give an unreserved recommendation to a Shakespeare production. It may be damn near heresy to say it, but I actually don’t usually like seeing Shakespeare performed. There’s theater, after all, and then there’s Shakespeare. The normal qualifiers don’t usually apply. You don’t go see Shakespeare for a well-rounded production. The performances are always uneven. The cutting that goes into paring down the show to digestible length is usually reductive and, in its choices, revealing of the director’s debatable interpretation. It’s not that Shakespeare isn’t good, it’s that it just so rarely offers an unfettered sort of enjoyment. But director David Herskovits and co. offer just that, and that’s why it’s a rare treat.

Whereas most production concepts concern the meaning of the work (let’s set Hamlet in World War II!), Herskovits’s is, fascinatingly, about the production itself. Inspired by the fact that The Tempest was originally written for a chamber setting, Herskovits chose to explore that historicity. It’s not by any means an originalist production, but it borrows heavily from that style. The main theater at HERE is reconfigured for a surprisingly intimate setting; the design is minimalist in its affectation, referencing the staid backdrop of a chamber rather any realistic mise-en-scene. And the acting performances are pre-contemporary, pre-psychological realist.

The result is almost sort of Brechtian. The actors are, in fact, deeply alienated from their characters, and the text is performed as if being read out loud. The result is surprisingly enjoyable–rather than watching actors struggle with varying degrees of success to embody their characters, what we get is the text almost as an object, which allows us to enjoy it for the language. Unlike most other Prosperos I’ve seen, Steven Rattazzi doesn’t rush through his monologues because he’s enraged and consumed by a desire for revenge, but rather languidly indulges the language, letting the words speak for him. It’s not traditional acting, but neither is it deeply deconstructive. Instead, the performance splits the difference, giving us both the poetry of the words as well as the embodiment and performance of real living people, while deftly avoiding the pitfalls you see all too often at even well-regarded theaters.

Herskovits’s intelligent cutting also helps with that. This Tempest is extremely pared down, to under two hours, and it flies by without sacrificing too much. I have to admit, it’s always been one of my favorite Shakespeare plays, with not only my favorite line (“You taught me language; and my profit on’t, Is, I know how to curse”), but my favorite ending, for how it demands we move beyond anger to forgiveness, which I’ve found deeply moving every time I’ve seen it. (Herskovits doesn’t so much play up Prospero’s transformation, though, which I thought was sad even though it doesn’t hurt the production, per se. I’ve always found the heart of the ending to be in Prospero’s recognition of his own inhumanity when Ariel–the airy spirit who does his bidding–has more sympathy for his fellow-human victims than he does. That always gets me, but Herskovits lets it rush by to get to his finale, which holds its own pleasures.)

The odd thing is, performed this way, some parts of the play that are usually fun start to feel cumbersome. Caliban (Mary Neufeld) is rendered marginal, which works into the production fine, but his little cadre of drunkards–Stephano (Meg MacCrary) and Trinculo (J.H. Smith III)–who usually serve as comic relief, just become a bit cloying in this version, but also impossible to avoid in the story. It’s just that the rest of the cast is so engaging and fun that the comic relief feels over the top. Normally Miranda and Ferdinand’s romance is almost treacly, but Clare Barron and Hubert Point-Du Jour are both downright charming in it, particularly Barron, whose naive character comes to life in both her interactions with Rattazzi’s Prospero and Point-Du Jour.

And then of course there’s Ariel. The tradition of how the character became female is interesting in and of itself, but s/he’s always one of those characters designers love to use, because s/he calls for great bits of stage magic. Herskovits’s chamber production doesn’t disappoint even as it scales them down, and on top of that, Nana Mensah is both beautiful and engaging, diaphanous without sacrificing the character’s edge.

Popularity: 3% [?]

The Neta Dance Company’s upcoming performance, 2280 Pints! (at DTW, May 25-28; tickets $20/$15), is many things. Sparked from Pulvermacher’s response to an installation at the New Museum and borne out of a summer dance workshop at The University of Florida, the piece is a celebration of the company’s 25^th anniversary and a collaboration between dance students and a professional dance company. The hour long piece is comprised of individual sections developed by company members and workshop participants, which have accumulated over the past year from experimentation with buckets. In the performance, a cast of 20 dancers inhabits a playing space of 57 white, five-gallon buckets. I discussed the work with Neta Pulvermacher, founder of The Neta Dance Company, who has created over 75 works and is founder of The A.W.A.R.D. Show! and Dance Conversations @ The Flea.

