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The hand that controls the phone, or vice versa. Sarah Michelson’s September2017\/\\<\/em>. Photo: Paula Court<\/p><\/div>\n If a friend tells me he or she is going to see a particular choreographer\u2019s new work, I nod my head; I have a vague idea of what it\u2019ll be like. But suppose the choreographer named is Sarah Michelson. That\u2019s a whole other story. I\u2019ve walked into downtown New York theaters such as The Kitchen and P.S. 122 to see a Michelson work and had to orient my perspective; I appeared to be in a space I\u2019d never seen before. In Shadowmann: Part 1<\/em> (2003), we sat on bleachers facing The Kitchen\u2019s entry; at some point two sets of doors opened to reveal Michelson and Parker Lutz sitting on a stoop across 19th<\/sup> Street; then they walked over and joined us in the space. She can even make a gallery in the Whitney Museum of American Art look different (Devotion Study #1\u2014The American Dancer<\/em>, 2012); it was performed on a white floor printed with architect Marcel Breuer\u2019s ground plan for the building. Her sensitivity to architecture is remarkable.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em>I can also guess that in a piece by Michelson, she will talk and that the scenery and lights will be remarkable. Other aspects are harder to predict. You don\u2019t usually envision, say, a twelve-year-old girl (Non Griffiths, who had worked with Michelson in Wales) doing a synchronized duet with an adult female, the two of them dressed like deconstructed jockeys (Devotion<\/em>, 2011). During Group Experience <\/em>(2001), for which the choreographer created a shallow, carpeted theater within the downstairs theater at PS 122, Nancy Alfaro was part of the \u201cd\u00e9cor,\u201d knitting a scarf that had become about ten feet in length.<\/p>\n Last week, she premiered an astonishing new work at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson. Enigmas abound. Start with the title: September2017\/\\. <\/em>Then learn that Michelson, invited to create a piece for the campus\u2019s Richard B. Fisher Center, elected to work with a group of student dancers for four years<\/em>. Four of those students appear in September2017\/\\<\/em>: Rebecca Capper, Rebecca Ganellen, Joanna Warren and Anna Witenberg, all of whom graduated from Bard in 2017. To them, she has added New York dancers Rachel Berman, Jennifer Lafferty, and Madeline Wilcox. Plus herself.<\/p>\n What is this event \u201cabout?\u201d Better not to ask. Codes that we may think we can decipher, but can\u2019t? Slippage between elements that appear to coincide, but don\u2019t? There are moments when we\u2019re not sure who\u2019s in charge of whom. What we take to be improvising or running amok on the part of the performers may be scrupulously planned. Michelson thinks hard about every aspect of performance and its cultural linkages. September2017\/\\<\/em> is also infused with allusions to the college, these dancers, and spectatorship as a chancy business. At the end of the first part, Jaleel Green (who will graduate from Bard in 2019) walks to a microphone and says \u201cHello everyone. Here\u2019s the piece I\u2019ve been working on with my beautiful dancers.\u201d After Roobi Gaskins \u201919, Greta Grisez \u201919, Sakinah Bennett \u201921, and Olivia Troiano \u201920, looking very good, perform his short, very nicely constructed dance, we applaud, and he says \u201cthank you\u201d into a mic on the opposite side of the stage.<\/p>\n Joanna Warren dancing in the lobby of Bard’s Luma Theater. Photo: Paula Court<\/p><\/div>\n While we\u2019re waiting in the lobby for the performance to begin, Warren dances for us. She has a repertory of short variations on a theme. Each one ends as a smart phone rings a little tune; she repairs to it, checks something, and clicks it into silence. She also announces most of the variations in a code we may strive to divine: a combination of letters and numbers. The choreography is precise, engrossing, and she turns to show it from several perspectives. Her arms, mostly straight, swing from the shoulders; her feet are busy, her body mostly erect. Nothing we see in Bard\u2019s intimate Luma Theater will resemble it in terms of dance ingenuity and virtuosity as we usually define them.