{"id":2593,"date":"2014-05-17T14:16:16","date_gmt":"2014-05-17T18:16:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=2593"},"modified":"2014-05-19T13:48:04","modified_gmt":"2014-05-19T17:48:04","slug":"where-do-you-plan-to-travel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2014\/05\/where-do-you-plan-to-travel\/","title":{"rendered":"Where Do You Plan To Travel?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yoshiko Chuma and Rebecca Lazier share a program at LaMama.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Yoshiko<\/a>

Yoshiko Chuma and Chris Cochrane in her \u03c0=3.14 HOW TO DELIVER AN AFGHAN HAT….<\/em> Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n

Yoshiko Chuma\u2019s program note for her \u03c0=3.14\u2026HOW TO DELIVER AN AFGHAN HAT Endless Peripheral Border Cont\u2026<\/em> (part of the 2014 LaMama Moves Festival) begins with these words; \u2018War is like a sick child. You either keep doing your job or not.\u201d<\/p>\n

She should know. Growing up in Japan after World War II in a culture still shuddering its way out of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Chuma began the \u03c0=3.14\u2026 <\/em>series in 1999, when her School of Hard Knocks performed Footprints of War<\/em> at the Sarajevo Theater Festival. She has been journeying ever since\u2014to Macedonia, Albania, Romania, and, more recently, Manipur; her works have been performed in many cities. The collages that she assembles out of images, film, artwork, words gathered from interviews, dancing, and music are layered in enigmatic ways, so that\u2014while grounded in political and social issues\u2014her art is never didactic. Watching her pieces entails having sights and sound flash by you in often bewildering or jarring ways. You can no more sort them out on the spot than you could pick nuts and raisins out of pebbles as they pour from a bucket. Yet they collide in your brain in provocative ways.<\/p>\n

Born in Japan, living in the U.S., Chuma became interested in America\u2019s influence beyond its shores, especially on third world countries, although in her \u201cArtist Statement\u201d she says, \u201cIt has been more than 60 years since World War II, but Japan still smells of occupation, as though it is a U.S. colony.\u201d Also, as evinced by the quote at the beginning of this review, she is moved by how ordinary people continue to function in war\u2014how they try to keep working, eating, talking to their friends, educating their children. At some point, in the middle of \u03c0=3.14<\/em>, Ximena Garnica, sitting before a microphone placed on a glowing \u201clight table,\u201d speaks of ajiaco<\/em>, a soup well loved in Bogot\u00e1. The three kinds of potatoes, the herbs, and how it\u2019s best left to grow in flavor \u201ctrasnochada,\u201d or overnight. She makes you want some. And you may also think about days when, for many everywhere, there is no soup.<\/p>\n

The space in LaMama\u2019s little first-floor theater could be seen as analagous to the tangle and clutter and obstruction involved in border crossings and cross-cultural understanding. Wires snake from the light table and its microphones, from the table where composer Christopher McIntyre mans the laptop that delivers his score, and from Chris Cochrane\u2019s guitar to the pedals he stamps on. From time to time, as if carelessly testing a signal, Rebeca Medina swings once around her head a long electric cord with a cluster of bulbs at one end.<\/p>\n

Kit Fitzgerald, in a live video performance, fills the back wall with maps and drawings and drawn-on photos that are often both beautiful and terrifying\u2014rich colors, scratchy slashes, and blurry shapes you almost recognize, sometimes being scrawled over by white lines that wiggle like fat worms or snarling yarn. Is that a woman\u2019s torso that all those other images float over, or an explosion? Once we are in a train; sometimes palm trees rush by; sometimes a city (New York?) is seen in the distance. A woman\u2019s foot, photographed in close-up, rocks monotonously back and forth on her shoe\u2019s high heel, going nowhere.<\/p>\n

\"Rebeca<\/a>

Rebeca Medina (L) and Yoshiko Chuma against Kit Fitzgerald’s projections. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n