How did you become a dancer?
I was born and raised on a kibbutz in Israel, a community based on communist ideals. My parents’ generation was amongst the founders. They themselves are from Germany but they immigrated right before World War II. We would work in our little zoo and feed animals, work the land, learn art, musical instruments, and learn to think. When I was 13 I went to a neighboring kibbutz to take a dance class and that’s when I met a wonderful teacher that I’m still friends with. She taught us to listen and choreograph to music and somehow dance stuck.

Why dance?
In some ways because you don’t speak with words. In my upbringing there were so many declarations of ideals that it was so refreshing to have something with very different rules, language which is not verbal. It made me feel that I could say or express things that are difficult to do with words. With music, the ear recognizes a pattern much faster than the eye. It takes a lot more to recognize a pattern in dance because the language is a lot more complex. Dance works with linguistic principles, but it does not have the same exactitude as music. It’s more like poetry. It affects you without having to go through your submission which is another reason why I love it. You could be extraordinarily intelligent or dumb and it affects you without you needing to understand.

What are the origins of 2280 Pints!?
Last May I traveled with 11 of my students who are college dance majors to Israel for a study abroad program. I am originally from Israel and seeing my home country through their eyes was like experiencing it anew for me. I realized how that vitality and intensity of living- both joy and sorrow- is intensified by the fact that there is always an impending sense of violence in that part of the world. Going there with them for three weeks made me aware all over again about the importance of joy and not in a hokey kind of way.  Coming back home to New York City for a short time, I was going to direct a summer dance intensive in Florida for two weeks. I was tired and I didn’t feel like revisiting anything and not sure what I would work on. I read in the New York Times a review of the Rivane Neuenschwander retrospective at the New Museum and saw a picture of her piece, “Rain Rains.” I had to go see it. I walked into this room and it looked like it was raining buckets but in each of those buckets she drilled a hole, so the bucket dripped into identical buckets underneath. It was both visual rain and the sound of rain drops- very beautiful and whimsical. Then on Saturday I flew to Florida and on Sunday I said, “I don’t know what’s with these buckets, but there’s something.” So I went to Walmart and bought 30 $5 plain white buckets. I spread it on the studio floor and not a minute passed and the ceiling began to leak. There was something wrong with the AC. It was very funny.

How does this piece relate to your previous work?
I always think of my work like I’m a scientist in that there is something I research. Being in the studio and investigating is my job. I deconstruct the thing to its smallest ingredient and set it up in a way where it begins to interact and play.  I let it start to happen and I lift my hands and that’s when I see what it is. Inspiration comes from causing and enabling interactions between people, space, matter, ideas, and feelings. Those interactions are always relational. If I’m trying to understand what we make, it’s about the power of the imagination to see things other than what they are in relationship to other things and make an action in relation to another action or object. I’ve made a lot of dances, but this is not me being smart, cool, hip, I don’t’ give a shit anymore. I just want to make something that is vital and open, without any fear. To release a smile in a person’s face, a real deep body smile is a big deal.

Is your ultimate hope for this piece to convey and inspire joy?
It’s much more than joy. It’s a bucket world. It’s a micro world created with buckets, activated by people and music. It’s not fancy. The fanciness of it comes from your ability as a viewer to go with the idea that the bucket will become anything you want it to be. It’s trying to strip human behavior and show it through buckets. The buckets become human and the dancers become more human because of their relationship to them. The imperfections become accentuated because the buckets are uniform. I wanted to make something that would be generous and open. It’s unapologetically accessible without trying hard to be that. To get to that simplicity is a long journey. Mostly I just want you to be enthralled by the end of it that you would join us in the dance party.

2280 Pints!
Performed by: The Neta Dance Company: Courtney Baron, Robin Brown, Karen Harvey, Colette Krogol-Reeves, Meghan Merrill, Lonnie Poupard, Matthew Reeves, Rebecca Warner; special guests; and students from the University of Florida MOD project – a student ensemble directed by Pulvermacher at the University of Florida, Gainesville.

Wednesday – Saturday, May 25 – 28, 2011 at 7:30pm. Family matinee on Saturday, May 28 at 2pm.  Tickets are $20, or $15 for students, seniors and children.

Tickets are available by calling 212.924.0077 or online at www.dancetheaterworkshop.org/Neta_Dance

Popularity: 3% [?]

