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Flash Review 1, 2-6: TV Dinner + Talking Dance
A Night at The Kitchen = a Full Plate

By Darrah Carr
Copyright 2001 Darrah Carr

Friday evening's TV Dinner at The Kitchen, cleverly conceived and arranged by Dean Moss, brought together several of the greatest moving minds currently working in modern dance. The event was moderated by dance scholar Maura Keefe and featured panelists Ann Carlson, Blondell Cummings, Douglas Dunn, and Bill T. Jones. While we munched on a tasty dinner and an even better dessert, the choreographers discussed their experiences with and views of combining text and movement, as a prelude to the evening's Talking Dance performance series. Interspersed throughout the dinner dialogue were video clips from The Kitchen's extensive archive of choreographic works that explore text and talking.

Not surprisingly, each of these very diverse, yet equally acclaimed artists has a widely different history of using text. Cummings explained that she began talking within her choreography by accident, after being inspired by her acting classes. For Jones, on the other hand, the decision to start talking was a deliberate choice that often led to a subversive, political statement. He asked, "Who do you think is dancing? The body is dancing, but the body is thinking. The only way you can know what the body is thinking is if it starts talking." Unlike Jones, Dunn never intended to start talking. In fact, he explained, he was initially attracted to dance precisely because it was not verbal. For Dunn, dance was originally a means to escape his social persona and disappear behind movement.

What was most interesting about the panel was to hear how the artists' early views of text have changed during the course of their careers. Jones has moved toward formalism and currently believes that it is more important than words. He quoted Martha Graham's famous aphorism "Movement doesn't lie" and explained that he now asks himself quite simply, "What do you think is beautiful, Bill, and can you make some?" Again unlike Jones, Dunn has swung the opposite way. He began to explore the use of text after asking himself, "How can I say something without saying anything about what I'm doing?"

By such comparisons, I don't mean to pigeon-hole these artists, or paint them as strict polar opposites. If anything, both the panel and the ensuing performance demonstrated the fluidity of opinion and artistic interest over time, as well as the wide range of ways a choreographer can incorporate text into performance. Take Carlson's piece, "The Dog Inside the Man Inside" which she performed after dinner. Not only did Carlson speak, but the accompanying sound score was comprised of scattered bits of text from television and car radio broadcasts, a man's voice keeping an incessant tally of numbers, and a live dog onstage barking. (The dog was portrayed by Zulu, whose "parents" were listed in the program as the Joyce Theater's Linda Shelton and American Ballet Theatre's Jon Teeuwissen.) The entire score was simultaneously told by a sign language interpreter positioned at stage right -- sign language being perhaps the ultimate example of blending text and movement. The text that Carlson spoke was taken from a series of e-mail letters to a variety of people. Upon hearing these snatches of correspondence to friends and lovers, it occurred to me that sometimes the most telling thing is what is not said.

Blondell Cummings's piece "Just a Coupla Boomers Sitting Around Chillin'" had a similar conversational tone. Yet, in this case, Cummings herself did not speak. Instead, we heard recorded commentary from a variety of women discussing their perspective on life at middle age. The multitude of thoughts was then distilled and reflected by the singular voice of Cummings's dancing body.

Jones used the power of his dancing body and singular voice to tell the heart-wrenching story of a fourteen-year-old boy shot dead. He confessed at the start of the piece, "I have a hard time talking in front of people without trying to manipulate them." Yet, his hold on my emotions, though powerful, did not feel negative. If he was manipulative, it was through the deceptively simple structuring of the text and movement, which led to a surprising, shocking ending. Jones began the piece by saying "The day after Christmas" and singing bits of "The old gray goose is·" deliberately leaving out the familiar, last word, his feet stomping against the floor as if to fill in the blank and punctuate the sentence. These phrases were repeated throughout the piece, each time with more detail added, until the full story emerged.

Dunn's duet "Aerobia," performed with Grazia Della-Terza, also relied on the repetition of certain phrases, both textual and choreographic. The repeated phrases did not build toward a specific story, however. Instead, they accumulated as a stream-of-consciousness train of thought in the positive affirmation, or self-help genre. For example, as Dunn danced, we heard his pre-recorded voice saying matter of factly, "I like to be in the moment.... If this is the time, I'm in the place.... If I don't treat myself better, no one else will...." Similarly, as Della-Terza danced, we heard her pre-recorded voice claiming, "There's nothing like other people, pictures don't do them justice.... It's the size of the surprise." I felt as if I was reading the book "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff" in the checkout line at Barnes and Noble. After each dancer took a solo, the recorded voices began to overlap, and they slowly encircled each other, using the phrases as a conversation, or a means of approaching one another. This was the funniest part of the piece, thanks to the deadpan delivery of the text.

To complete the already extremely impressive lineup, the performance also featured works by David Gordon, Yvonne Rainer, and Trisha Brown. Valda Setterfield performed Gordon's "Short History." Part of the piece was taken from the 1978 work "What Happened Happened." According to Setterfield, the work was originally performed by seven women who told seven versions of the same story simultaneously. The only thing they agreed on was that there was an accident and that the police eventually came. Although we only heard Setterfield's version, her description of the original piece highlighted the fact that one's choice of language can completely change the perception of an event. Her description of the accident cleverly interwove gesture and text, and played off of the double meaning of different words that sound the same, such as "sew" and "so" or "two" and "to." When she raised four fingers, but used the word "for," for example, the gestures became something more interesting than pantomime or straight description.

Rainer's "Talking Solo" also incorporated descriptive gesture in order to describe the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly. It was performed by Michael Lomeka of the White Oak Dance Project. Because Lomeka is such a technically proficient, beautiful dancer, I found myself watching him dance more than I listened to what he was saying. This brought to mind several of the questions raised in the panel discussion. When incorporating text and movement, does one inevitably dominate? How can one strike a balance? Should one make a connection between the two, or simply let them be alongside each other?

In Brown's "Accumulation with Talking Plus Water Motor" (which we saw on film) she chose to let two dances with two narratives exist alongside each other and then made a connection by jumping back and forth between the two, picking up each time exactly where she left off. First A, then B, then A, then back to B. Amazing. Such an agile body and mind. It must feel like patting your stomach and rubbing your head while standing on one leg and reciting all the state capitals in a foreign language.

Overall, TV Dinner plus Talking Dance added up to an extremely thought-provoking event -- a perfect blend of lecture/demonstration, composition seminar, meet-the-artist series, and dinner theater. Talking Dance returns tomorrow through Saturday, with a different roster including Katie Duck, Elevator Repair Service, Foofwa d'Imobilite, Miguel Gutierrez, Sarah Michelson, Cynthia Oliver and Jamie Sneider. For more information, please visit The Kitchen web site.

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