{"id":4277,"date":"2016-06-09T10:06:29","date_gmt":"2016-06-09T14:06:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=4277"},"modified":"2016-06-09T10:06:29","modified_gmt":"2016-06-09T14:06:29","slug":"emerging-from-returning-to-dust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2016\/06\/emerging-from-returning-to-dust\/","title":{"rendered":"Emerging from, Returning to Dust"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yvonne Rainer’s The Concept of Dust: Continuous Project\u2014Altered Annually.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Yvonne

Yvonne Rainer’s The Concept of Dust: Continuous Project\u2014Altered Annually<\/em>. (L to R): Yvonne Rainer, Patricia Hoffbauer, Emmanu\u00e8le Phuon, Pat Catterson, David Thomson, and Emily Coates. Photo: Paula Court<\/p><\/div>\n

So, a woman walks into The Kitchen and stands hesitantly before the audience. Behind her, at the back of the performing area, five dancers wait; there\u2019s a gap in their shoulder-to-shoulder line. The woman\u2014it is choreographer Yvonne Rainer\u2014 warns us, fumbling a bit for words, that she has bad news for us. About performer Pat Catterson. Then she delivers it: \u201cPat died.\u201d Cries erupt from the audience as she talks on: \u201cOh no!\u201d \u201cNot Pat!\u201d and the like. That\u2019s what the gap in the line of performers tells us: Catterson, the eldest of the performers and Rainer\u2019s choreographic assistant in The Concept of Dust: Continuous Project\u2014 Altered Annually<\/em>, is missing. Oh my God.<\/p>\n

In the midst of our consternation, Catterson strides onto the stage, calling out: \u201cWhat the fuck, Yvonne! Are you trying to get rid of me?\u201d The other performers rush away in a horde, arms thrown up, shrieking as if they\u2019ve seen a ghost. Rainer remains calm and not exactly apologetic; she exits, leaving the space to Catterson, who begins a solid, soft-shoe routine while delivering the first text of the evening (drawn from a New Yorker <\/em>review by Joan Acocella of Brian Seibert\u2019s book, What the Eye Hears: a History of Tap<\/em>). <\/em>She tells most memorably of slave ships, whose captives were regularly brought up on deck and ordered to dance, in the hope that exercise would keep them healthy.<\/p>\n

At the end of the work, after the bows, Rainer returns to the stage and wonders if we have any questions. Especially about that beginning. Opinions vary. Is that kind of a jolt good for us? Might there be a less alarming way of reminding us that we will all become dust some day? One choreographer said afterward that she thought Rainer\u2019s opening\u2014risky as it was\u2014was a strong one, even though she admitted to seeing the first ten minutes of Dust <\/em>through tears.<\/p>\n

The work didn\u2019t have this shocking opening when a version of it premiered last June at the Museum of Modern Art under the title, The Concept of<\/em> Dust<\/em>, or How do you look when there’s nothing left to move? <\/em>It acquired the new title when it began this five-week series of presentations by the American Dance Institute, produced by Performa, and co-commissioned by the Getty and Performa. This month, ADI breaks ground on a new structure in Catskill, New York, where selected choreographers will have not only studios in which to create, but a black-box theater. Still to premiere during The Kitchen season are works by Brian Brooks, Jane Comfort, Susan Marshall, and Jack Ferver.<\/p>\n

Certainly, age is a factor in Rainer\u2019s Dust. <\/em>She was born in 1934. None of the marvelous performers is young, although all are youthful. Emily Coates, Patricia Hoffbauer, Emmanu\u00e8le Phuon, Keith Sabado, David Thomson, and Catterson bring a treasury of experience to their work in Dust<\/em>\u2014dancers and choreographers able to make smart decisions about what sequences or movements to choose in the parts where that is an option.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s something relentless about the verbiage, which raises issues that don\u2019t always seem to relate to what we see\u2014at least, not in obvious ways. Rainer hauls a script around, holding it in front of now this performer, now that one (whether he\/she is busy with some dancing or resting on the floor) and offering the microphone. The script is cumbersome, and pauses for page turning are frequent. Rainer\u2019s manner strikes a medium between offering her colleagues a chance to speak up and badgering them to do so.<\/p>\n

The dynamics of Dust<\/em> make me think of Rainer\u2019s epochal 1966 Trio A. <\/em>For that, she choreographed a vocabulary of fascinating, apparently unrelated movements, never repeating them (even though she executed a few of them several times in a row), but spooling them out in a matter-of-fact flow that had much in common with daily life (e.g. brush your teeth, scratch a sudden itch, pause to remember a friend\u2019s remark, rinse out your mouth, pick up a sock you notice on the floor).<\/p>\n