I think that every 31 Down show I’ve seen is somehow louder than the last. Not a criticism, mind you, just an observation. Here At Home, which is running at the Bushwick Starr through May 28th, is pretty darn loud. Maybe it is because the Bushwick Starr is a little more intimate than the Incubator, maybe it is because 31 Down just likes it loud. Not sure. But the rumble and hum of the sound design is omnipresent, almost a character unto itself. At times it is a foreboding undercurrent of tension and un-ease; at other times it represents the violence of the war overseas, far away but always present in the hearts and minds of those here at home.

In “Here At Home” Hollis Witherspoon plays Holly, a Wal-Mart worker whose boyfriend, Matt (Eric Bland), is stationed in Iraq. She spends her smoke breaks not smoking with co-worker Frank (DJ Mendel) – a veteran of the first Gulf War who has apparently suffered some kind of brain damage. They are occasionally joined by Matt’s misfit brother Mike (Ryan Holsopple) who cannot join the military due to an eye ailment but hopes to see some action overseas as a contractor. Through a series of intimate scenes and surreal vignettes, their lives intertwine as Holly unravels, Mike dreams of carnage and Frank drifts between the two. Matt is a spectre, looming large over the proceedings but appearing only briefly, and in silence.

Mendel and Witherspoon deliver intense, focused, well-crafted performances as two damaged individuals reaching out to each other for some sort of cold comfort. They exchange banalities, reflect on the ennui of slaving for Wal-Mart, they try to find ways to express the unease they share, Frank with his memories of war and Holly with her fear for her boyfriend, her own ache and longing. When Frank decides to share with Holly a poem that he wrote to an ex-girlfriend, it is both hilarious and heartbreaking.

Previous 31 Down shows have been written collaboratively by Holsopple and director Shannon Sindelar – this marks the first time (I think) that they’ve worked with an outside writer, Eric Bland. Bland’s writing style is more straightforward than Holsopple/Sindelar’s work, though it is punctuated by impressionistic moments of heightened language, to varying effect.

Thematically “Here At Home” is timely and relevant. Despite the constant headlines of global unrest, still it is easy to forget we are a country at war. By focusing on the way war changes the men who fight it and affects the loved ones left behind, the show draws attention to a little-discussed reality.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Dean Moss’ premieres “Nameless Forest” this week and next (Thursday-Saturday, May 19-21 and May 26-28, 8 pm) at The Kitchen. Part rite-of-passage, part meditation on the evolving processes of contemporary performance, it was developed in collaboration with Korean sculptor Sungmyung Chun and features dancers Kacie Chang, Eric Conroe, Aaron Hodges, Pedro Jiménez, DJ McDonald and Sari Nordman. In work also incorporates diary entries from photojournalist Mike Kamber, neon effects from visual artist Gandalf Gavan, an original score by Stephen Vitiello, costumes by Roxana Ramseur, and lighting and technical design by Vincent Vigilante. We spoke briefly last week.

So, you’re loading in this week and premiering the work, but it’s had many showings ASU, MANCC, and recently at Yale. But you’re in the final gathering of everything for it, right? Yes. We had three preview performances at Yale. That was a great out of town showing for a very supportive group of students and public. The Kitchen is the premiere after a week in the space and I’m very excited to have the time to ensure that the technical aspects and performers are working well in the space. So, I’m very excited to be presenting it, hosting it. I feel like I’m sharing something with my audience. It’s as if there is a gift that you’ve worked hard on, that you know is a very nice gift and you’ve gotten this very nice gift for someone you know very well and you are about to present it to them and that’s how that’s how I feel about this work.

What do you mean about the work as a meditation? It is a meditation on the work of my collaborator. The meditation is not only what I think his work means, but also what it is in the space and within the circumstances of its presentation. I start to think about myself in relationship to it, my own experience of it including what’s not in the work and what is tangentially related to the work. One can be thinking of all of these other things. It takes his exhibitions and installations into a whole other realm of experience and that process of moving from one thing to another becomes the work. The rite of passage is a method to experience the work. The work is set up for some fraction of the audience to navigate through it physically and that journey can be seen as a rite-of-passage. The passage is witnessed by the rest of the audience, but the witnessing that the audience does is like watching a ceremony that you may or may not know all the parts to. You are probably coming a way from it with an impression of how difficult this journey is. Whereas the person navigating through it may have a different experience. One primarily of the embrace that their community is giving them, the support that they are being extended. The off stage audience sees one thing and onstage audience sees another. It’s very embracing, very intimate onstage.

