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Mapping
States and Bodies: Colliding Worlds
Sitting at the Kitchen, waiting for David Dorfman's new See Level to begin (it's there through March 8), I get dizzy staring at the soft-focus rippling water projected on a screen mounted in front of a clear plastic sheet. Then I notice that behind this in the dimness, people are lying on the floor, some with arms held up and tilting to one side. They look like beached crabs or sea grass. They begin to walk as the drowsy, almost imperceptible hum of Chris Nugent's electronic score (performed live) begins to build. When does the piece "start?" Maybe when the soothing, group-therapy voice says, "I'd like you to imagine that the edge of your body is the coastline of a nation." Can we also imagine that coastline joining with those of other nations, bays and peninsulas nestling together? Or would hostilities emerge and the entities repulse one another? That's what this uncannily beautiful work seems to be about: our bodies as sovereign nations attempting or refusing to integrate. And how daringly Abby Crain, Paul Matteson, Jennifer Nugent, and Joseph Poulson do this. Leaping and plunging, twisting and rolling, sometimes in unison, they catapult fluidly yet wildly as free agents, but when they meet, skin presses into skin, bodies are canted into the air, joints bend to accommodate curious linkages. People are upside down as often as they're right side up in this quest for, or denial of, intimate union. Sometimes they try to copy one another's dancing, and when Dorfman appears he seems a wary outsider, imperfectly echoing something he sees and then retreating. Video and designs by Samuael Topiary and lighting by Blu combine magically to drown the dancers in, say, patterned water that covers the back wall and white floor, or to open windows of light behind them, or turn their world momentarily sunlit. Peck's sound score is sometimes gentle, but more often overwhelming, catastrophic. Just as you think the performers are going to melt in the heat of it all, witty duets emerge. Nugent engages Matteson with the request, "I want you to imagine me." Matteson obliges. She disapproves. As she exhorts, he gets increasingly turned on by being her. Then she tries to be him, which works pretty well until she embraces Poulson, at which point Matteson insists, "That isn't me!" in a panic of sexual insecurity. This is all wonderfully wise and funny. Crain and Poulson later have a provocative dialogue of their own. In the middle of the
piece, Dorfman has a solitary, demented outburst, during which, shockingly,
he reveals a black tongue. But at the end, after the orgies of dancing
have finally quieted down, and the backdrop has shown for a few second
not land masses and maps and seas but apartment buildings, he unobtrusively
lines up beside the others. Would that nations tried so skillfully and
doggedly to unite!
David
Dorfman David Dorfman is the guy-next-door revolutionary.
Underneath his Jimmy Stewart exterior, there’s a rampant subversive streak.
While on the surface his work might not look startlingly radical, in fact,
on almost every level, Dorfman is challenging business-as-usual in the
dance world. Since founding his company, David Dorfman Dance, in 1985,
he has blown through modern dance like a bracing gust of wind, sweeping
away convention, and bringing with him new ideas about what dancing and
dancers can be. While it is a given in contemporary art
that all artists aspire to create something novel and individual, it is
rare that they are questioning the very structures and values that shape
the art world. True paradigm shifts come about infrequently, but Dorfman’s
way of creating dances does indeed confront the most basic of assumptions
of theatrical dance: Who gets to dance? Who gets to create art? Why do
people engage in these activities? In rethinking these premises, Dorfman
has enlarged the sources of the movement vocabulary and expanded the ways
that the body is used. Dissenting by example, he also has been as interested
in humanistic concerns as he has been in aesthetic values. In working
with various partners and communities, Dorfman questions the notion that
only a select caste of the anointed can create art. Dorfman is himself not a danseur noble, that trite ideal of an aristocratic virtuoso, nor does
he aspire to be. His entire company, in fact, eschews the cookie-cutter
look of the contemporary dancer, brandishing in its place a prosaic demeanor
and look that declares their allegiance to matter-of-factness. His company
members are not taking on personae but are presenting themselves as themselves,
a fact that is most pointed in Gone
Right Back (1997), in which they address each other on stage by their
real names. Even though they are, in fact, highly trained and extraordinarily
disciplined, these dancers consciously cultivate a pedestrian look that
rejects glamour and larger-than-life presence. While this is a concept
that has been kicking around modern dance at least since Judson choreographer
Yvonne Rainer’s famous 1965 “NO Manifesto,” with Dorfman it is not a theoretical
trope, but a way of humanizing a discipline that’s been all too sacrificial
of its adherents. In insisting on the pleasures of watching seemingly
ordinary people dance, Dorfman does much to dispel the notion that there
is some kind of ideal, or that there is only one way to look and be. Dorfman has taken this notion even further
in a series of projects made for people with no previous dance experience.