When \u03c0=3.14<\/em> begins, everything is covered with an immense white plastic tarp (entering the theater, you see this shrouding taking place). Chuma and Miriam Parker begin to uncover the space. They do this in spurts, checking with each other before each burst of action. As they thrash the tarp, it billows up like waves, like clouds, making a rustling, rainy sound. We know what lies hidden beneath, but also know that we might not<\/em> know.<\/p>\n

In previous works, Chuma has tangled\u2014often hilariously\u2014with musicians, but there\u2019s nothing funny about the way she and Cochrane periodically interact (she has embedded her 2005 Guitar Crash <\/em>in this new work). At the beginning, the rumble of bass notes that he slams out of his instrument incites Chuma to shove him, bump into him, hang onto him. He hunkers grimly down over the guitar and makes it howl. He steps on the pedals, and silence falls; when he plays again\u2014something sweeter and more melodic, she comes at him more gently, but when separated, they tend to stare combatively at each other.<\/p>\n

There don\u2019t seem to be any choreographed transitions. The performers move from one activity to a seeming non sequitur the way you switch off the light when you finished reading and go make a sandwich. They are so matter-of-fact that when Chuma starts making this-is-the-way gestures or \u201cstop\u201d signals, you\u2019re not sure whether she\u2019s actually cueing the media or guiding an invisible crowd.<\/p>\n

What makes McIntyre turn from his laptop and blare sound from his nearby trombone? Hard to say. He just does, and it adds to the cacophony that bespeaks impossible traffic conditions. What does it mean when various ones of the women hold up a clock whose hands seem stuck around 5:30? It\u2019s our task to think about crossing time zones, about time running out.<\/p>\n

\"Miriam<\/a>

Miriam Parker and her shadow in \u03c0=3.14.<\/em> Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n

There is some astonishing dancing in \u03c0=3.14. <\/em>Every now and then, one of the women is seized with an urge to move. Chuma has always danced like a wild woman, as if she can\u2019t get out what she feels and works herself into a frenzy; sometimes she looks like a puppet whose strings are being pulled by a maniac. But Parker, Medina, and Garnica are also remarkable. Each has a moment to dance alone, and although each has her own distinctive patterns, all of them stress instability or uncertain balance. Their legs snarl, their knees buckle, their bodies cant oddly. Garnica jumps so heavily that you fear for the floor. She also keeps returning to sit on one of the folding chairs scattered about, but almost immediately jumps up again and starts dancing, as if she cannot rest for fear she\u2019ll never express what she needs to express.<\/p>\n

Light and darkness collaborate. Chuma dances brandishing a flashlight. Sometimes a performer\u2019s shadow\u2014growing larger or smaller\u2014blots out part of Fitzgerald\u2019s video projections,. Whenever the other women switch on the light table, the atmosphere becomes slightly cozier. In one sequence, seated around it on three sides, Medina and Garnica engage in a rapid-fire dialogue that\u2019s rhythmically interesting enough to be thought of as choreography. Questions are asked. \u201cWould like to go to Colombia?\u201d \u201cWould you like to go to Maracaibo?\u201d In this jumble of related questions and answers translated from and into French, English, and Spanish, the tactics are those of an interviewer and an interviewee (perhaps debating a visa). They keep switching roles without letting up in speed. Seated between them, Parker turns her head from side to side, following them as if at a tennis match.<\/p>\n

\"(L<\/a>

(L to R): Ximena Garnica, Rebeca Medina, Yoshiko Chuma, Miriam Parker. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n

Parker, a wonderfully convincing actor, later turns her attention on us. \u201cDo you have a reservation?\u201d she asks. She\u2019d like to interview us. It will be easy, she says. So friendly. And suddenly she\u2019s telling us quite calmly and pleasantly of a documentary with missing footage, mentioning that she has been in captivity. And, yes, her entire family was in prison.<\/p>\n

A big hour glass projected on the back wall keeps being inverted. At one point, Parker says to us, \u201cAre you crying? It\u2019s normal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Medina swings her light cluster. Dances. An earsplitting shriek blasts from the guitar. Chuma and Cochrane travel haltingly along together, her head seemingly glued to his shoulder. The clock display, the swinging lights, the crazy dancing, and the voyaging meet and intersect against a vista of rolling clouds.<\/p>\n

