{"id":1213,"date":"2012-12-12T17:01:51","date_gmt":"2012-12-12T22:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=1213"},"modified":"2012-12-13T07:27:12","modified_gmt":"2012-12-13T12:27:12","slug":"what-do-you-see-look-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2012\/12\/what-do-you-see-look-again\/","title":{"rendered":"What Do You See? Look Again"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Michael

Michael Dunbar, Ross McCormack, Alisdair Macindoe, and Jake Shackleton in Lucy Guerin’s Untrained<\/em>. Photo: Julieta Cervantes<\/p><\/div>\n

The Brooklyn Academy of Music\u2019s Fisher Space in its compact new building is proving to be dazzlingly adaptable. The seating has been configured differently for all four works that I\u2019ve seen there as part of BAM\u2019s 30th<\/sup> Next Wave Festival, and that design, in turn, influences scenic possibilities and alters the audience\u2019s angle of vision and relationship with the performers. Lucy Guerin\u2019s Untrained <\/i>was designed for a more traditional set-up, so at the Fisher, we sat in twelve long, banked rows at one end of the space, which limited the performers to a shallower area than that occupied earlier in the season by either Jonah Bokaer\u2019s Eclipse<\/i> or Nora Chipaumire\u2019s Miriam. <\/i>Miguel Gutierrez\u2019s And lose the name of action<\/i>, which followed Untrained <\/i>into the Fisher a week later, seated the audience in three banks of two or three rows each, which were arranged in an irregular, gapped triangle. The performers occasionally ventured so close to the spectators that crossing your legs was inadvisable.<\/p>\n

Most of us weren\u2019t sitting within spitting distance of the performers in Untrained<\/i>, but over the hour that the piece lasted, we came to know them very well. These are their names: Michael Dunbar, Alisdair Macindoe, Ross McCormack, and Jake Shackleton. Macindoe and McCormack are experienced dancers; Dunbar is a freelance interaction designer; Shackelton is an environmental engineer with conservatory training as a pianist.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/i>I remember that once, during my dancing days, a colleague said, \u201cWe\u2019re not people, we\u2019re dancers.\u201d I don\u2019t recall the occasion\u2014maybe it had to with the resourcefulness with which she was turning a train seat into a campsite\u2014but the words stuck with me.\u00a0 They sprang into life when I was watching Untrained. <\/i>Uncompromisingly and affectionately, Guerin has created a structure that rings changes on three related points: dancers are clearly people, but they have physical skills and a knowledge of the body that many non-dancers don\u2019t; people with no dance training approach movement in ways that dancers may find it difficult to imitate; you can\u2019t always tell a dancer from a non-dancer.<\/p>\n

The set-up is simple. A large gray square is marked off in the center of the performing space. It\u2019s flanked by smaller white squares, edged with sheets of paper. Four bottles of water stand by. Untrained<\/i> is, structurally speaking, a vaudeville\u2014well over twenty \u201cacts,\u201d some of them under a minute long. These involve speaking, singing, drawing, and film appearances, as well as dancing.\u00a0 Often the performers line up on one side of the space or another\u2014covertly checking what\u2019s written on the papers\u2014and walk into the center one by one. At other times, they step out of an assembled group at the back of the main square to perform individually or as a twosome.<\/p>\n

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\"Paul

Michael\u00a0 Dunbar shows his stuff in Untrained<\/em>. Photo: Julieta Cervantes<\/p><\/div>\n

Guerin rehearses a given cast for this tidily structured improvisation for only five days, lest the performers become too secure in the tasks and too aware of the audience. She also changes the cast for the same reason. The professional dancers pull no punches; barrel turns, pushups, balletic jumps are essayed across the area (better to call it an arena). For Macindoe and McCormack, it\u2019s a no-brainer to grab one foot and hoist a leg high to the side; Dunbar and Schackleton gamely indicate the move, having difficulty even standing on one leg (the spectators laugh, but not unkindly). The two dancers have a sophisticated understanding of how their bodies negotiate the space around them and the most advantageous timing. But get the four to create agonized falls or act out iconic speeches from films, and they\u2019re all wonderful (or terrible) in their own individual ways.<\/p>\n

\"(L

(L to R) Macindoe, Dunbar, and Shackleton watch McCormack. Photo: Julieta Cervantes<\/p><\/div>\n