In performances made for communities of athletes (Out of Season, 1993), families (Familiar
Movements, 1996), and organizations (No
Roles Barred, 1999), Dorfman has demonstrated the power of non-technical
movement and storytelling to express what is deep and true about the human
condition. Here, he is using untrained dancers not as poor substitutes
for the real thing, but as people whose life experiences leave them with
profound revelations to which dance technique seems only incidental. Unmediated
by the seductive surface of slick expertise, their movement is unaffected,
honest, and fresh. And there is no denying that these unpretentious dances
reach general audiences directly, in a way that more “sophisticated” modern
dance just cannot. In describing his Out
of Season, Dorfman identifies the project as central to his creative
vision, citing its “rawness and inclusiveness” as a “microcosm of my artistic
desires.” The community projects
forge a notion of performance in which the dancer undergoes a kind of
transformation that is just as important as that achieved by the audience.
In an art form that so often focuses almost exclusively on aesthetic goals,
Dorfman has restored humanistic and therapeutic ideals as intrinsic values.
Too, the projects implicitly declare the process of creation equal in
value to its product. It is not only the authority of the dancer
that Dorfman has been willing to jettison, but even the prerogative of
the choreographer. Dorfman declares himself “an avid fan of collaboration
and collective processes,” and, while maintaining a company that bears
his name, he has made a career of cooperative creation. In seeking out
group systems of artmaking, Dorfman has shown himself willing to give
up the presumption of the authority of the auteur. In addition to the community projects, Dorfman has engaged in collaborations
with other choreographers, including Mark Taylor and Stuart Pimsler, as
well as ongoing coauthorship of a series of duets with performance artist
Dan Froot. Made over the last decade, this Live Sax Acts trilogy (consisting of Horn, 1990; Bull, 1994;
and Job, 1996; with a fourth,
Shtick or Shtuck, about being stuck in your shtick, to be added next year) is among the most compelling work in the contemporary
repertory. Dealing with the relatively neglected issue of how men negotiate
their relationships with each other in a culture that provides only the
broadest cartoon as a model for their emotional lives, these duets have
revitalized the hackneyed idea of the pas
de deux. Dorfman has also aimed at a transformation
of the content of dance, opening its parameters to new ways of moving,
of combining the arts, and of drawing on sources for movement invention.
He has formulated a variety of means for movement and sound to interrelate,
with dancers speaking text, musicians moving as dancers, and dancers playing
instruments as they move. Dance technique, too, has come into question,
as Dorfman defied traditional dynamic categories in concocting a highly
athletic and exuberantly physical, yet gently flowing and gesturally nuanced
base of movement. Even the assumption that the main form of support in
dance must be the feet is not one that he makes, as he devises dancing
that also takes place on the forearms, hands, and shoulders—literally,
turning dance upside down. His movement style celebrates the idiosyncratic,
but in a gloriously dorky rather than a cynically hip way. The work can
be side-splittingly funny—one critic has described it as “goofing around”—
but here again Dorfman won’t let us cling to easy categories. Even the
humorous work has at its heart serious business. The dances that he creates
for his own company tend toward abstraction, operating by indirection
and evocation. The communal goals of the cooperative projects are also
present in this work, but these relationships are presented more obliquely,
with issues of community and conflict implied through dynamic and spatial
choices, rather than through mimetic or narrative strategies. Such pieces
as Sky Down (1996), with its
poignant evocations of connection, A
Cure for Gravity (1997), which uses the music of Joe Jackson as a
springboard for contemplation about aspirations that remove us from the
here and now, and Subverse (1999),
which deals with the reality underlying appearances, make the case for
the ability of abstracted movement to carry vivid depictions of undefined
but recognizable experience. And, finally, what is perhaps the most radical
of all Dorfman’s innovations, is the very subject of his choreography:
the stuff of daily life. For even the lowliest among us, Dorfman recognizes,
just being alive is dramatic. Honoring
the welter of emotions, choices, and connections that constitute the most
seemingly mundane of existences, Dorfman concerns himself with physicalizing
the inner life. He reveals his own experiences with a candor that can
be startling, and, while it is heartfelt, this intimacy of revelation
is thoroughly free of mawkishness or bathos.
