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Dance Union
Dance Union is new dance series which presents dance works and experimental dance art to further realize the endless possibilities of the art of being.
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Dance Union hosts two
By Sid Smith
At first blush, no two artists are more unalike. Jonathan Meyer's solos tend to be stark, challenging, angst-ridden and ferociously serious, as if the entire weight of the nuclear age rested on his slender frame.
Jyl Fehrenkamp is comic, campy, irreverent and satirical, sometimes going by her stage alter-ego as "Jyldo" and listing in her program credits "choreographer and nerd-in-residence for 'Alien Queen,' a rock musical version of the 'Alien' movies." How in the world did they wind up sharing a bill together?
Enter Ayako Kato and her Dance Union, which relishes just such assemblies and often includes, as they did Saturday, when the outing took place in the rear North Theatre of the Menomonee center, a brief discussion exploring the result.
Maybe one clue as to what Kato was up to comes from the fact that, as soon as I heard of the pairing, I didn't want to miss it. Indeed, it proved wondrously revelatory, showing off fine work by both performers and evoking probing thoughts and questions about the very nature of performance itself. Meyer admits there are sly comic moments in his own work; Fehrenkamp's snarkfest solo "Corey," about her own teen crush on Corey Haim, slashing at adolescent folly and the drug and money machine of pop culture alike, is the blackest of comedy as it turns weirdly on his sordid, tragic end from multiple addictions.
Any program always depends on the quality of the works, and the 45-minute effort here was entertaining, as these performers tend to be. Meyer's "Spim" is a driving, driven, compulsive and compelling solo impassioned by tortuous writhing and deformity, his hands frequently gnarled in what reminded me of neurological disease and a nurse in the audience of the process of dying.
I liked "Whence," his comparative extravaganza last fall, but the solo, in a confined space, seems in many ways Meyer's forte. "Spim" is a wealth of contradictions and tensions, including, especially in a few early passages, modern dance that looks like stumbles from which he recovers. His swift, speedy control and bodily force often boast the more traditional look of the deliberate modern dancer--the not-a-muscle-out-of-place sense of mastery on view in everything from "Cry" to Christian Denice's remarkable River North solo. But Meyer, more than most dancers, is able to appear to be falling or stubbing his toe or on the brink of losing all control, only to slip back into self-command--the flailing stumble brought hair-raisingly back into harmony.
You also feel you can't blink or you might miss something, the phrasings are so densely packed. He can go from prone position to the upright with extraordinary ease and energy, and Saturday he did so at one point by coming up, his toes curled underneath, a method of standing that both tweaked ballet and would seem to risk breaking the tarsals and metatarsals of his feet.
"Spim," to silence, is tortured, alarming, pained and painful, distortions that recall the great actor David Threlfall in "Nicholas Nickleby," counterbalanced by haunting pauses and poses that hint of a more promising serenity, though one short-lived and not very reliable.
Fehrenkamp opened with a quintet entitled "a boating incident" and a score made up of two songs from 1980s staple Christopher Cross. Fehrenkamp senses that the abandoned loves of our youth still play a role long after we've discarded them. Part of it's nostalgia. Now 35, she seems to be doing for the '80s what earlier satirists did for their teen years mocking "Leave It to Beaver" for one age group and "The Brady Bunch" for a later one.
But something else, too. The follies of innocence change, deepen, but still delight. "a boating incident" is intoxicating silliness, the players deliciously self-satisfied, the dancing mock video antics, fey as all get out and infectious with its joy. We all, for a moment, flash back to when we secretly hummed along to Cross's catchy melodies, just as we join in the latter-day superiority that we're better, more sophisticated now. Aren't we?
I have a fantasy that "a boating incident" will open next summer's "Dance for Life" benefit. The crowd would go ape, I boldly predict. Saturday's outing was more or less a work in progress, Fehrenkamp suggesting she may add a third Cross selection to the two here, a good idea. I'd also suggest she amp up the Jazzercize vocal instructions. I didn't get that joke, which she explained in the discussion, and I think she can afford to be more demonstratively Richard Simmons-esque to get across the point.
