{"id":290,"date":"2011-10-31T09:01:41","date_gmt":"2011-10-31T13:01:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=290"},"modified":"2011-10-31T16:21:13","modified_gmt":"2011-10-31T20:21:13","slug":"wandering-down-memory-lane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2011\/10\/wandering-down-memory-lane\/","title":{"rendered":"Wandering Down Memory Lane"},"content":{"rendered":"
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William Forsythe's dancers play no-ball ping pong. Photo: Julieta Cervantes<\/p><\/div>\n

William Forsythe is an innovator. I doubt that fact is even up for debate among those who adore his work, those who loathe it, and those who simply scratch their heads over it. His post post-Balanchine ballets, his installations, his recent theater pieces, and his 2004 computer app, Improvisation Technologies: A Tool for the Analytical Dance Eye<\/em>, have influenced choreographers, performers, teachers, and thinkers outside the dance world.<\/p>\n

Scholars in Europe and the American continent chew over his work in the light of the ideas he has articulated. Take this sentence by Sabine Huschka (referencing an earlier text of hers in a 2010 essay in Dance Research Journal<\/em> titled \u201cMedia-Bodies: Choreography as Intermedial Thinking Through in the Work of William Forsythe\u201d): \u201cSo, performative sequences of choreographed movement fold projected, imagined, constructed, and physically remembered images of the body into processes of generating and forming movement-actions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Umm, yes. That is, yes as far as dance studies go. And yes as an allusion to the processes that dancers and choreographers can deal with. But I don\u2019t think that all the spectators who attend performances of Forsythe\u2019s work and cheer for them see what Huschka is talking about. Watching his 2008 I don\u2019t believe in outer space<\/em>, presented by The Forsythe Company at the Brooklyn Academy of Music October 26 through 29, you may decide that the medium-sized, irregularly-shaped, slightly shiny balls littering the stage represent fallen meteorites, and go on to link them with the title. But unless you\u2019ve read everything written about Forsythe, you may not know that he and his dancers collected the wadded-up balls of tape that stagehands form when they rip apart the floor-covering that the company tours with. Why did the company amass these? They might come in handy some day.<\/p>\n

You also might not know that in 2008, Forsythe was looking ahead to his 60th birthday; it was therefore an especially fortuitous time for him to delve into the body\u2019s memories, desires, and anticipated events. I don\u2019t believe in outer space<\/em> can be considered an eccentric road map of his memories and those of his highly collaborative dancers. In any case, you simply take in and relish (or not) the many isolated, often absurd events powered by movement, text, lighting, and sounds. This is the first work of Forsythe\u2019s that has made me think of Pina Bausch\u2014 except that repetition is a crucial part of her collages of vignettes, which are organized in a tidy way for maximum theatricality. Forsythe doesn\u2019t seem to think in terms of sewing things up.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t believe in outer space<\/em> strikes me as less impressive and thought-provoking than his Three Atmospheric Studies<\/em> and Decreation<\/em>(both shown at BAM in the past decade). He has described the piece as \u201ca series of preposterous takes on the theme of giving it up.\u201d That idea\u2014along with the urge to survive\u2014doesn\u2019t shine out clearly or provide the strong glue that the themes of those other works did. Nor is the space as well defined by zones of activity or objects. To the audience\u2019s left is what looks somewhat like the interior of very messy office (I\u2019m not sure that spectators seated on the far left of the theater can see into it). Cast members sometimes retreat into it. Papered with photos\u2014torn, hanging loose, crumpled on the floor\u2014it hints at the mental scrapbook that the whole piece seems to be.<\/p>\n

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Esther Balfe in I don't believe in outer space. Photo: Julieta Cervantes<\/p><\/div>\n

The stage is a bleak place. Thom Willems\u2019s score may suddenly blare (sound design by Niels Lanz) and the lights (by Tanja R\u00fchl and Ulf Naumann) blaze and just as swiftly darken. Once, one of the performers (Katja Cheraneva) screams, and everything halts. People wander in and out of the space; suddenly they\u2019re just there<\/em>, as if they\u2019d been poured in by a wily scientist to see how they might affect the existing population. The dancing\u2014for instance, an intriguing solo by Esther Balfe, and another, quieter, equally impressive one by Yasutake Shimaji\u2014is echt Forsythe. The performers\u2019 bodies seem to be imprinted with fragmentary ideas that twitch, roll, and wriggle their way through muscles and nerves\u2014constantly diverted to new paths and both fascinating and disturbing to watch.<\/p>\n