Dunbar and Shackleton have very different bodies and ways of moving. Dunbar is a large man and moves with a looseness that\u2019s almost floppy.\u00a0 Shackleton is tauter and trimmer, rhythmically astute; his range of motion is smaller and more precise. This isn\u2019t to say that Macindoe and McCormack aren\u2019t different from each other in appearance and qualities, but training masks those differences when certain skills are called for. In some sequences, the four are more or less equals\u2014singing the opening of Beethoven\u2019s Fifth as different instrumental voices, while Shackleton conducts, for instance. They all roll on the floor in the same way.<\/p>\n

Guerin makes us look carefully. She opens our eyes to subtleties of similarity and difference, while offering us a work that\u2019s elegantly developed and deliciously entertaining. When McCormack performs a mini-solo, Shackleton describes it for us. Then Dunbar performs and Macindoe finds words to explain it (how they see is as interesting as what they do.) McCormack gives Dunbar detailed instructions\u2014like \u201cmake a robot\u201d\u2014for a solo dance, and Dunbar gives it his best shot. When Dunbar takes off in a wild solo, and Macindoe has to copy him as he goes, the highly skilled dancer has trouble picking up his colleague\u2019s free-flowing, floundering extravagances (it seems easier for McCormack to imitate Shackleton, since the latter tends to be precise and reined-in).<\/p>\n

\"Macindoe

Macindoe (L) copies Dunbar. McCormack (L) and Shackleton watch. Photo: Julieta Cervantes<\/p><\/div>\n

We can relish the different ways in which, one by one, the guys remove their tee shirts (McCormack\u2019s method is a silky virtuosic act with no fumbles.)\u00a0 They may not be equal in physical skills and theatrical timing, but they all go for broke in depicting a cat accidentally electrocuting itself. Guerin\u2019s work offers insights not just into how dancers differ from non-dancers in terms of physical acuity, but how individuals differ from one another. The short films that the men have created to star themselves are revealing, as are their recollections of their fathers, or their telling us their secret afflictions and fears.<\/p>\n

When the four make observations about Untrained<\/i> and the process of putting it together, McCormack notes the honesty of the untrained men in performance, while Dunbar says that he and Shackleton think and then do, while the trained ones just do; \u201cthought becomes action.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the end, Guerin\u2019s essentially uncomplicated idea is not so simple after all.<\/p>\n

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\"K.J.

K.J. Holmes with Paul Duncan onscreen in Miguel Gutierrez’s And lose the name of action<\/em>. Photo: Julieta Cervantes<\/p><\/div>\n

Gutierrez\u2019s And lose the name of action<\/i> is anything but uncomplicated. Ideas and images swirl around. Lights (I\u2019ve never seen as many as Lenore Doxsee\u2019s design calls for) turn gold, green, violet, glaring white. An immense, filmy, white object is suspended overhead like an upside-down white parachute. A sheer white curtain veils the only open wall of the Fisher. Two large screens hang opposite each other, and periodically the bearded British actor Paul Duncan (excellent) appears on one or both as a black-and-white filmed image in a white limbo; he lectures us as if we were his students, his text drawn from Dr. Jeannette Norden\u2019s lectures on neuroscience. Six performers dance, talk, sing, yell, laugh, and change clothes. They also, periodically sit among us in white chairs placed between our dark ones.<\/p>\n

The piece\u2019s title is the last line of Hamlet\u2019s famous \u201cTo be, or not to be\u201d soliloquy, in which he inquires into his own inaction. \u201cWho would fardels bear,\u201d he asks,\u201cTo grunt and sweat under a weary life,\/ But that the dread of something after death,\/ The undiscovered country, from whose bourn\/ No traveller returns, puzzles the will.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s that something after death that interests Gutierrez and has fueled his ambitious and perplexing new piece. And lose the name of action<\/i> is haunted by ghosts and other paranormal phenomena, presences sensed but not seen, and footsteps in the corridor, but Gutierrez also ventures into the intertwined nature of existence and perception, as well as the neurological disturbances that can disorder both of these. Much deep thinking has gone into And lose the name of action<\/i>. and possibly Gutierrez intended<\/i> to disorder the audience\u2019s perception\u2014risking confusion, disapproval, and worse. I can make more sense of the work now than when I was watching it, but that\u2019s an odd way to experience art.<\/p>\n