Yoshiko Chuma is leaving for Afghanistan immediately after her performances in the LaMama Moves Festival ends on May 18.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"(L<\/a>

(L to R) Christopher Ralph, Anna Sch\u00f6n, and Tan Temal in Rebecca Lazier’s There Might Be Others<\/em>. At back: Cori Kresge. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n

The School of Hard Knocks shares its LaMama programs with Rebecca Lazier\u2019s There Might Be Others<\/em>, a work-in-progress that the choreographer intends to expand. It provides a pleasant introduction to the evening, but is difficult to write about after having seen Chuma\u2019s darker and more complex work.<\/p>\n

There Might Be Others<\/em> is, in effect, a structured improvisation, and knowing that affects how we view it. The seven expert performers have access to a collection of movements, rules, possibilities, tasks, and games. So we see them making decisions, influencing one another, taking various risks\u2014all of which they do very smoothly and with intensity of energy and focus. The recorded voice of Vladan Radnvanovic accompanies the first few minutes of the dance with a text that\u2014 in words both witty and irritating\u2014poses questions designed to make us ponder what we are seeing in terms of present existence and past (I\u2019m not explaining this well at all). Later sounds, such as something like radio static, a train, or rain take over. Or silence.<\/p>\n

Some of the movements quickly become familiar as people take them up or break away from doing them. One choice is to stand on one leg with the opposite knee lifted. Another is a kind of lunge. Another is a phrase of jumping steps that travel around the space. Another involves dropping to the floor and bouncing heavily while seated. There\u2019s also, at a give point, an option for everyone to sing softly a tune that interests him or her, while interacting with others.<\/p>\n

\"(L<\/a>

(L to R): Senaz Demirel, Pierre Guilbault, Tan Temal, Cori Kresge, Anna Sch\u00f6n, and Vincent McCloskey in There Might Be Others<\/em>. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n

In the small space, you can get interested in the dancers as individuals. You can choose to watch what Senaz Demirel is up to, or how Pierre Guilbault, Cori Kresge, Vincent McCloskey, Christopher Ralph, Anna Sch\u00f6n, and Tan Temal make their decisions. The way counterpoint emerges and shifts gears can capture your attention, but collaborations are the most rewarding elements to watch\u2014people tangling or building something together.<\/p>\n

It seems to me that a potential problem with improvisation of this kind is that the playfulness and complications that arise can look, well, silly, or childish. Not that adults don\u2019t play games (and adult dancers are extremely good at this), but Lazier\u2019s plan, while sometimes yielding intriguing results, also makes me wish for more complex strategies and more unusual movement possibilities. Perhaps those will develop as There Might Be Others<\/em> grows.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

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

Yoshiko Chuma and Rebecca Lazier share a program at LaMama. Yoshiko Chuma\u2019s program note for her \u03c0=3.14\u2026HOW TO DELIVER AN AFGHAN HAT Endless Peripheral Border Cont\u2026 (part of the 2014 LaMama Moves Festival) begins with these words; \u2018War is like a sick child. You either keep doing your job or not.\u201d She should know. Growing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2596,"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":[1194,1184,1188,1193,675,1185,1191,1190,1187,1183,1189,1195,1192,1196,1182],"class_list":{"0":"post-2593","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-postmodern-views","8":"tag-anna-schon","9":"tag-chris-cochrane","10":"tag-christopher-mcintyre","11":"tag-christopher-ralph","12":"tag-cori-kresge","13":"tag-kit-fitzgerald","14":"tag-miriam-parker","15":"tag-pierre-guilbault","16":"tag-rebeca-medina","17":"tag-rebecca-lazier","18":"tag-senaz-demirel","19":"tag-tan-temal","20":"tag-vincent-mccloskey","21":"tag-ximena-garnica","22":"tag-yoshiko-chuma","23":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2593","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=2593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}