{"id":244,"date":"2011-10-19T18:47:19","date_gmt":"2011-10-19T22:47:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=244"},"modified":"2011-10-20T16:27:06","modified_gmt":"2011-10-20T20:27:06","slug":"bearing-the-past-traveling-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2011\/10\/bearing-the-past-traveling-on\/","title":{"rendered":"Bearing the Past, Traveling On"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Jean-Baptiste Andr\u00e9 in Rachid Ouramdane's Ordinary Witnesses<\/em>. Photo: Ian Douglass<\/p><\/div>\n

Some people aver that dance and politics don\u2019t mix well. Others claim that dancing is inevitably political in some sense\u2014yielding or countering dominant views about gender, power, race,\u00a0 or identity that may be inscribed on the body. Occasionally, a choreographer wants to speak out, to raise awareness and awaken consciences through dance. In his or her own way.<\/p>\n

When Jane Comfort dealt with the transporting of suspected terrorists off American soil for possible torture in An American Rendition<\/em> (2008), she opted for a multi-layered and savagely theatrical presentation. Rachid Ouramdane\u2019s Ordinary Witnesses<\/em> (seen October 14 and 15 as a co-presentation by New York Live Arts and FIAF\u2019s Crossing the Line Festival,) approaches the subject of torture very differently. The world he presents is a gray one, through which survivors wander, forever numbed in some way by what they endured. Ouramdane is no stranger to that world. Before his parents left Algeria for France during the Algerian struggle for independence, those members of their generation who survived were marked by the terrible violence of their experiences. Since the founding of his France-based company, L\u2019A.\/Rachid Ouramdane, the choreographer has functioned like a maker of\u00a0 film documentaries, gathering and weaving together testimonies and potent images. His 2005 solo, Les Morts Pudiques<\/em>, focused on the deaths of young people, especially suicides, gathered from the Internet.<\/p>\n

What light there is for Ordinary Witnesses<\/em>at NYLA\u2019s Bessie Sch\u00f6nberg Theater is often dim, but it can also turn blindingly white. Designer Yves Godin has placed a slanting wall of globular lights\u201460 in all\u2014 at one side of the area. Sometimes these emit an amber glow; sometimes they glare; sometimes they toggle between bright and dim in various patterned combinations. Jean-Baptiste Julien\u2019s score exists between the extremes of a barely audible hum and catastrophic tumult. For a long time, there are no people at all onstage. We listen to Ouramdane\u2019s halting voice, trying in French to explain matters that \u201cgo beyond what words can say,\u201d and the white sentences of the English translation often have to arrest their flow across the screen at the back while pauses dam up his thoughts.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Mille Lundt in Ordinary Witnesses<\/em>. Photo: Ian Douglass<\/p><\/div>\n

As the five dancers, barely visible at first, walk quietly this way and that, other recorded voices speak of the aftermath of torture, of the hatred of one group for another. The voices never describe the torture itself; one woman simply says that, after her release, she wanted to commit suicide by falling out a window, but was unable to walk to the window to do so. At the very end, on a small downstage screen, we see in close-up the face of one survivor. She speaks articulately and without rancor, smiles, can laugh at times, but her face is the face of someone who has suffered, and her words reveal how prison and torture altered her completely.<\/p>\n

What Ouramdane shows us in his choreography are the wracking effects of that kind of experience on mind and body. The performers touch only occasionally. Mille Lundt pulls Jean-Claude Nelson\u2019s arm behind his head into what must be a painful position. There is a passage in which some performers lay others out on the floor. But mostly, these people are isolated\u2014watching one another from a distance or scrutinizing others\u2019 actions at closer range, like prison guards.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Lora Juodkaite spinning through time. Photo: Ian Douglas<\/p><\/div>\n

Lundt arches her body so extravagantly that she looks deformed, then walks in that position. Lora Juodkaite spins and spins and spins, travelling in a tightening circle as she does so. She\u2019s no erect, serene dervish; her head juts slightly forward or hangs back, and her body descends from it in an s-curve. Her hair flies out. You imagine her dissolving. Many time, Georgina Vila Bruch balances in increasingly distorted handstands\u2014collapsing, trying again, collapsing. . . .When the performers (the fifth is Jean-Baptiste Andr\u00e9) tumble or slip or writhe to the ground, as they often do, they end up in grotesquely askew positions\u2014their limbs tangled, bent beneath them, or cranked at strange angles. The spoken texts do not define the dancers\u2019 actions; rather the living bodies illustrate what cannot quite be said.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

<emVisible<\/em> by Nora Chipaumire and Zawole Willa Jo Zollar. Photo: Julieta Cervantes<\/p><\/div>\n

Nora Chipaumire and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar intended in their collaborative Visible<\/em> to show\u2014through music, and dance, and the spoken word\u2014related ideas about American ideals of freedom and equality, the struggle of those uprooted from home and family, the individual versus the community, and more. That\u2019s a lot to deal with, and not all of it came through clearly, judging from the detailed program explanations. The Waterworks premiere, produced by Urban Bush Women and presented by Harlem Stage in the marvelous brick space of the Gatehouse, was an organized m\u00e9lange of images related to power, rage, pride, defiance, death, national differences, religious practices, friendship, and support\u2014all these conveyed by dancing and music so full-bodied and hot-spirited that I could imagine steam from it rising to the vaulted ceiling.<\/p>\n

