{"id":5108,"date":"2017-06-21T11:55:17","date_gmt":"2017-06-21T15:55:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=5108"},"modified":"2017-06-21T17:15:46","modified_gmt":"2017-06-21T21:15:46","slug":"artifacts-reinvented","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2017\/06\/artifacts-reinvented\/","title":{"rendered":"Artifacts Reinvented"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sally Silvers’ three new works at Roulette, June 15 through 17.<\/p>\n

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Caleb Teicher held by Branden Collwes in Sally Silvers’ Tenderizer<\/em>. Dylan Crossman at back. Photo: Paula Court<\/p><\/div>\n

I love pondering the palimpsest that is New York City. Sometimes when a building\u2019s skeleton is all that\u2019s left, you lay what you know of its past over its present. The eye-level, horizontal strip of a Bleecker Street window that once displayed antique toys has vanished under the big-deal plate glass that\u2019s there now, fronting shoes. I found crumpled 1920s newspapers when I disinterred a fireplace under layers of plaster in my years-ago apartment.<\/p>\n

Waiting for the crowd to straggle into Roulette to see dances by Sally Silvers, I\u2019m sitting on what seems to be a large forestage\u2014maybe not all of it dating from the space\u2019s construction in 1928, when this was the concert hall of a well-equipped Brooklyn YWCA. Tonight, the proscenium arch frames us, while we look past the now seatless space to the u-shaped balcony, ornamented with a silvery band of a bas-relief that alternates garland framed urns and winged women in floating garments. A dainty contrast to Silvers\u2019 keen-witted, earthier dance designs\u2014 although not, to my mind, as delectable.<\/p>\n

The palimpsest image is not that far-fetched when watching Silvers\u2019s new Tenderizer<\/em>, which owes much of its imagery to a skewed mining expedition into three Alfred Hitchcock thrillers: Marnie<\/em>, The Birds<\/em>, and Psycho. <\/em>That, however, is the evening\u2019s closer, and the two pieces preceding it are meatier than the opening number and divertissement you might once have expected in this theater.<\/p>\n

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The Big Now<\/em>. (L to R): Sally Silvers, Paul Langland, Kathryn Ray, and Jamie Di Mare. Photo: Paula Court<\/p><\/div>\n

The first of the three pieces featured in the performance billed as \u201c[Dance Roulette] Sally Silvers and Dancers: Tenderizer<\/em>\u201d is called The Big Now.<\/em> The \u201cnow\u201d is a giveaway. This quartet is a structured improvisation by Jamie Di Mare, Paul Langland, Kathryn Ray, and Silvers, wearing outfits in muted earth colors by Elizabeth Hope Clancy. These are not gifted young dancers, but seasoned pros\u2014nimble in mind and body. Periodically, they assemble in one or another corner of the performing area and, as they advance in a squad along a diagonal, erupt into new strategies. Meanwhile, Bruce Andrews\u2019 sound score and musician Michael Schumacher\u2019s keyboard contributions badger them with changing sounds, volumes, textures\u2014 enhancing the atmosphere of wariness and watchfulness. The words and phrases we catch on the fly can be disorienting (\u201cWho\u2019s the cupcake?\u201d \u201cCreeping angel\u201d. . .did I hear those correctly?). Ursula Scherrer\u2019s mutable video design peppers the walls and the white panels she has hung from the balcony.<\/p>\n

Episodes with the sheen of mini-dramas surface and sink again in the performance I saw. Ray has some kind of fit, and the others help her pull herself together. Langland is lifted and ejected from the group; they lay him out, lie down themselves, then rise and help him up. But these are isolated moments. The dominant image is these performers\u2019 physical closeness to one another. Most often, they tangle and weave and dart through and duck under a bramble of arms and legs, whether the entity they comprise stays on one spot or travels around in the space. Wily dodgers, they nevertheless enable or copy one another\u2019s moves\u2014a model of cooperation, teased by daring.<\/p>\n

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(L to R): Lindsey Jones, Veraalba Santa, and Alicia Ohs in Sally Silvers’ If You Try<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

When you watch Silvers\u2019 imaginative choreography, nothing seems usual or easily predictable. Yet neither does it announce itself as importantly weird. And it\u2019s always wonderfully organized. If You Try<\/em> offers at the outset a theme of sorts; it\u2019s one I associate with paired ice skating (partners side by side, crossing arms to grip right hands and left ones). Lindsey Jones, Alicia Ohs, and Veraalba Santa, of course, do nothing as basic as that; their arms link in more creative ways, which change as the three travel together but don\u2019t interfere with the immaculate unison of their busy feet.<\/p>\n

Clancy has garbed the women in black tops and flared, flamboyantly patterned pants, Whether they\u2019re working in unison or canon, alone or in a twosome, their dancing is precise but not \u201crefined.\u201d That is, they may move in clearly defined patterns, but they still look impulsive. Silvers invites us to watch Jones\u2019s long lanky body kick into movement, to take in Oh\u2019s scampy boldness and the juiciness of Santa\u2019s dancing. Big, demanding steps mingle with small gestures, sharp ones with smooth ones; some repeat over and over; others slide in and slip away. It\u2019s almost a shock when the three turn perfectly synchronized cartwheels. Briefly, Jones and Santa seem at odds, then Santa \u201cfixes\u201d her colleague, the way a mother might check her daughter\u2019s collar and buttons before sending her to school.<\/p>\n