\"Yvonne

Yvonne Rainer’s The Concept of Dust: Continuous Project\u2014Altered Annually.<\/em> (L to R) back row: Yvonne Rainer, Keith Sabado, Emmanu\u00e8le Phuon; pileup: Patricia Hoffbauer, David Thomson, Pat Catterson, and Emily Coates. Photo: Paula Court<\/p><\/div>\n

Your gaze travels around the space, unconsciously tracking memories. Sabado catches my eye, jiggling around, giggling in silent pleasure at something he feels or remembers. Later, I spot Phuon doing her version of this. You welcome back the sight of people running in a circle, occasionally bounding into a low-level leap. A skilled choreographer is at work here. The dancers may fall into unison or divide into counterpoint\u2014giving equal emphasis to movements as different as a waddle with turned-out feet, curved arms lifting to frame the face, and the swing of a leg into the air. Rainer may read aloud while lying on her belly or sitting on the butt of one of the several crawling dancers\u2014as unconcerned about her mount as a colonizer seated atop an elephant.<\/p>\n

Coates\u2014hands pinioned behind her back, crawling forward on her knees, and convulsing in anguish\u2014tries to bring to life Carl Van Vechten\u2019s stilted description of Isadora Duncan depicting the Russian slave\u2019s emergence into freedom (one of Duncan\u2019s works to the music of Scriabin). She ends by flinging her arms wide. Pretty soon two others join her to replay the whole sequence, which bears little resemblance to the version of the solo handed down by Irma Duncan. A flawed recollection drawn from words. A fossil uncovered from its dusty demise\u2014albeit a different sort from the remains of a tiny, 52 million-year-old hedgehog unearthed by anthropologists (an account read early in Rainer\u2019s piece) a couple of years ago.<\/p>\n

Some of the available movements and images come from Rainer\u2019s own history. The group collaborates to lift Thomson, place a pillow to receives his head, and lower him onto it. This refers to a section of Rainer\u2019s Continuous Project Altered Daily <\/em>(1970 at the Whitney). I thought I also caught a two-handed gesture close around the head that I recall from Trio A. <\/em>One of the texts is a very bad dream of hers.<\/p>\n

Those texts\u2014some of them fairly long, others pithy\u2014swarm around my head. I want to catch them all and can\u2019t. I know they\u2019re connected. Something about Mohammed and the Abbasid dynasty; the controversial interpretation of the Second Amendment on well-regulated militias; the widow of Isaac Babel, who lived to be 101; Oreo<\/em>, Fran Ross\u2019s satirical 1974 novel about a racially mixed young woman; incidents of violence and racial profiling. A few of these come out of thin air, trailing absurdity, e.g. \u201cIt is better to have loved and lost than to have put linoleum on your floor\u201d (although, come to think of it. . .) .<\/p>\n

The overall rhythm of the words and the delivery system that butts against movement creates the sense that Rainer and her interloping microphone represent politics and history nudging at the dancing, as if to say, \u201cWake up to the world!\u201d And \u201cLook at what\u2019s been happening around us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Once she asks, \u201cWhere is that music coming from?\u201d and, indeed, what must be Gavin Bryar\u2019s Sinking of the Titanic <\/em>sounds as distant and unearthly as the echo of the ship\u2019s band heard through water. Not long after that, we hear the dazzling resurrection by Cecilia Bartoli of an aria from the turn of the 18th<\/sup> century, Giovanni Paisiello\u2019s \u201cChi vuol la Zingara.\u201d Just before that, and again later, the performers cluster and sing wordlessly the first four notes of \u201cWe Shall Overcome\u201d (omitting the drop onto what would be the \u201ccome\u201d tones).<\/p>\n

Two passages stand out, both of them signaled by Rainer. \u201cCrush,\u201d she calls, and they all cluster tightly together\u2014struggling to stay connected, even thought the whole group travels across the space, even though individuals fall out of it and are drawn back. Later, she decides on \u201cSlow\u201d and trios take turns coming forward and slowly working their way into a position. For example, facing the audience, Sabado, Catterson, and Thomson bend forward and then reconstitute themselves, ending with Sabado holding Thomson\u2019s feet, while the latter braces himself on one shoulder, and Catterson and Sabado lean together. Variations and repetitions of this ensue, with the participants walking forward to take a turn.<\/p>\n

And, lest anyone think otherwise, they all dance strenuously and diligently, but calmly (unless you count Hoffbauer\u2019s crazy fit in a bright-patterned skirt she has donned, perhaps disguised as Henri Rousseau’s “Sleeping Gypsy”). And the program lists names of those from whom Rainer has sourced movement. They include Fritz Lang, Jacques Tati, Honi Coles, and Nina Stroganova. All of them are dust, and they still live among us.<\/p>\n

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