<\/p>\n Even before entering, we can hear voices shrieking and muttering. The main performing area is empty, except for three remote-controlled cars about a foot in length, and Zack Tinkelman\u2014who\u2019s been designing light for Michelson for six years\u2014initially gives the space a harsh cast and occasionally startles us with glare. Various noise-making objects sit on a low table beside the stage\u2019s small pit. Beside that, stands a console too complex for me to understand. Michelson controls its buttons, levers, and knobs, making her own voice repeat, become a chorus, join other voices, get louder, diminish, speed up to Donald-Duck gabble. She whispers, yells (\u201chello\u201d and \u201cgoodbye\u201d become a rhythmic litany). Other sounds intrude. Her phone periodically tinkles out that warning tune. She hunches over her equipment like a witch stirring her cauldron, doing a kind of dance impelled by her labor\u2014feet pumping, pelvis swinging, hands flying about their tasks.<\/p>\n Two of the cars start running backward in circles; Ganellen controls them from one side of the stage. The raucous sounds stop so we can hear their wheels turn. The cars are still, when Rachel Berman enters on roller skates. She eschews tricks like arabesques and pirouettes, just glides coolly around, straddling the cars as she goes, sailing into a lunge, once spreading her legs very far apart, as if contemplating doing a splits. Michelson speaks in a high little-girl voice: \u201cs,w,i,a,t,s,f.\u201d (was that it?). Sometimes her voice is so quiet that it\u2019s barely audible.<\/p>\n Madeline Wilcox (L) and Sarah Michelson in Michelson’s September2017\/\\.<\/em> Photo: Paula Court<\/p><\/div>\n Ordeal sometimes plays a role in Michelson\u2019s world. We suffer with Wilcox, who gives no indication of suffering. She doesn\u2019t exactly \u201cdance,\u201d although she walks from place to place or poses facing different directions. Her whole body is involved in delivering the same words over and over in a loud strong voice, with intermittent pauses. The main words are \u201cyeah!,\u201d \u201chold!,\u201d and \u201cback up!,\u201d occasionally \u201cpeace\u201d and \u201cdrop off.\u201d At one point, she seems to be aiming these emphatic utterances at a man who watches from one side of the stage, occasionally disappearing; I imagine him watching for cues to change the lighting. At first, I strain to decipher her words, mistaking \u201cback up\u201d for \u201cgrandma.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGrandma\u201d isn\u2019t that far-fetched, Michelson both soothes Wilcox and eggs her on in what turns into increasingly arduous labor. The choreographer swipes the dancer\u2019s legs and belly with a mic, although no loud sound is heard. \u201cYou wanna soda?\u201d she asks, but doesn\u2019t proffer one. She accompanies Wilcox with a \u201cwhirly tube\u201d (remember them from the 1960s?) and attempts to cool her with a big, black fan, while blowing the whistle in her mouth (Wilcox tosses her head, adding her ponytail to the wind). Michelson also fans her with a thin piece of plywood, for a few seconds pressing it under her chin, as if to encourage good posture. Once, she says, \u201cI love you, honey,\u201d before hurrying to squeeze the black bulb on an old-fashioned car horn to make it honk.<\/p>\n I can\u2019t adequately convey how much bustling around Michelson does and how much noise she creates at her console and with her equipment (which once includes bells on each finger) and how I feel for Wilcox. I want to scream for quiet and slowness (just once or twice, Michelson talks in a casual, everyday voice). Briefly, Witenberg arrives to add her presence and voice to the proceedings, seconding what Michelson proscribes. Ganellen launches another car; this one has no lights. A second one crashes into it. Just before Witenberg exits, she gives Wilcox an order, \u201cOpen your eyes, honey.\u201d<\/p>\n After we view Green\u2019s piece for the current Bard students, we\u2019re ushered into another room\u2014a dance studio by the looks of it. The atmosphere is nothing like what we\u2019ve just seen. Or is it? And what have we seen anyway? A teacher or coach with a student? A mother pushing her valiant, obedient, almost robotic daughter into a career (and what a limited career it seems to be)?