In any event, the program, dubbed somewhat incomprehensibly "Dance & Theme/Non-Theme II," inspired all manner of thoughts about drama, comedy and all intersections and crossovers among them, not to mention meditation on the pristine, close-to-pure and ultimately terrifying job of the soloist.
Dance Union "Politics and Dance"
By Laura Molzahn
Was the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and 19 others on Saturday a political act? Probably more political than the four pieces presented Saturday night at the Drucker Center in Dance Union’s fourth showcase, "Politics & Dance." These works defined politics broadly and variously, as cultural injustices, a couple’s internecine battles, an individual’s conflicting impulses, and the human tools used in combat.
Adam Rose's solo, "IAR 93 Vultur," is strangely prescient on the subject of killers like Jared Lee Loughner. Rose told me in an interview that "what's interesting about the military is that it's a form of politics that transcends all politics. It's about technology and force." And for Loughner, the political cause seems to have been almost arbitrary while the violent act was crucial.
Rose is frighteningly present and invested in "IAR 93 Vultur," which he named after a Romanian military aircraft partly because the number 93 is crucial in Thelema, the religious-magical system devised by Aleister Crowley. Rose's company, Antibody Dance, according to its website uses "occult research" to "create antibodies --- agents of resistance and transformation within culture." And fanatical belief in the power of magic to transform must lie behind Rose's own transformation, from shy and diffident offstage to a completely uninhibited freak on the boards. His eyes roll back in his head, his mouth contorts into ghoulish frowns or smiles, and he hops around the space like a mad frog or whirls like some combination of dervish and military target search device. He's reminiscent of Jeremy Renner's suicidal thrill seeker in the film "The Hurt Locker," or the bloodied beast in Goya's painting "Saturn Devouring His Son."
Ayako Kato was likewise transformed in her solo "Z," though the result was very different: elegant and introspective rather than demonically possessed. The self-effacing founder of the Dance Union series becomes entirely self-assured onstage. Kato writes that her piece is about "the contradictory characters of the personnel who seeks salvation," and I saw those warring impulses as ego and self-abnegation. Reaching outward with a yearning yet crabbed hand might suggest the creeping tendrils of egotism, while Kato's hidden face --- which she turns away from us or veils with her hair --- might indicate self-repression. Or not. Whatever, Kato galvanized the concept of inner conflict in her charged, nuanced performance.
"Abbot & Viv: The Prelude" externalized conflict. Choreographed and performed by Michael Estanich and Lucy Riner (aka Re|Dance), this duet embodies the direct confrontations, sneaky skirmishes, and loving embraces of a couple fighting and bonding over a glass bowl, which they alternately snatch from or give to each other or ignore. The word "again" signals a new variation on the theme, reinforcing the nightmarish sense of doomed, neurotic repetition. A version of "Abbot & Viv" at Link's Hall last January had a more fleshed-out set that enhanced the eerily warm domestic feeling. But it's difficult to see how the bowl --- which seems to represent "the world around them" in Re|Dance's description of the piece --- could be political. Instead it seems a psychological force or concept unique to this couple.
An excerpt from "Ladies Ring Shout," a work in progress, was the most overtly political work. Created and performed by Felicia Holman, Abra M. Johnson, and Meida Teresa McNeal, this multimedia piece is described online as "a sounding ground and witness space acknowledging the roadblocks and pressures experienced by females of color." Two of the three performers are academics, and the piece is dominated by its texts. Discordant humming at the beginning is promising, then there's a half-funny, half-bitter treatment of slaves on the block that reveals contemporary stereotypes of black women and their supposed usefulness to white men, white women, and black men. Slide projections bring to vivid life the negative stereotypes of black women, especially as seen in Tyler Perry's Madea movies.
"Ladies Ring Shout" gains some sympathy through its depiction of the "pressures" inflicted on women of color; Johnson's dancing is especially heartfelt. But the piece seems mostly focused on healing for the performers, a fact acknowledged online and in the title’s reference to 19th-century religious rituals. I hope the experience worked for them, but for the audience, something less blatantly discursive and more ecstatic would probably work better.