As usual, the performers (17 of them) are magnificently daring and wonderfully expressive. When the piece begins, two men are grappling at the back of the stage, as if they\u2019re stuck together and not entirely liking that condition. Tilman O\u2019Donnell lies supine, occasionally talking into an empty paper towel tube. When Josh Johnson arrives dancing, he has some of the tape balls stuffed into his pants and shirt to simulate protuberant buttocks and breasts. But it\u2019s almost impossible to keep your eyes off the stellar Dana Caspersen, who has worked with Forsythe since 1988. She\u2019s channeling two people who are having an increasingly peculiar conversation about mundane matters. In a high nervous voice, she welcomes a newcomer to the neighborhood, then spraddles her legs and bends her knees deeply to dredge out of her guts the hoarse, snarling voice of the visitor. He or she may admit to living just down the block, but whoever said Death always told the truth?<\/p>\n

Amancio Gonzalez appears beside Caspersen, lip synching (I believe) her words. It\u2019s a device Forsythe uses throughout the piece. The performers often move their mouths to form sentences we may or may not hear, and we can\u2019t always tell who\u2019s actually speaking.<\/p>\n

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Left to right: Fabrice Mazliah, Roberta Mosca, Ander Zabala, Elizabeth Waterhouse, Dana Caspersen. Photo: Julieta Cervantes<\/p><\/div>\n

Fairly early in I don\u2019t believe in outer space<\/em>, Casperson hints at its form. \u201cAs if by chance,\u201d she confides, \u201cthere\u2019s a lot of stuff all over the place, things moving in all kinds of different directions. . .\u201d She wants us to know that\u2014as if by chance, randomly\u2014things separate, collide, stop. As in life. And, as in life, there are memorable moments in Forsythe\u2019s piece. Shimaji, inscrutable in a hoodie, pantomimes a wacky ping-pong match with no ball or net. He wields two paddles; his opponent, Gonzalez, has none. Jone San Martin, Elizabeth Waterhouse, and Yoko Ando watch appreciatively, if not always accurately. Tilman, wearing a kneepad over his face, impersonates a professor; I think it\u2019s he who remarks that there\u2019s no research, only researchers, as he hastily stuffs tape balls under his sweat jacket. Once, while Caspersen talks, Ander Zabala unleashes his impressive singing voice. Another time, holding a mike on a long pole above her, he produces what he makes very clear are farts; Waterhouse, Roberta Mosca, and Fabrice Mazliah make terrible faces, as if these were daily exercises.<\/p>\n

Forsythe\u2019s title alludes to a sentence in \u201cI Will Survive,\u201d the song known best for Gloria Gaynor\u2019s rendition of it. Caspersen delivers the crucial verse that begins \u201cI will survive\/ as long as I know how to love\u201d in an anguished, terrified howl, as she backs away along the floor from a figure she sees as threatening. At the very end of I don\u2019t believe in outer space<\/em>, she lists all the things she\u2019ll have to do without: \u201cno more falling. . .no more having a beautiful blue dress and wearing it to the dance. . .no more saying \u2018at first I was afraid.\u2019\u201d Those last words lead her into the song again: \u201cand so you’re back\/ from outer space,\u201d she says. \u201cI just walked in to find you here\/ with that sad look on your face.\/ I should have changed my stupid lock. . . .\u201d Meanwhile the curtain is falling. Very, very slowly.<\/p>\n

Note to Forsythe: in December, you\u2019ll turn 62. That\u2019s not so bad, right? I thought so. You\u2019re surviving nicely. And let\u2019s hope you got the fear out of your system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

William Forsythe is an innovator. I doubt that fact is even up for debate among those who adore his work, those who loathe it, and those who simply scratch their heads over it. His post post-Balanchine ballets, his installations, his recent theater pieces, and his 2004 computer app, Improvisation Technologies: A Tool for the Analytical […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":292,"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":[99],"tags":[192,191,190],"class_list":{"0":"post-290","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dance-theater","8":"tag-i-dont-believe-in-outer-space","9":"tag-thom-willems","10":"tag-william-forsythe","11":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290","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=290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}