{"id":2637,"date":"2014-06-15T13:48:16","date_gmt":"2014-06-15T17:48:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=2637"},"modified":"2014-06-15T13:59:12","modified_gmt":"2014-06-15T17:59:12","slug":"diary-of-an-image","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2014\/06\/diary-of-an-image\/","title":{"rendered":"Diary of an Image"},"content":{"rendered":"

DD Dorvillier adds a new work to her month-long reassessment of her history in dance.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"DD<\/a>

DD Dorvillier and stand-ins in her Diary of an Image<\/em> (dress rehearsal). Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n

DD Dorvillier always seems, in her choreographic projects, to be testing something. Perhaps it\u2019s the audience\u2019s perception of dance, or her own. She probes into the interactions of light and darkness, into the effect of space on sound vibrations, into the interference of objects on live dancers, and more. Translation between languages interests her. So does borrowing structures from other art forms and re-envisioning them. I can think of few choreographers who could fill so inventively a month-long \u201cplatform\u201d like the one that DD Dorvillier\/human future dance corps and Danspace Project presented this June at St. Mark\u2019s Church and at other sites around town. Danspace Project\u2019s executive director, Judy Hussie-Taylor, needs to be lauded for her vision.<\/p>\n

Dorvillier has made it clear that her Diary of an Image<\/em> is not a retrospective. That is, none of the dances that she has made since 1990 are being revived and presented in their entirety. She thought about the process, she said in an interview, \u201cas cracking a whip in the air and seeing the pieces that fall in the moment.\u201d I didn\u2019t see the performances that she included by other artists whose work had an impact on hers (among them Jennifer Lacy and Jennifer Monson). I have read Diary of an Image, <\/em>the book with commissioned texts that can be purchased at the performances. And I have seen one component of the series, A Catalogue of Steps<\/em>\u2014or at, least, a particular version of it at one of the free afternoon performances\u2014and written about it (https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2014\/05\/please-do-it-again\/<\/a>). For this, three dancers (Nibia Pastrana Santiago, Katerina Andreou, and Oren Barnoy) learned fragments drawn from Dorvillier\u2019s previous works and performed them, re-situated and without their original accouterments.<\/p>\n

A new dance, also called Diary of an Image<\/em>, mingles Dorvillier\u2019s history and the present moment in extraordinary and enigmatic ways. Three silhouetted figures with mirrored surfaces stand in various spots. Created by Olivier Vadrot, who also made the gorgeous flags (each representing a Dorvillier dance) that hang overhead. The figures represent, the program tells us, Lacey, Monson, and Sarah Michelson (also influential on Dorvillier\u2019s thinking), but they also reflect the immediate atmosphere of the church: images of the audience, seated on cushions that surround three sides of the area, slip onto one simulacrum\u2019s leg; another mirrored honoree wears a lopsided crown made of reflected parts of the moldings around the balcony.<\/p>\n

\"Composer<\/a>

Zeena Parkins plays her score for Diary of an Image<\/em>. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n

Composer-performer Zeena Parkins walks briskly across the floor and seats herself at a lidless grand piano. We wait for her to touch the keys. She doesn\u2019t. Just sits there with her hands in her lap, surveying the space or (apparently) meditating. A gentle mid-range hum begins to filter into the space. Other tones filter in and out subtly; you don\u2019t know they\u2019ve disappeared until they have. Electronic equipment up on the balcony, you suppose. But there\u2019s something eerily present about the sounds and their relation to the apparently motionless pianist. (later, I learn that eight battery-powered, magnetic \u201cebows\u201d have been placed on certain groups of the piano\u2019s strings, and that Parkinson\u2019s foot on the instrument\u2019s sustain pedal is causing the strings to vibrate and resonate in collaboration with the church\u2019s architecture).<\/p>\n

Even stranger sonic devices and the placement of speakers hung around the perimeter enable the mirrored cut-outs\u2014spot-lit by lighting designer Thomas Dunn\u2014to converse. You could swear the voices are emanating from them. The give-and-take isn\u2019t comprehensible, at least, not at first. The first voice chants rhythmic variations on the vocal sounds \u201cdee\u201d and \u201cda.\u201d The second voice uses the same vocabulary (all the voices were recorded by Dorvillier and the repeated \u201cdee\u201ds invoke her name, as well as the sound of Morse code messages being sent). Sometimes, the voices mingle in a fuzzy unison that bounces off the wall (and maybe us). Other sounds enter: \u201cem,\u201d for instance. \u201cYou-you\u201d becomes \u201cI-I-I.\u201d By the end, two or three short sentences emerge. Always the voices are calm, angelically resonant. Then Parkins stands up and runs out the door, and Dorvillier enters. I don\u2019t know at what point I realize that the church\u2019s stained glass windows are brilliantly illuminated by Dunn\u2019s lighting. Now we have other watchful presences, some of them saintly. Passersby on Second Avenue or Tenth Street will see a glowing church.<\/p>\n