The music for If You Try <\/em>seems less deliberately fragmented than that for The Big Now<\/em>, but it\u2019s also full of sudden contrasts (at one point, for instance, repetitive, percussive patterns yield to a screaming vocalist). Tenderizer<\/em>, however, is a supercollage on all fronts. Projected film clips from the Hitchock movies edge the space at either side, their images dissolving into one another or suddenly cutting in. Andrews\u2019 sound score borrows aural material from them (I think) but also creates an ambiance of non-specific dread. Silvers\u2019 choreography imaginatively recycles, dissects, and mingles images from the films, without trying to tell their stories.<\/p>\n

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Sally Silvers’ Tenderizer.<\/em> Identifiable (L to R): Melissa Toogood, Brandon Collwes, and Alexandra Berger. Photo: Paula Court<\/p><\/div>\n

Tenderizer<\/em> (what a title!) is performed by a cast of experts (three of them onetime members of Merce Cunningham\u2019s company): Alexandra Berger, Brandon Collwes, Dylan Crossman, Jones, Caleb Teicher, and Melissa Toogood. You mightn\u2019t recognize Toogood and Jones at first, because they move for quite a while with their backs to us, perhaps watching, as we do, a filmed woman walking away from us, along the platform of a train station.<\/p>\n

Out of its original context, the filmed action is both concrete and mysterious. Hands open a wallet. A gloved hand pushes a key through a grating. A hand brushes a child\u2019s long blonde hair. Janet Leigh, frantic, drives a car through the night. We see the sign for the Bates Motel and feet belonging to a body being dragged out of a shower. We see film credits. When Crossman and Collwes tip Teicher over, then lift him high, he looks at us as if we were negotiating his closeup.<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t need to have seen all three movies to understand the atmosphere of terror projected both by the projections and by the dancers\u2019 way of staring around them\u2014wary, hunted. Or to realize that, for instance, lighting designer Joe Levasseur\u2019s sudden flashes of red were inspired by Marnie\u2019s mysterious color visions. Or that, at some point, the dancers\u2014bent over, elbows out, hands flapping\u2014evoke those hostile birds that scared Tippi Hedren almost to death.<\/p>\n

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Brandon Collwes and Melissa Toogood in Tenderizer<\/em>. Photo; Paula Court<\/p><\/div>\n

Watching the action, I don\u2019t attempt to create narratives, but I feel their lurking presence. Something must have convinced Crossman, Collwes, and Toogood to progress in a weird crawl, hands linked. Some scrap of a story made Jones and Berger bend Collwes over and position him. What are they all seeing when they look up? What impelled a crazed jump just before Crossman pairs up with Jones and Teicher with Berger in simultaneous impassive duets? Just after the Bates Motel sign appears, Crossman puts his hand over Berger\u2019s nose and mouth and moves her close to Jones, puts his other hand over Jones\u2019s nose and mouth and kisses the hand. Then he carefully manipulates the muzzled women. I can\u2019t adequately describe all the ingenious ways in which these terrific performers depict complicated relationships and bondings that you can\u2019t imagine working. They fleetingly embody not just characters in a story, but the tangled ways in which mysteries themselves unfold, knot up, or mislead you.<\/p>\n

Imagery from The Birds<\/em> dominates the last part of Tenderizer<\/em>, but the very end is a fine solo for Collwes. While the projected black-and-white showerhead hints that we might ally him with Anthony Perkins in Psycho<\/em>, he doesn\u2019t perform<\/em> a psychotic killer; he just presents an image of power and complexity and deviance that could\u2014almost\u2014 map that character\u2019s image of himself.<\/p>\n

In the program Silvers thanks all her colleagues, but mentions the dancers\u2019 \u201cwillingness to try it all, contributions to the movement, problem solving, and incredible talent.\u201d Indeed.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Sally Silvers’ three new works at Roulette, June 15 through 17. I love pondering the palimpsest that is New York City. Sometimes when a building\u2019s skeleton is all that\u2019s left, you lay what you know of its past over its present. The eye-level, horizontal strip of a Bleecker Street window that once displayed antique toys […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5109,"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":[2713,1104,2718,2717,2714,768,2716,296,2715,1098,2720,2719],"class_list":{"0":"post-5108","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-postmodern-views","8":"tag-alfred-hitchcock","9":"tag-alicia-ohs","10":"tag-bruce-andrews","11":"tag-elizabeth-hope-clancy","12":"tag-jamie-di-mare","13":"tag-joe-levasseur","14":"tag-kathryn-ray","15":"tag-michael-schumacher","16":"tag-paul-langland","17":"tag-sally-silvers","18":"tag-ursula-scherrer","19":"tag-veraalba-santa","20":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5108","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=5108"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5116,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5108\/revisions\/5116"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}