ARTSCAPE

4X4, Bluefoot Bar and Lounge, December 12, 2006

The 4X4 performance series at the Bluefoot Bar & Lounge in North Park (San Diego) is simply the best thing since chocolate chip cookies. Liam Clancy and Jeremy Gaucher of SUSHI Performance and Visual Art have cooked up a slate of evenings in which the entire event is a continual surprise. And, having staged only three shows, 4X4 is the hottest place to be in town.

The December 12^th 4X4 spectacle was the third in the series, and you couldn’t have crammed one more body in the beyond-packed back room at Bluefoot. The November 14^th event was very crowded with about 120 people (at the time the room looked filled), and last Tuesday’s show was seen by possibly 170 dance-and-performance lovers — people who knew what they were there for. Thunderous applause followed each of the ten acts.

And exactly what were these I-don’t-care-how-long-I-stand-as-long-as-I-see-a-great-show viewers viewing? Only the most vibrant, compelling, dynamic, alive, and fearless dancers and performers anywhere. Period.

Guts. It takes guts to be in a dance class. It takes guts to sing or write or act or play an instrument. And then, it takes more guts to go to an audition or submit your work, guts to go to a callback, guts to lay it all out there, guts to rehearse and do it over and do it over again, and then even more guts to perform for an audience. Guts are what’s on view at 4X4.

And much more than guts. Creativity with a capital C. Talent with a capital T. Fun with a capital F. And joy with a capital J.

4X4 is extreme performing. 4X4 is smashing through your limitations and experiencing the boundless joy of the possible. By so severely constraining the stage and everything we usually think about when we think about the theater, 4X4 performers are in fact set free to create works of remarkable newness. Within these severe limitations, freedom is found. Freedom of creativity. Freedom of exploration. Freedom of sharing.

Sharing because 4X4 redefines up-close-and-personal. At 4X4 the boundary between dancer and audience is fluid. The first row of seats is only two or three feet away from the tiny stage, and it’s very possible for these audience members to become part of the physical space of the performance. Audience members as props. Audience members as a barre. And, too, audience members as random performers, casually included in the unfolding of a piece.

So, all-in-all, 4X4 is pretty Zen. And, 101 years after Albert Einstein introduced special relativity — revolutionizing our thinking about space and time and the universe — 4X4 offers a radical new tool for investigating the universe of performance.

The ten acts presented at the December 12^th 4X4 were staggeringly diverse. And uniquely wonderful. In order —

The past)(modern performance duo (Rebecca Bryant and Don Nichols) presented a humorous, subtle, and provocative take on “the specificity of time and place”. This complex piece used movement, text, and props — a tall stool, bullhorns, coins, and tableware — to investigate the metaphysics of experience. Portions of the live performance were rerun and re-edited before our eyes, and the audience was instructed to “reference the videotape”. Likewise, the text would stop and restart, Rebecca and Don serving the dialog to each other like tennis balls. I was strongly reminded of Italo Calvino’s brilliant novel, “if on a winter’s night a traveler”.

Eric Geiger presented an “experimental work in progress”. In this very human exploration, Eric wore a monkey mask throughout. The choreography changed levels, changed directions, used all the available space of the 4X4 stage. This strong, well-trained dancer presented a powerful piece with swirling turns, in arabesque and attitude, his arms and legs describing an emotional space that was both energetic and contemplative.

Kimberly Gregg performed in a little black dress whose intimacy was enhanced by the inherent proximity of the 4X4 environment. In 4X4 you want to cover the space, because you really don’t have much of it, and Kimberly used nearby audience members to expand her choreographic space. This was a lyrical, sensual dance, a bold and beautiful exploration of closeness.

Grace Jun and Ant Black presented “A Lifetime Writing”, a “collaboration of poetry and movement”. Grace Jun, wearing a white midriff and white sweat pants, provided a movement counterpoint to Ant Black’s poetry. It quickly became apparent that Ant Black was presenting much more than generic rap, that we were being privileged to listen to a live performance of a highly original, searing, gripping poetic narrative of young people in love and in pain. The saga focused on pregnancy, possible abortion, and the dangers and difficulties of raising a child. He would name his son, “Sky — he would be the only limit on how high he could fly”. Ant Black’s imagery, dialog, and narrative were heroic, and I was reminded of both Odysseus and Eldridge Cleaver (co-founder of the Black Panthers and author of “Soul on Ice”).