\"(L

(L to R): K.J. Holmes, Hilary Clark, Luke George, Michelle Boul\u00e9, and Miguel Gutierrez. Photo: Julieta Cervantes<\/p><\/div>\n

The very opening is rife with enigmas. Neal Medlyn\u2019s unearthly score begins with a soft jangling and a distant male voice. A slim, gray-haired woman (K.J. Holmes), wearing a crown of sorts, lifts the lid of a white box; a light beams out of it onto her face as she peers in; she reads aloud, \u201cI am an old man.\u201d In the beginning, Boru O\u2019Brian\u2019s costumes are like shabby ghosts of regal attire. A collar, a cloak, a crown. It\u2019s not only Hamlet\u2019s ghost that\u2019s indirectly evoked over the course of 90 minutes; it\u2019s the specter of Hamlet<\/i> the play.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/i>Ishmael Houston-Jones puts on a smarmy voice to conduct a s\u00e9ance of the kind that intrigued 19th<\/sup>-century gatherings, but he mixes the appropriate commands with more contemporary ones, like \u201cbreathe\u201d and \u201cfeel your feet on the ground\u201d that invoke a different kind of mind-body experience. As if we\u2019re sitting around a table in a medium\u2019s parlor, we\u2019re ordered to hold hands with our neighbors and wait for something to happen. \u201cAre you there?\u201d he calls out to a spirit. I see-hear-feel none, but oh, the light display and Houston-Jones with his arms raised! The others hopefully copy his gestures, while we hear the thud of footsteps.<\/p>\n

\"Hilary

Hilary Clark and Luke George in And lose the name of action<\/em>. Photo: Julieta Cervantes<\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s difficult to convey the many elements that appear out of nowhere and seem to lock into place. Is this the jigsaw piece that will complete the lake? No. Sure?\u00a0 Not really. Holmes and Luke George\u2014a white stripe down his face, half his lower lip blue\u2014consult a lot over the box. Hilary Clark has some extraordinary fits of dancing, her voluptuous body tossed by emotional storms or possessed by visions that appear to terrify her. At one point Holmes appears naked under a transparent tent of a costume and joins a bizarre family portrait, with Houston-Jones seated as if on a throne, while George and the wonderful Michelle Boul\u00e9 continue to dance vigorously.<\/p>\n

Some of the choreography is related to an initial solo by Houston-Jones. He\u2019s not a young guy anymore, and he brings an engrossing mix of power and precariousness to the way in which he stamps around, raises one leg, pauses, strides, lifts a leg again, twists. But dancing, while integral to And lose the name of action<\/i>, isn\u2019t the most memorable part of it. I remember better Clark standing close enough to me to be touched and shuddering violently, or Houston-Jones lying naked at my feet, as stiff as a corpse. Gutierrez walks slowly along, bending forward and gradually regurgitating an 8-inch white substance that looks like frozen foam. Later, he kneels to bury his head in Holmes\u2019s belly and then retreats, pulling a white length of fabric between his teeth until it comes loose from her (only now do I think about the umbellical cord that once connected Hamlet with his mother the queen).<\/p>\n

\"Gutierrez

Gutierrez and Houston-Jones talk Berkeley. Photo: Julieta Cervantes<\/p><\/div>\n

I recall the performers lying in a head-to-feet chain and twisting or rolling in response to Gutierrez\u2019s verbal intstructions (and maybe to Duncan\u2019s onscreen mention of a sea captain and the commands he gives to the sea). But I also think back to how nicely they chanted in harmony. And grow a little irritable remembering Houston-Jones and Gutierrez, facing each other on chairs and reading argumentatively about existence from philosopher George Berkeley\u2019s Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous<\/i>. And re-experience a certain nervous pleasure induced by a sequence in which the performers rush about placing chairs and taking away those that others have placed until the activity seethes into pointless havoc. Close your eyes and think poltergeists.<\/p>\n

In the end, the onscreen \u201cprofessor\u201d loses his poise and his certainty. Over and over, a phrase in Medlyn\u2019s score repeats its seven-note run upward, its pause, and its drop onto a single lower note. Duncan thinks, struggles to get a sentence out, searches for the right word. Gives up.<\/p>\n

A voice says, \u201cthank you.\u201d The performers take no bows. I take a last look around this elaborately peculiar world that materialized in the Fisher, and walk out bemused, thinking, \u201cWhat the hell was that all about?\u201d\u00a0 Now I\u2019m contending with its ghost.<\/p>\n

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