In refusing to ennoble or aggrandize his life and thoughts, Dorfman
creates ground for us to recognize ourselves in these dances. There is,
in fact, a quality of uncanny extrasensory surveillance in how closely
these works seem to be eavesdropping into our hearts, displaying the id,
with all its constant craving and demands, for all to see. This is always
done, however, with the utmost compassion in Dorfman’s acknowledgment
of how difficult it is to be human, adrift in the world and trying to
do good despite our frailties and continual penchant for messing up. The
works zing right into the heart of what really matters, compelling a recognition
of the commonality of personal experience and the larger issues that reside
in daily interactions. Ultimately, Dorfman’s dances reveal that the struggle
to be part of our various communities and relationships constitutes the
true drama and challenge of our lives. In having found humane ways to make dances,
direct a company, connect with the general populace, and rehabilitate
interest in the ordinary, Dorfman has provided a model for the ways that
compassion can become embedded in art and artmaking. Giving voice to the
poetry of personal life and honoring the gravitas of felt experience,
he has made a brief for art as something relevant to all people. While
realistic in its recognition of pain and foible, Dorfman’s vision of community
is ultimately concerned with transcending these difficulties and finding
ways to work together. If art can offer us no more than this, surely that
is more than enough. © Suzanne Carbonneau 2000
Dorfman
program for SPA is an engrossing one
|
© 2002, Houston Cronicle |
Subverse, the dancier of the two, was a marvel. First, the evocative atmospherics: Jane Cox's sharp white lights fell in patterned shafts. Paul Clay's set design featured a trio of red columns, lit from inside, that slowly descended. Hahn Rowe's multilayered score was variously ponderous and penetrating.
Dorfman began and ended the dance in front of the curtain, moving around a patch of grass about six by three feet -- cemetery-plot size -- a subtle but not too dark reference to mortality. Teetering on the turf, with good comic timing, he told a joke about a tailor named Fake whose store sign might have suggested he made suits for free. It became a verbal volley with himself, as he played both parts.
"Everything's funny. Some of it's just real," he said. Did he mean real as in real funny? Or as in reality? Either or both, probably. Ambiguous, yes -- but refreshingly so.
The curtain opened on a surreal scene -- variously glaring and shadowed -- where Dorfman was a manipulative figure and his very fine dancers (Jeannie Durning, Curt Haworth, Paul Matteson, Jennifer Nugent and Joseph Poulson) were searching for truth. There were moments of poignant clarity: A dancer repeatedly trounced across the stage losing his pants. A line of dancers, one by one, jumped for something invisible above Dorfman's raised hand.
Near the end, Dorfman had another exchange with himself. This time he played two guys asking, like jailbirds, "What are you in for?" Yet another loaded question, full of existential possibility. I have no idea how this connected to the rest of the dance, though. It seemed like a skit that might be the start of another piece -- maybe a play on "convict" and "conviction."
In larger ensemble movements, the dance had kinetic magic -- fluid to the bone yet highly aerobic. It made me want to get up and dance, too.
Dorfman often positions his five dancers in groups of two, two and one -- as opposed to two and three or all five in unison -- the isolation is obvious.