Next, in remarkable contrast (and this is part of the richness and beauty of 4X4), three guys dressed in black strutted onto the stage. Greg Lane (choreographer), Daniel Marshall, and Eric Geiger performed “Objects of Desire”. And when I say performed, I mean “brought down the house”. If you can imagine Robert Palmer’s “Simply Irresistible” performed by guys, that’s what this piece was all about. Three super-hot guys, all terrific dancers, with blank expressions, dancing killer, sexy moves. Total dancing. Total fun. Totally the best.

And then, if you thought things couldn’t possibly get any better, there was Mira Cook. Five — FIVE! — gorgeous dancers glided onto the four foot by four foot stage. Four gorgeous women and one handsome guy, all wearing short shorts and tops. All tall, all with long legs and arms. And, they began to dance, backed by driving, rhythmic, primal music by Preston Swirnoff. If you had thought the 4X4 boundaries couldn’t have been expanded any further, you were wrong. Five dancers! Complex combinations exploded the space. Beautiful dancers with great technical excellence and skill boldly performed as if they were dancing on the stage of Lincoln Center’s New York State Theater, not a micro-stage in a bar in North Park.

I’m loving this dance, loving being so lucky to be seeing it, and then with a jolt I recognized I was watching jungle scenes. These were wild animals whose natural movements flowed and occurred in perfect unison with the natural music of primal Nature. We were watching the give-and-take and play of a pride of lions or a leopard pard or a pack of wolves. Each dancer would emerge from the pack and perform a solo, expressing his or her truth, supported and nurtured by the pack. Long legs extended in all directions, beautiful arms flowed through the space. The strength, beauty, and grace of the world as it was, could, and can be was revealed for those who could see.

Next, Bethany Lockhart presented “Spread”, a performance piece using exposition, movement, a telephone, a birthday gift, and fortune cookies. For me, “Spread” was about communication — the pain of failed communication, the loss of withheld communication, the hopes and dashed hopes of the words we use with others and ourselves. This piece had darting currents of subtext and was performed powerfully and bravely.

Amanda Nora performed an extraordinarily unusual and physically challenging “dance piece” which “takes only the space of one’s stationary kinesphere”. The kinesphere in this case was the solid cylinder described by the dancer standing on her head and the width of her extended legs. Amanda entered the stage space and assumed a head-standing position, remaining on her head for the duration of the piece. She cycled through an amazing assortment of the most difficult yoga poses, with legs fully extended diagonally and then fully extended overhead. And, she was singing the entire time!!! The performer demonstrated remarkable strength, control, and poise. Doing these things alone is already super-difficult. Doing them in front of hundreds of people, gladiator-style, is fantastic.

Bridget Rountree performed “Collections”, a “hybrid of visual art, performance, dance, and theater”. Bridget’s props were a wonderful collection of hats, ranging from black bowlers to a Clint Eastwood–style Stetson to a Pierrot-style clown hat. One hat had a marvelously long, curvy feather, which Bridget used both to tickle a guy in the audience and to accompany a beautifully described arc of movement. The hats not only supported the performer’s character changes, but also contained rich content within themselves. The well-written text of this very smart piece ranged over the topics of money, credit, and insurance, and pointedly asked, “do you understand English?”. Importantly, Bridget used a remote mike and headset, which not only was an interesting costume element, but also allowed the valuable text to be heard clearly and easily.

Jakey Toor presented “Conversations with a Poet”, a solo piece uniting poetry and choreographic movement. The poem was terrific, telling a story about “a young girl and a homeless man”. Jakey’s strong, gestural, organic movement provided emphasis, highlighting, and new directions to the flow of the poem. This was a bravura showcase incorporating a lot of text and a lot of movement, wonderfully performed by one person.

All of us so-lucky members of the very crowded audience at the December 12th 4X4 are grateful for the generosity, humanity, and very hard work of the dazzling array of so-talented performers that graced the stage that magical night.

Add comment December 17th, 2006

ONE TO ECHO

I attended ONE TO ECHO at San Diego State University on Saturday night, December 2^nd, 2006, the second of two performances. ONE TO ECHO was curated by Jillian Chu, Founder of BOUNDcontemporaryDance, and Alicia Peterson, Founder of A.S. Peterson Dance.

Jillian Chu and Alicia Peterson created an extraordinary evening of dance theater, presenting a wide range of events, pieces, and styles. ONE TO ECHO was a tremendously entertaining production. For me, the overriding qualities of the evening were invention, intelligence, and vision.

“everyone turns into birds”, by Amanda Waal, was a startlingly original creation, a compelling symphony of mixed media. This kaleidoscopic, encyclopedic piece included, at various times and in various combinations, dance, music, voiceover narration, film, stroboscopic lighting effects, and little white parachutists falling from the flies.