You have been constructing carefully considered methods for making the audience experience integral to your work. I was deeply appreciative of it during Kisaeng becomes you. What is it about this careful bringing in that interests you? I’m interested in vulnerability again as I was in Kisaeng. If you want to get at that and at compassion and at these intimate details of someone’s emotional lives, I think it’s important that the participants feel safe and I think having a community that values that enables that.

How did you come to collaborate with Sungmyung Chun? And, how did you work
together? It’s important to see his work. He makes figurative sculptures. They are the size of a child and often have his face on them, an adult head on a child’s body. The figure is often wounded – light scrapes, a little blood. As you go through his exhibition, these wounds seem self-inflicted. You never see that activity, but you have this sense that there’s no one else doing this to the figures. His work is presented not as individual pieces but as whole installations. So you see scenes. He very much likes to think of himself as a storyteller and he uses these stories to explore existential being. I was at the beginning of Kisaeng, walking the streets of Seoul and I came across his gallery. I went in, saw his work and thought it was fantastic and would make a fantastic performance work. I left my name and he speaks little English and I speak no Korean so we had a friend translating and we hit it off. He watched the making of Kisaeng. In 2007, I saw his work, then made Kisaeng and then came back in 2009 to work together with him. It’s taken a long time. Working together was and continues to be relatively easy beyond language where we alway use a translator. The idea is strong and we quickly found that we could be flexible and patient with it’s physical development. Also practically we did a lot of traveling. I have flown Sungmyung and his associate Hyangsuk Choi to the states five times in the past two years. I have gone to Korea twice during the same time. So we put high value on being together in the space and looking at the work. Part of the process was in the selection of the transferable elements of Sungmyung’s work. Asking what was going to make a transfer onto the stage that can be about more than merely animating his characters. With figures on a field, Laylah Ali and I found out right away not to do the big green heads from her pictures. With Kisaeng we wanted to avoid the dancers being seen romantically as traditional artist courtesans. With this piece, the narrative that I conceived was kind of a parallel, not based entirely on the narrative of the original work. We broke down that narrative to disrupt and comment on it. Some early inspiration was taken from the structure of Rashomon. There was some early inspiration taken from the structure of Indonesian hindu rites in Bali. We both wanted the audience onstage and that meant that if the audience is onstage how we incorporate them must be significant. The audience becomes the core of the work. You’re inviting the audience onstage and you’re creating a frame with dancers for bringing the audience in. The work originally developed in a different way. We had a showing at the Kitchen that didn’t work entirely. So, I changed the master narrative or the primary metaphor: the underlying logic of the work. The original metaphor was trying to create community with our onstage audience. That became extremely unclear when we showed it – for me and for many who saw it in process and they were right – how are you going to get from here to there. I was faced with this aesthetic problem – how do you keep what you have onstage in this specialized environment and make a circumstance or framework for community. So there became these questions: What’s the community? What’s the relationship between the performers themselves and this thing they are trying to embody on stage? What is it that artists do in their communities? Why does a community, dance community, artist community – why do they care about individual feelings and the artifact of those feelings? Why does that matter was a big question. So by changing the primary metaphor to a place of initiation – ritual of passage – allows the performers to be the performers. It allows them to take their place within this specialized space and allows us to shepherd our guests and introduce them to this space in a very specific personal way.

You’ve also included several other elements. What fed that? Sumyung’s original images and installations have a pure kind of form and are editorially very straightforward. He’s really cut into his sense of self within a particular world. There’s not a lot of comment on it or distance from him. He has an interesting humor, but the work is a sincere and straightforward interior dialogue. In bringing it onto the stage, I was aware that people in the role of his figures will carry a more complex sense of presence and that there’ll automatically be a commentary. If you are a single visual artist and making work, it can be about yourself but if I take that intimate existential idea and put it on other people it becomes about other voices. So, I wanted those other voices to help form the structure of the work. The performance of Nameless forest is in three parts: the first part is homage to Sumyung’s world. It is the longest section and there’s a kind of journey well depicted. In the 2nd part, the narrative (his internal narrative) is replaced with the photojournalist Mike Kamber’s diary entries. Mike’s been in many conflicted places. (We’re friends from the early 80s when we used to squat buildings together.) He gave me his audio diaries from when he was in Somalia. Using Mikes diary entries as score the performers dance a choreographic variation on the first section. The third section is like a ritual epilogue. It sets up the work in a timeless sort of way and then it asks for a kind of participation from the audience to again fill in the narrative. The audience themselves, their own narratives complete the work.