Zollar was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and Chipaumire in Zimbabwe (they don\u2019t perform in Visible<\/em>),\u00a0 and the cast is a mixed one. Souleymane Badolo hails from Burkina Faso, Catherine D\u00e9n\u00e9cy from Guadeloupe, Margeurite Hemmings from Jamaica, Judith Jacobs from Holland, John O. Perpener III from the U.S., and Kota Yamazaki (who also designed the costumes) from Japan. Their performing is abetted by Amanda K. Ringger\u2019s highly effective lighting and by the terrific playing of Bashir Shakur and David L. Alston\u2014first on side-by-side drum sets, later on inverted plastic buckets that the men punish with virtuosic stick work. Taped material, including Miles Davis\u2019s \u201cSo What,\u201d supplements the live music.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Margeurite Hemmings (front), Judith Jacobs, and Catherine D\u00e9n\u00e9cy. Photo: Julieta Cervantes<\/p><\/div>\n

You can envision Hemmings on her first entrance (black hat, dark glasses, white cane) as a death figure\u2014the transplanted Eleggua of Yoruba myth masquerading as a rickety blind man. Yamazaki too has a cane. And, perhaps feeling their influence, Perpener, seated on a chair, pushes the handle of his cane against his own neck, as if unseen forces were throttling him. Perpener, a noted dance scholar, isn\u2019t as nimble as the younger dancers, but in addition to reminiscing about a childhood transplanted to Boulder, Colorado, he\u2019s out there when unity is called for, joining the other two men in their moves.<\/p>\n

Different languages ring out in the Gatehouse, and its long, narrow space is awash with motion. Maybe it\u2019s three men thumping their canes on the floor while the women whip themselves into dancing\u2014swinging their hips, lunging, springing off the floor with their legs bundled up under them. Maybe it\u2019s the three women, marking time with small steps in place, while Yamazaki and Badolo confront each other under a blaze of light. At first, the two men compete like drummers trading fours; suddenly they\u2019re wrestling (contentious rivals or a man taking on a god?).\u00a0 Maybe it\u2019s the women half-shucking items of clothing and carrying on with the garment hanging off them. Badolo and D\u00e9n\u00e9cy banter teasingly, calling out \u201ckrik\u201d or \u201ckrak,\u201d each insisting on one or the other. All the performers toss little stones like dice, whooping when a favorable prediction can be decoded or a prayer answered. Jacobs repeatedly hurls herself to the floor, gasping out infuriated words about an America that doesn\u2019t live up to its promises; \u201cwe the people\u201d is a pipedream, and getting the necessary visa almost impossible When she finishes with a cry of \u201cMama!\u201d the others softly call out the word in their own mother tongues.<\/p>\n

There are processions and parades\u2014 traveling roads,\u00a0 mourning loss. Yamazaki brings in white shoes of all sizes\u2014enough for several families\u2014and lays them on the floor as a symbol of voyaging. Ironically, for all the implied lack of community, the dancers and musicians themselves form a profoundly supportive little society.\u00a0 And their shared wealth is the dancing \u2014full-bodied, robust, powerful, voluptuous\u2014as grounded as African forms and often as rhythmically complex.<\/p>\n

At one point D\u00e9n\u00e9cy launches herself into a mesmerizing solo that seems to come from deep inside her. I can\u2019t convey how rich it was the night I saw it\u2014both in power and in the many nuances and dynamic shifts that modulated the flow of movement. What D\u00e9n\u00e9cy achieved\u2014dredged up\u2014 was as complex as thought, yet swept on a tide of feeling. You could perhaps be transformed by such a dance\u2014whether as the performer or the spectator with imminent tears pricking the rims of her eyelids.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Judith Jacobs (left) and Catherine D\u00e9n\u00e9cy. Photo: Julieta Cervantes<\/p><\/div>\n

If all the ambitious, complicated ideas mentioned in Chipaumire\u2019s scenario don\u2019t emerge in Visible<\/em> in all their specificity, audiences can probably deal with that. Interpretation survives as a grab bag; what you get is what you get, and if the prizes in it are mostly bright, shiny ones, that\u2019s okay. Once people went to the Gatehouse because it was a pumping station for water coming from the Croton Aqueduct to New York City. Now you go there to drink. . .politics maybe, artistry for sure.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Some people aver that dance and politics don\u2019t mix well. Others claim that dancing is inevitably political in some sense\u2014yielding or countering dominant views about gender, power, race,\u00a0 or identity that may be inscribed on the body. Occasionally, a choreographer wants to speak out, to raise awareness and awaken consciences through dance. In his or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":247,"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":[109],"tags":[178,176,177,175],"class_list":{"0":"post-244","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-contemporary-dance","8":"tag-harlem-stage","9":"tag-jawole-willa-jo-zollar","10":"tag-nora-chipaumire","11":"tag-rachid-ouramdane","12":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244","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=244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}