It’s not that “everyone turns into birds” was so good because it contained all these elements — merely dripping paint on a canvas doesn’t result in a “Jackson Pollock”. The piece is brilliant because of the talent, taste, and vision of the creator, Amanda Waal.

For me, “everyone turns into birds” was a continual surprise. It began prosaically with a single dancer upstage right, and yet interestingly, because the dancer had a red strobe attached to her left shoulder blade. Unusual. The assault on the viewer built gradually. It became clear during the first film segment that what was being offered was deep and rich and suggestive, relating strongly to some pretty important aspects of human experience, such as “how do you tell the living from the dead?”. And, what is living? and what is dying?

In the face of these critical issues, “everyone turns into birds” was warm, humorous, and engaging. The second film, from the early days of cinema, featured cavorting celestial beings, gods and goddesses flying about on their planet-chariots — Venus, Mars, the Sun. Jealousy, vanity, war, love. Just like us, really.

The second series of voiceover narrations were literally voices from the dead, dead people relating in single sentences or sentence fragments how they died. The impact and the tragedy continued to build, the weight increasing, and then the parachutists came down. This was a heartbreakingly funny, painfully bittersweet theatrical moment.

And, importantly, for a while the dancer was dancing in darkness. Other things were happening onstage but she was dark. This was very new, for me. At first, I didn’t get it. “Hey,”, I’m thinking, “that’s wrong. She’s not lit.” And then I realized this most unusual approach was well thought out, was very sophisticated. It made a statement — the dancer in a “dance” is not necessarily the only important thing that’s going on. And, “dancing in the dark” is a powerful metaphor, particularly in the context of the piece as a whole.

“everyone turns into birds” breaks new ground in dance theater, extending the poetry naturally inherent in dance by incorporating additional media and creating something new and valuable.

Dance is sufficient in itself. And, as Amanda Waal has so brilliantly demonstrated, dance can become part of a collaborative multimedia effort — very much like film, in this case incorporating film — in which something entirely new emerges.

“Why I move”, concept by Jillian Chu and performed by Sarah Keeney, and “How I move”, choreography by Jillian Chu and performed by Jillian Chu, Sarah Keeney, and Yvonne Hernandez, were small, gemlike etudes. These graceful studies contained many interesting moments. “How I move” was most powerful when the three dancers would find each other, forming a synchronous trio, and then breaking out into new combinations supportive of the music.

“A separate piece entirely”, choreography by Alicia Peterson, performed by Alicia Peterson, Jillian Chu, and Vanessa Tipon, presented a river of movement, like a horizontal waterfall. My impression was of liquid choreography.

“The Commitment”, choreography by Elizabeth Swallow and performed by Alicia Peterson, presented a lone dancer caught in a literal and metaphorical maze of her own personal tragedy and the never-ending demands of daily living. Four dynamic elastic bands angled across the stage from right to left, a spidery meshwork creating simultaneous traps and openings for movement, struggle, pain, and possible redemption. Having explored [for now] the phase-space of darkness and potential light, the dancer walked free of the maze and offered a wistful, half-hearted smile, a desperate attempt to prove to herself and everyone else that she was really all right. And then the stage went black. This was a great, truthful moment.

“Knock Knock”, a cinematic collaboration by Hassan Christopher and Monica Gillette, choreographed and performed by Hassan Christopher and Marissa Labog, was a genre-defining dance film. Not merely dancing captured on film or a film of dance, “Knock Knock” fused the dynamism and showmanship of jazzy choreography with the time/place/perspective shiftability that is the natural power of film.

First of all, the dancing and dancers were killer. And, the choreography was killer. Utilizing virtuoso film editing, a movement sequence would begin in one locale, in one season, with a certain costuming, and would conclude seamlessly in a radically different locale and season, and with different costuming. A spin move would begin in New York’s Central Park with snow on the ground and the dancer would come out of her spin in the brilliant summer sunshine lighting the mean streets of Compton in Los Angeles.

The quick pace of the choreography was complemented by the fast pace of the editing, creating a rich compositional effect. And, the choreography fully integrated the various environments, including solitary park benches, fluttering sheets of newspaper, snowy Manhattan streets, and the rocky shores of the Pacific Palisades.

These very talented dancers were doing very difficult things and they were totally committed to what they were doing and to each other. “Knock Knock” is a high-octane love story, a potentially award-winning film breaking new ground in a relatively new genre.

Likewise, the curators of ONE TO ECHO, Alicia Peterson and Jillian Chu, have set a new standard for what an evening of dance theater can be.

Add comment December 5th, 2006