{"id":1686,"date":"2013-05-26T17:28:16","date_gmt":"2013-05-26T21:28:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=1686"},"modified":"2013-05-26T23:40:54","modified_gmt":"2013-05-27T03:40:54","slug":"playing-hard-game-unknown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2013\/05\/playing-hard-game-unknown\/","title":{"rendered":"Playing Hard, Game Unknown"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gallim Dance at BAM Fisher, May 21-26, 2013<\/i><\/p>\n

\"Jonathan<\/a>

Jonathan Royse Windham (L) and Dan Walczak upend Francesca Romo in Andrea Miller’s Blush<\/em>, Austin Tyson (hidden) on floor behind them. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n

What does \u201cblush\u201d convey to you?\u00a0 A person becomingly embarrassed? A person ashamed? The reddening sky of dawn?\u00a0 If it were not for the association of \u201cflush\u201d with toilets and wealth, I\u2019d consider it an apter title than Blush <\/i>for Andrea Miller\u2019s <\/i>revised 2009 dance. <\/i>The six go-for-broke members of her Gallim Dance do indeed turn red in the face over the course of this powerful work, but the cause is their exertions. Vincent Vigilante\u2019s lighting design often turns the BAM Fisher\u2019s black-box stage dark and shot through with spectral beams, but even so, you can see the spotty white makeup on the dancers\u2019 hair, faces, and bodies gradually running with sweat, leaving increasingly large pink patches of hot skin.<\/p>\n

Miller has accomplished a great deal since she founded her company in 2007\u2014not only choreographing for Gallim but for other professional companies and for student ones. She is, I think, in love with effort and with the complex ways the human body can sense changes in the atmosphere\u2014both exterior and interior\u2014and respond to them. She has admitted to being a fan of wrestling, although I can\u2019t say whether she meant that she only watches matches or that she also engages in them.<\/p>\n

\"Gallim<\/a>

Gallim Dance in Blush<\/em>. L to R: Caroline Fermin, Dan Walczak (partly hidden), Troy Ogilvie, Francesca Romo, Jonathan Royse Windham, Austin Tyson (only on leg visible). Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n

In the late 1920s, when Martha Graham was working her way into modernism, she wrote that \u201cUgliness<\/em> may be actually beautiful if it cries out with the voice of power.” Even now, when \u201cugliness\u201d has been redefined in many ways and banished in others, quite a few people might have trouble accepting that statement. Not Miller. When Blush<\/i> begins, you can hardly make out the figure in the center of the stage; the only illumination is a row of lights at floor level on either side of the performing area. He (it turns out to be Dan Walczak) knots his body and limbs as if he\u2019s accommodating to a small space, scrabbles along, walks in a squat, whirls into turns, and collapses. When he manages to rise and balance on one leg, that leg is turned in, and he\u2019s wavering as the lights go out.<\/p>\n

When the stage brightens, a drumbeat kicks in under a high throbbing, and water sounds emerge, three women (Caroline Fermin, Troy Ogilvie, and Francisca Romo) dance in unison. Fermin and Ogilvie have known Miller since her Juilliard days, and Romo co-founded Gallim and is now its associate director); they\u2019re her kind of anti-heroic amazons. They can jump as if launched by catapults, but they tend to stay low to the ground\u2014feet planted wide apart, knees bent, bodies hunkering down. Turning, stepping out, reaching with widespread and weighted arms. . . . If the floor were a field, they\u2019d have it ploughed and planted by now.<\/p>\n

\"L<\/a>

L to R: Francesca Romo, Troy Ogilvie, and Caroline Fermin in Blush<\/em>. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n

Meanwhile Austin Tyson, Jonathan Royse Windham, and Walczak lie on their sides at the rear of the area. Inching along, their bare torsos pale, they look like larva fighting their way to the next stage of life.<\/p>\n

