"Far," "tanks under trees," other war dances, and the new Inertia Movement

"If you unloaded the movement from its generic meanings, took it apart piece by piece to see what the movement itself said, there might be something there."

Rebecca Kelly took her inspiration from a letter written by a soldier in Iraq, his leave(s) home, and stop-loss. This new work of hers is very moving. Her best that I've seen. The content (the war and the environment) is the same as "tanks under trees" but the approach couldn't be more different than Dunn's, that is, hers is modern ballet. There's room for different approaches.

Dunn's piece is very much expressive movement—Paul Singh's open-mouthed silent scream gives me the shivers. But it's Anne Waldman's spoken script that points at Iraq (among other things) specifically. "Zero Degrees" is very moving, but I thought of the Middle East if only because of the popular Israeli song about Jerusalem that Cherkaoui sings.

I am writing for www.exploredance.com. lately, not for Gay City News (another case of budget cuts for arts articles.) You know how one door closes and another opens? Please look for my reviews there, including one on "Zero Degrees." Thanks,
Lori

Apollinaire, you wrote:

"Given how bodily warfare is, I'm surprised there aren't more movement works. A choreographer could do so much with the ducking, the scrambling, the marching, the machismo, the intimidating, the torturing and being tortured, the barreling around in HumVs, the being blown up. I know, I know: someone's going to say this is a hokey idea, and presumptuous to imitate a war we're so removed from."

I'm wondering about the necessity of movement artists reminding us what the movements of war look like when we've seen a lot of that already via the media (if not currently, since there's a clampdown on actual imagery of the Iraq war and its consequences) and via other artforms, often with more sophistication and power than dance has ever managed. What might be more radical is for movement artists to find a way to show us the movements of the psychic states and emotions that create war and its consequences since these things are the origin of war and since they reside with us. It stands to reason that they are what we have the power to work on. Perhaps rather than showing a man scrambling on his belly under gunfire--something many a movie has already shown us--we can get at what put him in that situation, get at the fear, repression, greed, lust for power, manipulation, power, humiliation, and all the malleable, terrible human stuff that drives individuals and communities and tribes and nations. Can dance speak of the things that have happened in our families, our communities and our nation as a whole to make us vulnerable to those who devised this war for their own purposes? Can it show us what it has done to us, personally and societally, over the years of the war? In other words, rather than dealing with something far away and with either "hokey" or inadequate methods, can it finally show us ourselves and help us confront and challenge and change ourselves? Can it do this very hard and necessary thing? Or it is limited to showing us some men marching and others wearing the hoods of torture?

Apollinaire responds: Good point. And I do think that was Ouramdane's aim: to show us the psychic fall out. Martha Graham's "Chronicles," with its war Medusa, is wanting to show the mentality of war--as is Victoria Marks' "Not about Iraq Dance." And yeah: crawling on belly = bad idea. I do think dance might do well to take off from the concrete, though. Dance IS good at showing psychic states, but that has its dangers too. (The bathos, the bathos!) I guess in the abstract every idea has its dangers. Thanks for writing, Eva. ~)