The four doors leading to other parts of St. Mark\u2019s are open, and at some points during Diary of an Image<\/em>, the spaces behind them are lit. Once, beams of light that make you think of heavenly radiance in Renaissance paintings streak along the floor from the central front door.<\/p>\n

\"DD<\/a>

DD Dorvillier and reflective collaborator. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n

All the preceding has taken some time, but that\u2019s fine. You seem to have been enveloped in a giant \u201com\u201d\u2014a Methodist church awakening to Buddhism. So now here\u2019s Dorvillier wearing shiny purple tights and a navy-blue tee shirt, and she is dancing. Her springy little step-hops don\u2019t cover a lot of space with each repetition, but they take her around the floor in various patterns. Erect, and holding her hands on her hips or occasionally opening her arms wide, she brings to mind a grave celebrant in certain folk dances\u2014Balkan, maybe (she has experienced those). Every once in a while, she\u2019ll jump two or three times straight up, followed by one jump bending to the right with her arms slashing in that direction. Occasionally she pauses, standing on tiptoe and reaching forward, as if to stabilize herself and take a few deep breaths.<\/p>\n

As with any minimal dancing rooted in repetition, you watch for variations. Some are clear\u2014a heel-and-toe action, a lift of the knee following by thrust-forward foot; others are even subtler\u2014shifts in Dorvillier\u2019s breathing, her gaze, the bounce of her ponytail. She travels backward, then forward. She sees<\/em> the church and the three figures she passes. Her rhythm is plain and unvarying.<\/p>\n

Suddenly, a big change. She pushes up the sleeves of her shirt, and her arms become a major player, her feet reduced to simple walking and turning. Sometimes one of her shoulders, sometimes an elbow, sometimes a hand leads her arms into smooth, serpentine motions; her fingers remain straight and clumped together as she carves the air. Later, I read that the first dance form Dorvillier learned was hula.<\/p>\n

\"Dorvillier<\/a>

Dorvillier and Katerina Andreou make their arms dance. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n

The speakers begin emitting low-key music with a drone involved, and another woman enters. It\u2019s Andreou, wearing a chartreuse shirt and tights, and she launches herself into the step-hop dancing that Dorvillier has burned into our brains, with a few variations of her own. Dorvillier herself, having walked out a rear door, reappears through the front one, and dances her way out into the city again. This is the part when Dunn illuminates the various passages to other parts of the church or to the world outside, yet at this point, Andreou is moving unenhanced by lighting.<\/p>\n

Parkins re-enters to make the strange instrument that the piano has become begin its mysterious choir of sounds, and the two women dance simultaneously, but rarely in unison. They work their arms. They do the hopping dance. It\u2019s only now that I begin to see Diary of an Image<\/em> as a ritual of sorts. These women are dancing to make something happen, except that we don\u2019t know what that something is. I feel as if I\u2019ve stumbled into a society whose customs are unfamiliar to me.<\/p>\n

Changes do occur in the atmosphere. Parkins leaves again, and electronic sounds begin\u2014at first sounding almost like rain; later they crash and clack dangerously and include what could be nasal voices. Pools of light appear around the mirrored figures, and Dunn makes the church as bright as noon. The two dancers\u2019 shadows are thrown on the walls.<\/p>\n

Dorvillier and Andreou rarely move in unison, but their patterns seem related, as well as more intricate. They look less like people proceeding along narrow, fairly straight trails, and more like travelers along the kind of roads that snake around. So their dancing appears to be more fully three-dimensional, even though the steps are the same ones we\u2019ve been watching for a long time.<\/p>\n

Another gradual change enhances the feeling of a ritual. The crispness of Andreou\u2019s dancing never wanes, but she pauses quite often. Dorvillier visibly tires and attacks the steps less energetically than before. Yet there\u2019s no question that the two will continue until they finish whatever they set out to accomplish. Or that they are ministering to a space that exists beyond the area that has been re-designed by their dancing, Parkins\u2019s music, and Dunn\u2019s lights.<\/p>\n

\"Jump!<\/a>

Jump! DD Dorvillier and Katerina Andreou . Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n

Suddenly Dorvillier and Andreou pause facing each other and jump, both stretching their arms forward. They\u2019re close enough to touch fingertips. Has a circuit been completed? I imagine lights flashing. But no. Side by side, they walk out the door that leads to the street. It takes quite a few silent moments for us to realize that Diary of an Image<\/em> has ended and that we can clap now.<\/p>\n

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

DD Dorvillier adds a new work to her month-long reassessment of her history in dance. DD Dorvillier always seems, in her choreographic projects, to be testing something. Perhaps it\u2019s the audience\u2019s perception of dance, or her own. She probes into the interactions of light and darkness, into the effect of space on sound vibrations, into […]<\/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":[422,1210,1211,163,424],"class_list":{"0":"post-2637","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-postmodern-views","7":"tag-dd-dorvillier","8":"tag-katrina-andreou","9":"tag-olivier-vadrot","10":"tag-thomas-dunn","11":"tag-zeena-parkins","12":"entry","13":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2637","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=2637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2637\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}