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Before Thursday night’s performance of Shannon Gillen + Guests CLAP FOR THE WOLFMAN at the Incubator Arts Project I was having a chat with a friend of mine. We were talking about how in ballet and some modern dance pieces there are “roles” that are created within the work and it is interesting to watch how specific dancers take on those roles and interpret them. And then we discussed how in some contemporary dance it is not about roles, it is about finding the unique, individual movement vocabularies of the dancers themselves and meshing them with a choreographer’s vision. These are two distinct ways of approaching the creation of dance and the effect is very different – in one form we are looking at the virtuosity of the dancer as expressed in interpretation, in the other we are looking at the intersection of the dancer’s individual expression and the choreographer’s vision – how does this choreographer work with the innate material the corps of dancers brings to the work and shape it into a coherent whole?

In this context, CLAP FOR THE WOLFMAN is an interesting balancing act in which there are moments of improvisation, spontaneity and play juxtaposed with tightly structured choreography. The piece suggests a tension between the civilized and the wild, control and chaos, the primal and the refined. As an ensemble the dancers – Genna Baroni, Xan Burley, Frances Chiaverini, Janna Diamond, and Kristin Swiat – work together to create an ever-shifting web of alliances and confrontations balanced with moments of individual expression.

The piece starts with the dancers arrayed onstage and then goes to blackout, followed by a series of tableaux of the ensemble against the wall, as if they were on the run. They are all wearing hoodies and their faces are essentially covered, which establishes a sense of urgency and being hunted, that carries on throughout the work. During the darkness of the first sequence there appears to be a sixth dancer, which is soon revealed to be a Man Made of Many Balloons – which I thought was pretty funny. Not sure what it meant exactly – but it was an interesting trick.

From there we move into a sequence of various groupings in which the dancers perform with intensity and focus, broken up occasionally with moments of levity and play. They change costumes onstage and all the tech is on display. They perform to a score of found sound and use a live microphone as a key element of the design. At different points in the show the microphone is used to amplify the rustling and noise of movement and it adds an interesting, rough layer of texture.

The microphone is also used as a control device. In one sequence the dancers take turns giving instructions to each other, they also strike poses and self-narrate, things like: “This is what I look like when I’m praying” and “This is how tall I was when I was seven”. It seemed like a bit of a spontaneous improvisational contest. It came after a particularly rigorous sequence of movement and was a nice counterpoint to the intensity of the preceding choreography.

WOLFMAN started out a little disconnected – the sequences seemed somewhat random – but as the work progresses it builds momentum, the disparate choreographic elements come more into focus and we start to see patterns emerge, vocabularies repeat. And though it started out rather dark and moody, it lightened up over the course of the evening – it was as if the performers were settling into the world of the piece and the brooding tension of the beginning gave way to a sense of exploration.

It seems redundant to say that a dance piece is intensely physical, but the dancers in WOLFMAN were really present and expressive without being too self-serious. They brought a wonderful attention to detail and an exuberance to their physicality that was exciting to watch. They obviously enjoy working together as an ensemble and Gillen’s choreography took advantage of that. And while I generally don’t like to call out individuals in ensemble work, you couldn’t help but be intrigued and amused by Janna Diamond’s occasional impish grin. It was contagious and at times the whole ensemble seemed like they were going to bust out laughing – not in a bad way but in a “I can’t believe how much fun I’m having” kind of way.

And I assume Gillen, as choreographer, is responsible for creating the structural framework in which the dancers have the freedom to express themselves. She has placed conceptual and choreographic layers on top of the dancers’ natural inclinations, found a way to contextualize their vocabularies and built a house for it all to live in. Gillen is definitely a choreographer to watch. She has a lot of ideas both conceptually and choreographically and obviously has a good rapport with her dancers – who she can trust to help her deliver her vision.

WOLFMAN is a good beginning. I know Gillen has been making work for awhile but I feel like she’s really onto something with this balance of seriousness and humor, formal and informal choreography. The question is how she will edit and refine her vision as she moves forward. I, for one, look forward to finding out.

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In conjunction with the Fusebox Festival 2011, we bring you a podcast with Lin Hixon of Every House Has A Door. Hixson (and Matthew Goulish), after a twenty-year collaboration as co-founders of Goat Island, have formed Every house has a door to create project-specific collaborative performances with invited guests. This company seeks to retain Goat Island’s narrow thematic focus and rigorous presentation, but to broaden the canvas to include careful intercultural collaboration, and its unfamiliar, even awkward, spectrum.

Listen to Hixon’s interview with Timothy Braun and Fusebox Artistic Director Ron Berry here:

-Timothy Braun

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