To Lie Tenderly also had this quality, although movement-wise, it was a different flavor -- deliberate, full of self-conscious stop-and-go walking, rough-housing, confrontation and retreat. Again, the peripherals were excellent: Amy Denio's score provided a mood roller coaster, with various sections emphasizing guitar, vocals, accordion, baritone sax, keyboard, bass, baglama, drums and electric violin.
Part of Clay's set looked like one of those techno-inspired Metro bus stops, with a metal frame and an angled roof. The roof, as well as a revolving marquee atop a high pole and a head-high white backdrop all served as projection screens for video that seemed to be shot live, then manipulated and played back -- as at a rock concert. (The parts showing the musicians weren't live, since the music was recorded.) Naoko Nagata's costumes suggested rock star attire, loudly creative and raggedly glitzy.
The title To Lie Tenderly said a lot, and so did the dancers. Again, Dorfman explored the edges of truth and used the act of performing as a metaphor. The dancers talked the audience through the piece -- not quite play-by-play -- beginning each section with explanations like, "This dance is about never knowing who you really are" or "This dance is about me moving closer to you." Only I was never quite sure if they were speaking to the audience, to each other or to some imaginary character. Or whether they were telling the truth. Every comment, echoed in nuanced movement, had layers.
Most of To Lie Tenderly was anything but tender. The dancers cawed like crows, then the caws died to whimpers. They also erupted into whoops like drunks watching a football game -- screaming about life, about winning, about love, about who knows what. Who would have ever thought such an action could seem profound?
Dorfman
Hits the mark with two very different productions
By Alice
Kaderlan Halsey
Special to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Monday, February 11, 2002
There are many words that can describe the recent work of choreographer David Dorfman but "sophisticated" is the one that springs most readily to mind.
Like much of Dorfman's previous creations, the two pieces that he brought to Seattle this time feature his signature athleticism and inventiveness. But they also showcase a mature artist whose ability to interweave stunning visual images with an exuberant sense of fun is firmly rooted.
On the surface, "To Lie Tenderly" and "Subverse" couldn't be more different. The first work has a post-modern, minimalist look and a physical style that is jagged and sharp. "Subverse," on the other hand, seems set long ago in a Chinese temple and the movements are flowing and gracious. Yet both works are intensely theatrical with thoroughly integrated music and dance.
This extraordinary musicality, a common trait of ballet choreographers, is something we don't see as often in creators of modern or postmodern dance. They sometimes seem so interested in movement for its own sake that the other theatrical elements, including music, get pushed to the side.
But Dorfman is also a musician and plays a range of instruments, a talent used to great effect in "To Lie Tenderly," with original score by Seattle's Amy Denio. At first glance, it would seem that the powerful whirling and hurling of the dancers should grate against the exotic lilting sounds of Denio's haunting score. But the juxtaposition works.
Dorfman seems to have taken in the energy of the music, allowed it to resonate internally, then thrust it out as gyrating pyrotechnics. The result is an arresting work that engages the audience from start to finish.
Equally impressive is the degree to which Dorfman simultaneously explores personal relationships in both their physical and emotional dimensions. While dancers in one part of the stage are verbally interacting with each other, those in another are exploring ways in which they can share or divide a common space. As in "Subverse," he's at his best in ensemble choreography and his six formidable dancers form a dynamic and cohesive troupe.
Perhaps no Dorfman work shows these dancers off to better advantage than "Subverse." It's almost unmatched in the Dorfman repertoire for bravado, drama and flair. From the moment the curtain parts, you know you're in for a treat. The stark black stage is dissected by three striking red fabric columns and the dramatic lighting suggests a mysterious place where ritual is performed.
Against this stark background, Dorfman's powerful dancers, in elegant, flowing dress, explore a range of internalized and externalized emotion, alone and within the group, in an ever-changing tapestry of human interaction. The piece manages to convey genuine emotional content without losing its capacity to provide a dazzling feast for the senses.
For almost 20 years now, David Dorfman has been refining his prodigious talent. It is profoundly rewarding and incredibly exciting to see him hit his mark dead on.