<\/p>\n Jennifer Lafferty in the second half of Sarah Michelson’s September2017\/\\<\/em>. Photo: Paula Court<\/p><\/div>\n Compared with the bleak black, white, and gray atmosphere of September2017\/\\<\/em>\u2019s first part, the second is almost garishly colorful, mostly because of the gels on Zinkelman\u2019s spotlights. You could turn a bit pink yourself as you walk into a large studio and sit on three sides of it\u2014either on the floor or perched on heating units that run along the wall. This space is full of stuff. There\u2019s a small, dinky chaise at one end; Witenberg sits on it, talking into a white telephone and making notes on a pad of paper. Michelson (who starts Part 2 lying half under the chaise, only her legs visible) spends much of her time sitting in an Adirondack chair opposite Witenberg and some distance away.<\/p>\n Other items include two small platforms, a large tire set on end, a free-standing door with a couple of potted plants blocking it, papers, a shifting projection of a cat\u2019s head and an owl (maybe), with the words: \u201cback up.\u201d Does this means we\u2019re witnessing the prelude to what we just saw in the theater? Each of the performers has an individual task (or ordeal or fit). Capper works hard at what ought to be pretty simple to accomplish. She wants to stand on one or the other of the boxes; she lunges deeply and plants her front foot on one, rocking back and forth, but, for the longest time, can\u2019t make the final push. She appears to be rationing her energy\u2014announcing to us a 7% effort and finally a 15% one.<\/p>\n Suddenly a newcomer appears: it\u2019s Lafferty, and she performs a long, disturbing solo. Tall and skinny, she\u2019s hunched over most of the time, convulsing and thrashing as she travels around with big, low-to-the-ground steps. For a few moments, she has what looks like an unlit cigarette stuck in her mouth. What is wrong<\/em> with her? Michelson watches her with concern, as if she\u2019s off course, isn\u2019t doing what she\u2019s supposed to do. Without moving to help Lafferty, Witenberg among her pillows and Michelson in her chair speak and gesture to her (or about her) in a code that we can sometimes interpret, sometimes not. It\u2019s hard to discern whether she\u2019s responding or not. Witenberg says, \u201cWe love you,\u201d but without much assurance. Lafferty continues with her tantrum. Only once does she stand up straight. That\u2019s just after she flings the door open, knocking the potted plants over. (\u201cWe love you,\u201d we hear again.) If she appears empowered, it\u2019s not, I suspect, because of the directions of others.<\/p>\n Rebecca Capper (L) and Joanna Warren by the door to the lobby. Photo: Paula Court<\/p><\/div>\n I imagine Michelson putting autobiography, Bard events, students\u2019 skills and preoccupations, and much more into a kind of art-oriented cyclotron\u2014whirling them into bits and then reassembling them, trimming and polishing as she goes. There\u2019s something profoundly personal about the mystifying images that continue to nag at me days after the performance. A related project, October2017\/\\<\/em>, will premiere at The Kitchen next month; I don\u2019t dare make any predictions.<\/p>\n Near the end of September2017\/\\<\/em>, Warren reappears in the small lobby outside the door, now wearing a green shirt and dancing full out again. One whole side of the audience cranes to see her and can\u2019t; a few people walk out another door to get a better view. When she\u2019s done, she marches in and announces into a microphone. \u201cThis your chance to see me close up. I used to be a Bard student.\u201d And, of course, we have<\/em> seen her at much closer range, dancing in the lobby before the piece began. No, wait. That was how the piece began. Out in the lobby, two canisters stoked with dry ice smoke to beat the band. That\u2019s life: smoke and mirrors much of the time. I feel as if I\u2019ve been sucked into somebody\u2019s dreams and wonder how I\u2019m going to be able to drive home in the dark.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sarah Michelson premieres a new work at Bard College’s Richard B. Fisher Center. If a friend tells me he or she is going to see a particular choreographer\u2019s new work, I nod my head; I have a vague idea of what it\u2019ll be like. But suppose the choreographer named is Sarah Michelson. That\u2019s a whole […]<\/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":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5259","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5259","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=5259"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5265,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5259\/revisions\/5265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Warren.jpg\")
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