{"id":226,"date":"2011-10-09T14:14:17","date_gmt":"2011-10-09T18:14:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=226"},"modified":"2011-10-10T10:05:41","modified_gmt":"2011-10-10T14:05:41","slug":"but-if-the-cause-be-not-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2011\/10\/but-if-the-cause-be-not-good\/","title":{"rendered":"“But if the cause be not good. . .”"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Valda Setterfield in David Gordon's Dancing Henry Five. Photo: Paula Court<\/p><\/div>\n

When David Gordon first presented his Dancing Henry Five <\/em>in 2004, his reasons for choosing that particular Shakespeare play on which to wreak inspired havoc were obvious. In both England\u2019s invasion of France in 1415 and the United States\u2019 2003 invasion of Iraq, the justification was flawed, and the evidence supporting it flimsy. Also, just as Prince Hal, a rowdy pub crawler, reformed with a vengeance as soon as the crown encircled his brow, George Bush the Younger, cast aside his carousing years at Yale and became a born-again Christian.<\/p>\n

It takes a witty craftsman of dance theater like Gordon to turn a heroically jingoistic play into a wry but fervent plea for peace. And seven years later, as revived for Monclair State University\u2019s sterling Peak Performance series, Dancing Henry Five <\/em>(labeled by its creator as a \u201cpre-emptive postmodern strike & spin\u201d) sends a message that still rouses slumbering indignation and anger. Take note: the Battle of Agincourt not only prolonged the Hundred Years War, but led indirectly to England\u2019s dynastic Wars of the Roses.<\/p>\n

Shakespeare\u2019s Chorus warned patrons of the Globe Theater in 1588 that the spectacle would be minimal: \u201cCan this cockpit hold the vasty fields of France? Or may we cram within this wooden O the very casques that did affright the air at Agincourt?\u201d Nope. Gordon\u2019s own superb Chorus, Valda Setterfield, disarmingly confidential in manner, tells us that postmodern choreographers are used to make-do scenery and costumes, and, after all, for Dancing Henry Five<\/em>, the Pick Up Performances Co(s) is trying to suggest two large armies at battle with \u201cseven dancers, three dummies, and me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gordon, however, provides an armature on which to hang the instructions that Shakespeare\u2019s Chorus doles out. \u201cThink, when we talk of horses, that you see them printing their proud hoofs i\u2019 the receiving earth.\u201d Okay, have the dancers stand on chairs and prance carefully in place (the English forces move gradually onto the field at Agincourt). Have them grab poles, rush into formations, and bang the poles urgently on the floor (the horses are galloping now). A ladder on wheels becomes a horse for Henry. The music gets our pulses racing (it\u2019s the corresponding stirring passage from William Walton\u2019s score for Laurence Olivier\u2019s 1944 film of the play).<\/p>\n

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King Henry's Troops. Photo: Paula Court<\/p><\/div>\n

The program lists the provenance of the mountain of props that\u2019s onstage as the piece starts. Many items have been re-purposed from earlier Gordon works. The effect is simultaneously threadbare and rich. The costumes look as if a canny designer (none credited) had ransacked a variety of bureau drawers. The performers wear black shorts and caps, rugby shirts with toned-down stripes, and striped socks. Fabric panels are handed out from a rack when anyone needs a cape or a skirt. These double as carpets for royalty to tread on, billowing waves, and the ships that cross the English Channel; three cast members stand on them, bravely erect and motionless, and are pulled smoothly across this wooden sea.<\/p>\n

Gordon has pillaged other storehouses as well. Olivier\u2019s voice and those of actors from his film deliver crucial speeches from Shakespeare\u2019s text\u2014Olivier\u2019s readings often interwoven with Christopher Plummer\u2019s delivery of them for Henry V: A Shakespearean Scenario<\/em>. Walton\u2019s movie music draws on Canteloube\u2019s Songs of the Auvergne<\/em> (which itself drew on folk songs), and Gordon has also appropriated a passage from Walton\u2019s ballet The Wise Virgins<\/em> that Walton plundered from Bach (\u201cSheep May Safely Graze\u201d).<\/p>\n

