{"id":1623,"date":"2013-05-07T20:43:29","date_gmt":"2013-05-08T00:43:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=1623"},"modified":"2013-05-07T20:47:51","modified_gmt":"2013-05-08T00:47:51","slug":"a-change-in-the-wind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2013\/05\/a-change-in-the-wind\/","title":{"rendered":"A Change in the Wind"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tamar Rogoff\u2019s Summer\u2019s Different<\/em> in La MaMa\u2019s Ellen Stewart\u2019s Theater, April 24 through May 12
\n<\/i><\/p>\n

\"Tamar<\/a>

Tamar Rogoff”s Summer’s Different<\/em>. Foreground: Emily Pope-Blackman (L) and Deborah Gladstein. At back (L to R): Brandin Steffensen, Peter Schmitz, and Emma Lee. Photo: Julie Lemberger<\/p><\/div>\n

A family\u2019s summer day on the beach, what could be finer?\u00a0 Of course, someone might get\u00a0 sunburned, someone might drop her hot dog in the sand, someone might swim out a little too far. There could be bickering. Tears saltier than usual could be shed. But still. . .a cloudless sky, blue waves. That\u2019s the kind of day it seems to be in Tamar Rogoff\u2019s startling new work, Summer\u2019s Different. <\/i>When all its five characters are posed onstage at LaMama, they resemble the figures in some of Milet Andrejevic\u2019s 1980s paintings of people at ease in Central Park. Updated from Greek legends, his still figures and their apparently pristine relationships suggest enigmatic, maybe darker underpinnings.<\/p>\n

Rogoff prepares us for an idyll. The characters wear bathing suits, they spread towels; various garments hang from clotheslines at the end of the theater where the tiers of seating are usually filled with chairs. We spectators are arranged in a single U-shaped row that turns the performing area into an arena of sorts. The family members who enter one at a time are immediately identifiable. Peter Schmitz is the occasionally crabby grandfather, and Deborah Gladstein the mild, but not docile grandmother. Emily Pope-Blackman must be their daughter; she\u2019s also the mother of a young teenager (Emma Lee) and a ten-year-old girl (Annabel Sexton-Daldry). The youngest child loves her father (Brandin Steffensen) very much. In fact, with some reservations, they all love one another.<\/p>\n

\"Annabel<\/a>

Annabel Sexton-Daldry cartwheels for her family. (L to R) Peter Schmitz, Deborah Gladstein, Emma Lee, Emily Pope-Blackman. Photo: Julie Lemberger<\/p><\/div>\n

Rogoff\u2019s great gift (aside from her ability to choose and illuminate unusual scenarios) is her way of making small movements reveal large stories and large movements reflect emotional states, while bypassing display. As the characters enter, each takes a turn arranging a family tableau\u2014gently leading others to a new spot and posing them, this one\u2019s head on that one\u2019s shoulder, someone\u2019s\u00a0 arm around another\u2019s waist. Another of Rogoff\u2019s gifts is her compassion; it animates all her work.<\/p>\n

In Beo Morales\u2019s atmospheric score, music often gives way to the sounds of waves and gulls, sometimes of human voices (I thought I heard a coast guard\u2019s announcement). Joe Levasseur\u2019s lighting creates the weather\u2014inner and outer. Everything seems quite normal at first. The family members do what you might expect\u2014relax, put on and take off dark glasses, play. The little daughter dons a red kiddie tutu and dances around, gracefully waving her arms in the air; the others applaud her brave leaps in a circle. She and her father settle down to play. Both her mother and her older sister often take their long hair down or twist it back up into a bun, but the mother leans down and gestures, as if shading her eyes or looking under something. Grandmother basks in the sun. Grandfather takes off his specs, points them down, and peers, as if they could magnify beach life.<\/p>\n

The family members travel to new stations along the edges of the semi-circle and repeat their actions during the course of the dance. They scan new territory; we get new perspectives\u2014the unself-conscious beauty of the older daughter, say, and her awareness of her recently changed body; her grandfather\u2019s protectiveness of her; his stiff, obligatory push-ups.<\/p>\n

\"Brandin<\/a>

Brandin Steffensen, cross-dressed, in Rogoff’s Summer’s Different<\/em>. Photo: Julie Lemberger<\/p><\/div>\n

They all, at one time or another, scan an apparently cloudless sky.\u00a0 It is, therefore, a shock when Steffensen appears on what seems to be a diving board jutting out from the bleachers; he’s wearing a rather old-fashioned woman\u2019s bathing suit. The board is a liminal place, and this is his moment of decision, a private revelation. The others are asleep, and he is lit as if he\u2019s alone on a cliff in a shaft of light. That light goes briefly out. Now you recall how adept he was at putting makeup on Sexton-Daldry (at her request).\u00a0 How when the girls wrapped their supposedly wet hair in towels, he created a more elaborately twisted turban out of his towel. You remember, too, how often he simply watched Pope-Blackman.<\/p>\n

