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Wayne McGregror I Random Dance
By Sid Smith:
Wayne McGregor and his Random Dance are the last of the Dance Center of Columbia College's visitors in its series on science, and while they're the simplest and most conventional technologically, McGregor's choreography is beyond doubt the most exciting--this is work both electrifying and unique.
McGregor is a major force back home in London, where he not only runs this modestly sized troupe, but serves as resident choreographer for the Royal Ballet--a title he earned despite a lack of classical training. Nevertheless, the assault of dance that is "Entity," the work on view through Saturday, boasts casual, unmistakable echoes of classical form, however contemporary and innovative otherwise. Whether that's a reflection of McGregor's days with the Royal or has always been a part of his aesthetic, I can't say--this is the first of his work I've seen.
But I can't wait to see more, and the classic underpinnings--arabesques, pirouettes and taut extensions--are merely a basis for an exceedingly original style energized by a decidedly modern tempo. Two stylistic aspects are striking and reflect his inimitable mastery. The nine dancers frequently and repeatedly employ a series of quasi-grotesque gestures and individual shapes, gnarled hands, twisted in contortion, or here and there a head dip and serpentine undulation not unlike someone briefly imitating a chicken. I found myself recalling David Threlfall and his memorable portrayal of Smike in "Nicholas Nickleby"--this is very much the poetry of the spastic.
McGregor employs these countless moves and twists as part of a cascade of unsettling imagery, the formal beauty at the base of the work counterbalanced, transmogrified and counter-intuitively expanded with moves and executions unique in their oddity.
Secondly, the design and pace of "Entity" overall is one of perpetual motion, ever changing, brief in phrasings and short-lived in the tensions, couplings, aggressive encounters and moments of harmony that generously populate it. Little is long lived, save for a duet here and there, and while there are plenty of conventional interactions, they're so quick in coming that the piece seems an onslaught of pure form and design. There's human drama, to be sure, but architectural that it has a clean, pristine purity.
In the end, what matters, though, is that McGregor is an absolute magician of movement, endlessly inventive in the way he designs and executes his choreography, just as he's cagey in his selection of fine dancers. For all the formal restraint, the energy, agility and endurance of the performers themselves comes through. In no way solicitous, thanks to its aesthetic distance, "Entity" manages to win its audiences' hearts by virtue of the skill and determination by which the performers survive its 65-minute marathon.
The technical details are clean, bright and minimal, though I should note that a flyer in the program explains certain technical changes had to be made to accommodate the piece here. A long horizontal screen hovers over the production, televising the image of a racing dog at the beginning and end of the piece, supported by a giant industrial crane. Otherwise, the lighting effects and the white playing area combine with bare-bones simplicity to create a kind of technological blank space--a plain canvas. Images are telecast on the screen part of the time, basic pictures of dots and the occasional photographic negative.
I can't pretend to be able to wed all this to information outlined in the work's literature, talk of cognitive processes and various experts who contributed their learning. "Entity" succeeds nicely as fairly straightforward contemporary dance, though it may well be that the background and subtext is critical to that success, however subtle and unseen.
As for the series as a whole, I may be in a minority, but my conclusion about the troupes invited to explore technology and dance lead me to think that, even today, technology just doesn't make that much difference. It's window dressing, just as it was during the '60s multimedia heyday, and much of the digital projections on view didn't seem that different from the cinematic clips of that era. Decor's all well and good, and artists are welcome to use any elements to concoct one. But it's the flesh and blood of the dancers that matters most, and the design and imagination of the choreographer, old-fashioned virtues that McGregor, for all his novelty, possesses in spades.
