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Letter from New York, 1-24: Disengage the Disconnect
Shick's Schtick Lost without a Translation
By April Biggs
Copyright 2008 April Biggs
NEW YORK -- Saturday, January 12: Vicky Shick's "Plum House (a Cartoon)" stirs even in its
pre-show darkness at Dance Theater Workshop. The hub of the piece is a
barebones wooden frame house poised upstage right. Like a doorless outhouse
with transparent walls, the beams loom and a bald light bulb with a yellow
oval in its pear-shaped belly hangs center. The solitude of the house draws
the eye to the stark black space everywhere else on stage.
The bulb dims and the strumming of Flamenco rhythms is heard in the dark. As the stage lights
come up, we gaze upon the backs of five dancers in a marching line on stage
right. One by one they enter through the side of the house, each rendering a
unique gestural repertoire beneath the light bulb. Their costumes loosely
associate with leopard print, sooty black and a skirt theme -- but the
colorless attire is uninviting and draws me into a malaise that never quite
stops coming. One dancer, Derry Swan, is clad in a black tank and black
pants with a tiny neon purple string sewn around the waistline and trailing
down a pant leg. I expect some intriguing use of the neon in the dark, but
alas it never happens. After the idiosyncratic doorway ditties, each dancer
eventually makes her way downstage to glom the audience with a blank face
while executing hip circles. I feel like I'm waiting. By this point, my mind
has averted itself to the sound score by Elise Kermani. I doubt this is
Shick's intention as the score is mostly atmospheric, but it helps to keep
me from drifting out of the blackbox all together. Herein lies one of my
biggest pet peeves with the current modus operandi of modern dance. How much
work is an audience member expected to do?
Writing for DanceView Times in 2005, Nancy Dalva called Shick "a dancer's
dancer." Exactly. As a dancer, I don't think this is necessarily a good
thing. I am going against all iconic worship of Vicky Shick here, but her
choreography in "Plum House," for the most part, is in a language too
specific to dance -- gestural but not pedestrian -- and has all the earmarks
of current downtown dance trends: the eyes wandering the air and looking
full of wonderment at nothing in particular; a sharp gesture that suddenly
undulates and releases into another gesture; abundant silences filled with
disconnected vignettes; and that aggravating audible, seemingly involuntary,
breathing twitch -- Diane Madden demonstrates this in a short solo. The most
memorable and engaging points in the piece come when the dancers join
forces, whether occupying the same ten-foot space or moving in unison. They
form a line at times, causing each of their vagaries to incarnate something
louder and stronger. If they are to represent a family in a strange house,
if they are to represent disconnection, we only see this when they stand
together. Before this, their characters seem almost clandestine. I long to
see them threadbare.
So, why PLUM House? I keep asking myself, What is so distinct about this
house? What defines it as plum? I have yet to find an answer. I notice that
when the performers visit the house, physical contact, rarely seen in the
work at all, crops up between them. At one such point, Perrine Ploneis and
Laurel Tentindo occupy the house and the other three women cluster behind
it. Ploneis and Tentindo become a bit playful, seeming like two young
sisters or friends amusing themselves without supervision. They mimic one
another, exchange weight, parley with each other's negative space and then,
in a comic moment, lunge and with arms fully extended make their hands look
like claws preparing to attack. Juliette Mapp's character develops slight
shape when she takes control of the group, snapping her fingers, clapping
her hands and pointing them in one direction or another. But for the most
part, "Plum House" is too cerebral and calculated, each movement a letter of
a word of a sentence spoken over and over yet never translated.
Shick makes a cameo at one point -- in bells no less -- perhaps as a
matriarchal ghost. But even her own display of her movement sheds no light.
The atmospheric elements allocate our minds more than the dance. The music
hops about from Spanish guitar to a Judy Garland-esque voice, stopping off
at ticking clocks, crickets, Chopin and "La Vie en Rose" along the way. The
desolate, separate, yet perhaps safe wooden house created by Barbara
Kilpatrick haunts the periphery at all times. Aside from the obvious
indication of domesticity and family, though, I am left with a disconnect
from the disconnect. I do not care much about the characters, the dancers,
or the plight of the piece since such importance is far suppressed by the work's
gestural privacy.
The conclusion of "Plum House" parallels its beginning. The flamenco music
cues the women to march stage right again, repeating their quirky entrances.
As the house bulb dims over Mapp and Shick dancing arm in arm beneath it,
Tentindo disappears alone upstage right, Ploneis and Swan gather together
downstage right and Madden spins center stage. Just then I see something
curious and almost unbelievable: Madden smiles, the first I witness all
evening, as her face becomes shadow.
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