Delicately, Rogoff and the performers dissect what must inevitably ensue when an apparently straight man, a loving husband and father, feels himself to be\u2014in a crucial part of his nature\u2014female. Transgender identification can manifest itself in various ways, and Rogoff doesn\u2019t attempt to analyze the man\u2019s situation in detail. Instead, she shows us his anguish and how\u2014in a kind of shame perhaps\u2014he retreats from his wife.\u00a0 In a beautifully conceived sequence, Steffensen (he has removed the bathing suit) walks, then runs faster and faster in a circle. Pope-Blackman pursues him. She wants to touch him\u2014perhaps to console him, perhaps to reassure herself that he loves her, perhaps to question him.\u00a0 Maybe all three.\u00a0 He shrugs away from her hand, pushes her back. They run and run and run; eventually they become violent.<\/p>\n

\"Steffensen<\/a>

Steffensen running away, Pope-Blackman pursuing. Photo: Julie Lemberger<\/p><\/div>\n

Something is gradually achieved in the couple\u2019s moments of rueful tenderness (underscored by sweetly sentimental music), but the family\u2019s equilibrium has been upset, even though all return to some of their earlier separate activities, The grandfather, apparently appalled, doesn\u2019t want the girls to see what\u2019s happening to their parents and keeps shoving his son-in-law away; his wife calms him. She also soothes the teenager, who is more upset than her little sister (she loves her father and doesn\u2019t see a problem).<\/p>\n

\"Fighting-embracing:<\/a>

Fighting-embracing: Steffensen and Pope-Blackman. Photo: Julie Lemberger<\/p><\/div>\n

Rogoff has chosen to make items of clothing symbolic of the deeper changes, perhaps because cross-dressing as a phenomenon is readily apparent and understood.\u00a0 When Pope-Blackman performs a furiously conflicted solo, hurling and twisting herself around, she\u2019s wearing a slip. (Schmitz and Gladstein pass through, fond and at peace, appearing not to see her distress or hear her gasping for breath.) When she has finished, Steffesen appears, and she takes the slip off and hands it to him, backing away, covering her breasts with her arms as if she has never felt so naked in her life. Lee brings her a towel, wraps her in it, and leads her away.<\/p>\n

Now we see what the man has been wanting. Steffensen conveys with wonderful sensitivity how the slip makes him feel. It\u2019s like a new skin, something he can subtly undulate into and against. He raises his arms softly, calling to mind the little girl\u2019s lovely freedom of movement. She is coltish because of her youth; he is awkward because he\u2019s young in a different life.<\/p>\n

\"L<\/a>

L to R: Lee, Steffensen, Gladstein, Schmitz, Pope-Blackman, Sexton-Daldry. Photo: Julie Lemberger<\/p><\/div>\n

The matronly bathing suit has another role to play. After we see new manifestations of the tensions and alliances within the group. Gladstein brings the garment and hands it to Steffensen. It\u2019s a somewhat corny moment, theatrically speaking, but it makes an unequivocal point about forgiveness, and it isn\u2019t dwelt on. In an echo of the beginning, Lee repositions Pope-Blackman\u00a0 and Steffensen, allowing them unity with each other, as well as with Gladstein and Sexton-Daldry. She herself keeps hold of Sexton-Daldry\u2019s hand, but steps away, staring into the distance. Schmitz, still troubled, stands completely apart from the group, staring at a picture he finds difficult to understand and accept, even though it\u2019s composed of people that he loves.<\/p>\n

As I write this, I\u2019m aware of moving back and forth between the names of the characters and the names of the performers who bring them to life. As a writer, I want readers to keep the characters straight, but I also want to convey how sensitively and carefully these performers inhabit their roles. You almost feel that you could go up to any one of them and pay after-show compliments, but just as easily ask, \u201cSo how do you feel now about all that happened today on the shore?\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tamar Rogoff\u2019s Summer\u2019s Different in La MaMa\u2019s Ellen Stewart\u2019s Theater, April 24 through May 12 A family\u2019s summer day on the beach, what could be finer?\u00a0 Of course, someone might get\u00a0 sunburned, someone might drop her hot dog in the sand, someone might swim out a little too far. There could be bickering. Tears saltier […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1626,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[769,767,764,766,430,765,768,763,762],"class_list":{"0":"post-1623","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dance-theater","8":"tag-annabel-sexton-daldry","9":"tag-beo-morales","10":"tag-brandin-steffensen","11":"tag-deborah-gladstein","12":"tag-emily-pope-blackman","13":"tag-emma-lee","14":"tag-joe-levasseur","15":"tag-peter-schmitz","16":"tag-tamar-rogoff","17":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1623\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}