Joined by the five other company members of Anna Halprin under the direction of performer, Anne Collod, I see six well-toned dancers stare at the audience with the looming intensity of a sunset in the desert and carefully unbutton their white oxfords and peel off their trouser socks, sport coats, slacks and undergarments until they wore nothing but a stare that made me feel more exposed than they looked. As a dancer who has grown up watching dancers perform in various states of undress and nakedly prance about dressing rooms as though skin were an outfit donned on the red carpet, the nudity alone did not bother me nor seemingly anyone else in the audience. It is their complete dedication to the task at hand, the undressing, and their subsequent focus that is making this accessible "dance move" strongly communicated to the audience.
In a normal situation, I would grant them the privacy of averting my eyes. But, here they are, on a stage, performing, and as an audience member am I not supposed to fulfill my responsibilities and watch? Life has taught me that when sitting in an audience at a show, you direct focus forward and dream of the moment when the enigmatic beings on stage may toss an accidental glance your way. Performers often direct their focus outward and, while modern dance often jests at the concept of the fourth wall, pushing through the audience with their candor, at DTW these six performers obliterate even the most modern of these notions and invert my entire idea of performing.
Nothing about their disrobing causes me to think, “Man I wish I could take my sock off that luxuriously while articulating my left baby finger so eloquently. What charm, what finesse!” The inversion lies in their ability to perform mundane tasks with a heightened sense of awareness – more Eastern than Western in its origins – no multitasking, no highlighting of seemingly impossible feats, just unabashed focus on what it is to do one thing. Between my earlier struggle with wanting to seem like a normal person who could be social and converse with my seat mate and my desire to seem fully engaged by the inanimate objects in my lap, I become aware of how specific Halprin’s dancers must be.
So often, dance works to prove that the human body can do things far more extraordinary than perform the tasks necessary to get from morning until night. Halprin, joined with desire to take these daily tasks and make them engaging by reducing them to their raw efforts and results, pushes the concept of "new work." This particular aspect of Parades and Changes was initially highly controversial and often banned. Its return to the stage speaks to its importance both in the 60’s and now when no one can dedicate their focus to rituals that link the universe.
The evening takes many other tasks – ripping butcher paper, stomping on small platforms, dressing each other in found objects, etc., and works to bestow upon each task the integrity of highly technical dance work (or what I’d gather a brain surgeon dedicates when operating on a premature baby). Unwavering in their attention to each task or “cellblock,” they are augmented nightly by their pacing and staging. No two shows are the same which breathes life into "choreography" that has been engrained in both company and audiences members for all of time.
Go to Dance Theater Workshop to check them out and if you’re lucky, you may just sit next to a man who will talk to you like a human and then perform a human task that makes him seem otherworldly.
iDANZ Critix Corner
Official Dance Review by Eileen Elizabeth
Performance: Parades and Changes
Venue: Dance Theater Workshop
Show Date: November 18, 2009
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