The floor is edged with white tape to suggest a sports arena, and another white tape runs along the side and back walls at chest height. A string of amber lights, bordering the floor against the black wall, comes on at certain times; at another point, circular pools of white light appear. Jose Solis\u2019s costumes allude vaguely both to fashion and to Greek games. The women wear black trunks and rather glamorous, almost backless, full-sleeved blouses. The men wear short, belted, black drapes over matching diaper-type underpinnings. All the performers\u2019 ankles and arches are bound with fabric that suggests sandals.<\/p>\n

\"L<\/a>

L to R: Austin Tyson, Francesca Romo, Dan Walczak, and Jonathan Royse Windham. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/em>Like the twelve performers in Miller\u2019s 2010 Wonderland<\/em>, these people make up a tribe. But Wonderland<\/em>\u2014influenced by the life-like wolf packs of Cai Guo-Qiang\u2019s Guggenheim installation, Head On<\/i>\u2014suggested herd and mob behavior with a wildness both amusing and terrifying. In the smaller society of Blush<\/i>, conformity\u2014when it occurs\u2014is a given, and power struggles erupt and die away like tests accomplished. Sometimes the dancers project the image of a primal group that could be struggling its way to a more evolved state. In the last section, to Wolf Parade\u2019s \u201cI\u2019ll Believe in Anything,\u201d they run and leap around the stage in a loose, playful gang\u2014grinning and sometimes singing along with the vocalist. But at the very end, they follow Ogilvie\u2019s lead, backing away into a corner and staring across the long diagonal.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m impressed by the way Miller blends ferocity with disciplined form, whether in three brief contrapuntal duets or during a sequence in which everyone behaves individually at the same time. When several people hold out their hands, palms up, and alternate them in up-and-down motion\u2014as if estimating the comparative weight of two objects\u2014they\u2019re not in immaculate unison, but consensus is obvious.<\/p>\n

Given the fierce energy of the movement, Miller\u2019s choice of music is so surprising that you can\u2019t imagine it working, but it does. \u201cBallybane\u201d by Manyfingers is followed by Andrzej Przybytkowski\u2019s original composition \u201cBirds,\u201d a Chopin prelude, \u201cNew Breath\u201d by Kap Bambino, Arvo P\u00e4rt\u2019s familiar \u201cFratres,\u201d and the Wolf Parade song.<\/p>\n

\"Dan<\/a>

Dan Walczak (standing) grappling with Austin Tyson. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n

Among the dauntless, determined athletes in who-knows-what arena, push and pull are primary dynamics, never more ingeniously explored than in a fairly extended duet for Tyson and Walczak. Punishing and intricately designed, it conveys neither animosity nor fight-to-the-death competition, even though Tyson covers Walczak\u2019s eyes at one point as they rush along. Suddenly Walczak leaves, and Tyson runs in circles alone. He ends up stopped at a corner, looking around for his antagonist.<\/p>\n

On some level, Blush<\/i> is unfathomable. On another it\u2019s as dangerously, sensuously present as a touch on your own flesh.<\/p>\n

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

Gallim Dance at BAM Fisher, May 21-26, 2013 What does \u201cblush\u201d convey to you?\u00a0 A person becomingly embarrassed? A person ashamed? The reddening sky of dawn?\u00a0 If it were not for the association of \u201cflush\u201d with toilets and wealth, I\u2019d consider it an apter title than Blush for Andrea Miller\u2019s revised 2009 dance. The six […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"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":[199],"tags":[803,808,406,804,805,809,806,811,810,807],"class_list":{"0":"post-1686","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-postmodern-views","7":"tag-andrea-miller","8":"tag-austin-tyson","9":"tag-bam-fisher","10":"tag-blush","11":"tag-caroline-fermin","12":"tag-dan-walczak","13":"tag-francesca-romo","14":"tag-gallim-dance","15":"tag-jonathan-royse-windham","16":"tag-troy-ogilvie","17":"entry","18":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686","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=1686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}