OR: constant change out/in side
I tried to write about Alvin Ailey when they came to town. But writing about a company who's been around for so long seemed daunting. As an untrained dancer and person who likes to think and share but doesn't aspire to be a 'critic', I never got past my struggle to write a proper disclamer, let alone to the meat of my notes.
Well it's been a busy few months since then. I had a solo visual art show, said fairewell to the person I was working on coreography with, met a new friend to go to dance performances with, danced in a site specific piece, and did my own iteration of an interactive art/performance piece. I'm no more at ease as a writer, and bearly more at ease as a "mover", but I know a bit more about biting off the right amount to chew, and I'm hoping to aply that to writing this and get it up before the night it through.
Tonight I finally saw BLINKING by LostWax (multi media dance theater) These are my parentheses. I hate to see that explanatory tag-on mess up the poetry of their name, the gist of which, combined with the piece Blinking, prove it's visionary / creater/choreographer, Jamie Jewett's preoccupation with 'what is lost' or 'what is left' or 'the peripheral'.)
Blinking is a collaboration between Jewett and R. Luke DuBois (bio quote: "composer, artist, performer who explores the temporal, verbal, and visual structures of cultural and personal ephemera". The piece has original video (projected mainly on the backdrop screen), sound (created before/during/after the creation of the video/choreography), and choreography for 8 dancers. There was some sort of tracking device used on the dancers in some parts, which created lines relating to the video projection and were then projected themselves. More (but not much more) on this part later.
So You've got the elements now. Let me start by saying that this is perhaps the ONLY dance/video piece I've ever seen where there was no chance that the video would have detracted/destracted from the live dancers. I am someone who cannot ignore a tv when its on in the room. So that's really saying something, and not that the video was a boring element. Just that there was an evenness about the balance. The movement was more compelling to me And. And the video integrated almost the way the music did-- relating to the movement in a two way street sort of way, rather than dominating it.
I think that what I'll do is simply share my notes, and elaborate where necessary. Here goes.
mother blinks sits in public looking in one direction
periodically focusing on two young boys jumping and swinging around
two dancers with similar playful interaction, eyes meeting often, amused
circle on floor in center appears almost as a rug.
dancer flips it up and it becomes a projection screen.
reminds me of tonight's full moon
gets flung aside slides across floor to stage corner and stops...
becomes light source beautiful.
second spot flood projection on floorspace dancers occupy doubles the circles' meaning
there are lines from the womans face to the boys. tons of them, thin, white, apparently in the act of mapping. they move at slight angle shifts- perception of a million details is near simultaneous. all the thoughts observations visions intake crammed into 5 seconds, 45 seconds. An hour could be a lifetime at this magnification.
Two dancers become four-
on costumes: child-like ones are in purple and green turtlenecks and black pants with the a double white runners strip on the outer seam. they are boyish, short haired, even with the sparkeling aknowliging eyes and mascara.
the next two are in black bell-ish high wasted short-pants [i want them immediately. they are perfect] and asymetrical white shirts. their sleves are a mirror of eachothers- each with a long sleve bearing two black stripes and a short bellish sleeve. I immediately think of eye lashes and eye lids. Struck again by all the doubles.
the motion here is low down, with alot of jumping up then down again.
more down than up, the reverse of the woman's eyes, the reverse of waking life.
then four became five. more white. the odd one out in a dress with two black stripes down the middle. more thoughts about lids or mediating or action or equal sighns, translators, the In Between. Who is ever in there? Who is ever not?
mother watches children clip on loop dancers in front are moving differently though.
children (projected and mirrored) are dancing in a web of protection that is the woman's act of witnessing. in a web of inaction/restriction that is her judgement, no way to know. i project both with my own eyes onto the youth in my past prestent me.
a third piece starts within the whole. it's full of two legged hop/twirls and i instantly want to learn it. all the actions have an inner logic that has to do with momentum and gravity and i want to feel the phrases in my body, if i can manage them.
here the dancers do lots of watching, and overall the piece seems on one hand to be running on Ensemble-time, that's my code for what I learned in Bogart traing - moving as a unit with hyper-listening fueling almost-symultaneous but different action. But as i watched my friend i saw she was clearly dancing to 'a different drum'. I learned later in the Q&A that each dancer in fact was counting units of either 7,8,4, 3 or 5. Woah. Then later on the dancers told me themselves that when they were learning this part they would get messed up if they so much as looked at eachother. Now they can see where they need to be based on eachother, using the structure of their relationships to one another as landmarks in the sequences of landscapes they create...
"Inner Landscapes" is a phrase that came to me later as I was watching, in fact.
A couple of thoughts I had as I watched this part:
are actions like colors in that their impact varies completely by context? (obvious but this is the first time i can remember having this thought)
part of working with momentum is an economy of energy for the dancer.
and then of the girl in the dress: is she the lid the ball the vision? (nn to answer) the dream the thought the optic nerve?
there is a high surface with a sleeping dancer wearing a matching white dress.
a second dancer (the first one in the dress) dances alone below, and a sleeping woman is projected. this is the nearest parallel to a dancer and the woman on the screen.
relationships shift. there is dancer's level of activity/energy equels that of music.
and also, dancer movement is larger higher faster as music is more regular more quiet or simple. and the inverse of that also.
sharing varied measurements of a whole and sometimes being equel parts.
after awhile the dancer moves up the ladder toward the other. she "screams" a loud long "shhhhh" in her ear. its as though she is the thoughts of subconcious or activity of dream, waking the sleeper. or is she drawing her Into dream with shhhh? sleeper and second slump down platform to floor (the toes touch like a pin dropping- slow motion and ringing-perfectly precise) they dance together awhile, touching or rather moving eachother along like sisters or mirror-selves.
then the sleeper takes off her matching dress and begins to put on day clothes street clothes waking world clothes...
is she dream-walking?
betraying her dream visions in dressing.
taking waking. choosing it.
fighting away sleep, or dreams
thoughts, or that second other inner uncheckable fleeting only bearly-felt wordlss reality/part of self...
Dancer hearing sounds on stage
as a sign of change out/in side her
that poignent motion. swaying forward, hands as though heavy, wrists beside eachother as though bound...
Is Blinking a balking of life-- a balking as if at the cuffs of the landscape of conciousness?
on the bed / dock-
she alone
everyone else below the surface,
ear to ground as if listening to a pebble song
everyone else sub concious sub merged
Water. hidden or reflected
two sides of obscure
bits from the Q&A:
"a direct quote of the boys' movement"
"the video was always about Gaze"
and "main sonic element"
I am interested in a good format for thought fragments.
Please post comments with any you use / have seen.
Later, on the drive home, I recalled my art school unfoldment as an "Archaeology of the self"
Thank you to the artists and performers for their dedication in putting together an ambitious, successful and insightful work.
