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Flash Review 3, 6-5:
Excessories to the Dance
Jasperse Jousts with the Body Dance
by Susan Yung
Copyright 2000 Susan Yung
In previous works I've
seen by John Jasperse, his experimentations seemed to me a charming
and fascinating discourse on the body and human invention/s. In
the double bill seen at The Kitchen Friday, which included the premiere
of "Fort Blossom," I saw his willingness to surpass societal norms
and explore possibly uncomfortable psychological turf at the risk
of testing the patience and comprehension of the audience.
"Excessories" (1995)
purports to deal with the body and its surface as a canvas, and
it permitted Jasperse plenty of opportunities to play with familiar
objects and body parts in completely new ways. We saw it right from
the top -- a riveting sequence of hand/arm gestures lit with a river
of light from which the dancers scoop armfuls. Another scene features
Jasperse bound in a mask, wrist and ankle cuffs. He's wheeled in
on a chair, dumped, flipped and cantilevered about the stage by
Miguel Gutierrez, and is finally left lying on his side to sing
an aria, which ends abruptly when his mouth slit is zippered. The
other dancers (Larry Keigwin, Parker Lutz, and Juliette Mapp) --
all stupendous in sometimes incredibly demanding situations -- eventually
wind up with bound arms or legs, just to level the terrain. They
manage just fine.
The original soundtrack
by James Lo was a concatenation of banal noises -- ambient crowd
chatter, bowling, machinery, instrumentation played backward to
an emotionally heightened crescendo. Remarkably, the dancers performed
much of the hour-long piece in perfect synch with one another despite
the apparent lack of an organized musical counting system, which
in retrospect must certainly be more difficult than it appeared.
One section performed to good old music evoked certain foreign theater-dance
companies which employ street clothes and shoes for costumes; another
characteristic of such companies is a masochistic slant, and in
this segment the dancers took turns lying on the floor, being literally
danced on by others, oblivious. The section ended with a frantic
line dance including breasts and penises. The ponderous sense of
confrontation was balanced by an amazing section involving stretchy
red over-garments and linen undershirts (designed by Jasperse and
Katrin Schnabl), where the dancers inserted limbs into the sleeves
of others, like creatures co-opting the nests or shells of others
for their own use.
"Fort Blossom" is defined
by grating industrial noises and diffuse light from big heavy-duty
fixtures. (Philip Sandstrom designed the lighting; Michael Floyd
mixed the sparse, irritating sound.) The women wore sleek pumpkin
dresses; Gutierrez and Jasperse danced nude, and much of their movement
consisted of lying down and wriggling across the stage using anything
but human locomotion. Inflated ottomans function variously as cushions,
backpacks, intercourse interfacing, etc. The men perform a post-coital
duet with their bodies' nooks and crannies normally reserved for
lovers or doctors -- more exploration by Jasperse, but without costumes
and apparently to the limits of the container of the skin. This
is an alien world -- intense, airless, suffocating, and at once
fascinating -- yet nothing was stronger than the feeling of relief
I felt when the lights finally went out.
With antics like these,
it's easy to overlook the sheer ingenuity of Jasperse's unique movement
vocabulary. If one were to completely eliminate the use of props,
it's difficult to know how the movement alone would stand, but I'd
bet it would be fine. There are, in fact, long passages of complex,
dense, phrases of actions and reactions, where seemingly no move
is performed without an impetus from another dancer. These chains
of dance are so confident and natural looking, yet at the same time
totally innovative and new. At times the dancers' interactions evoke
wrestling matches, which can appear scripted yet of course unfold
moment by moment. Or the way animals communicate by nudging, leaning,
and head butting, or by other non-verbal ways. (It has a distinct
aesthetic that is immediately recognizable, similar to the way William
Forsythe's work is unmistakable in still photos.) There is a purposefulness
with each move, and Jasperse's work embodies that organic economy.
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