Flexibility, speed, and flow are hallmarks of Gordon\u2019s work, as are an everyday performing manner and non-virtuosic movement. Throughout the hour that the piece lasts, the dancers (Karen Graham, Robert La Fosse, Michael Bishop, Lauren Kelly Ferguson, Kendahl Ferguson, Omagbitse Omagbemi (especially memorable), Alessandro Pellicani, and, of course, Setterfield) literally swirl and sweep the action along. They, the props, and the set are always on the move\u2014turning and being turned and turning into something or someone else. Political strategies, for instance, are embodied in a neatly patterned game with one, then two large rubber balls (an allusion to the tennis balls sent to Henry by the Dauphin of France to mock the former playboy\u2019s readiness to reign). Tosses, catches, and bounces are cleverly calibrated to the music but also carry elements of risk and surprise. Like war.<\/p>\n

Gordon slyly makes the contrast between Shakespeare\u2019s style and his own both jolting and beguiling. When Falstaff, Hal\u2019s discarded drinking companion and mentor in dissipation, is dying, Setterfield adds a pillow to her outfit to suggest girth and lies down on a wheelable table; the recorded voice of Freda Jackson (Olivier\u2019s Mistress Quickly) speaks poignantly of his last moments, and King Henry looks through the window in the frame the others have assembled. Then Setterfield pushes the sheet off her face, sits up, and says briskly, \u201cOK, Falstaff is dead,\u201d and we move on with her.<\/p>\n

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Henry woos Catherine: La Fosse, Graham, and Setterfield. Photo: Paula Court<\/p><\/div>\n

In Dancing Henry Five<\/em>, <\/em>Henry\u2019s courtship of Catherine of Valois, the French King\u2019s daughter (a prize that was part of the negotiations) proceeds as a version of a stately basse danse\u2014with Setterfield, skirted up, as Alice, the princess\u2019s duenna, slipping around and between Henry, the victor (La Fosse) and his betrothed (a charmingly na\u00efve Graham). It\u2019s an elaborate negotiation rather than a wooing. As Setterfield\u2019s Chorus subsequently remarks, \u201cbig weddings are hell to pull off.\u201d\u00a0 And for the delightful scene in which Alice gives her mistress an English lesson in preparation for her queen-of England future, Setterfield and Graham\u2019s gestures for \u201cfingers,\u201d \u201celbow,\u201d and so on are synchronized with the film dialogue, yet form and dissolve within a dance language.<\/p>\n

Jennifer Tipton\u2019s lighting is at its most splendid in the nighttime-glow it provides on the eve of battle, when the soldiers assemble tents out of what they find and crawl in and out of them. Then when the melee of charging horses, lunging soldiers, and flying dummies is over, she turns the stage into a gray, moonlit field of fallen bodies amid the detritus of war.<\/p>\n

Setterfield, a brilliant actress, is in a sense Shakespeare\u2019s conscience, which crops up only briefly in the play in the words of a poor foot soldier on the eve of the battle. She is acid on the subject of combatants who announce that God is on their side, and furious when she says that if she doesn\u2019t want her son to go to war, and war seems to be unavoidable, that must mean that she wants someone else\u2019s son to die.<\/p>\n

Olivier made his film during World War II\u2014a war that has gone down in history as just. For all the grandeur of his Henry V<\/em>, he, too, made do; all the chain mail was string, knitted by nuns and painted silver. Ireland stood in for France. Nor did Olivier know how that 20th<\/sup>-century war would end. Maybe that\u2019s why he emphasized the sadness in the speech that Shakespeare wrote for the Duke of Burgundy; aided by shots of ruined fields and despairing survivors, it becomes a heartfelt statement about the aftermath of war for the common people of France, who knew and cared little about their rulers\u2019 lust for conquest and possession.<\/p>\n

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When David Gordon first presented his Dancing Henry Five in 2004, his reasons for choosing that particular Shakespeare play on which to wreak inspired havoc were obvious. In both England\u2019s invasion of France in 1415 and the United States\u2019 2003 invasion of Iraq, the justification was flawed, and the evidence supporting it flimsy. Also, just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":230,"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":[6],"tags":[168,166,170,169,171,167],"class_list":{"0":"post-226","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-postmodern-new-york","8":"tag-dancing-henry-v","9":"tag-david-gordon","10":"tag-karen-graham","11":"tag-peak-performances","12":"tag-robert-la-fosse","13":"tag-valda-setterfield","14":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226","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=226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}