{"id":533,"date":"2012-02-22T12:45:21","date_gmt":"2012-02-22T17:45:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=533"},"modified":"2012-02-22T12:46:22","modified_gmt":"2012-02-22T17:46:22","slug":"to-dance-in-the-sky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2012\/02\/to-dance-in-the-sky\/","title":{"rendered":"To Dance in the Sky"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Pat Catterson's To Lie in the Sky<\/em>, Jesse Dunham (foreground) ,Timothy Emmett Ward (leaping). Photo: Steven Schreiber<\/p><\/div>\n

At the very end of Pat Catterson\u2019s gentle, beautifully crafted new dance, To Lie in the Sky<\/em>, a voice recites the plangent opening lines of May Swenson\u2019s \u201cThe Question\u201d\u2014 \u201cBody my house\/ my horse my hound\/ what will I do when you are fallen.\u201d Catterson took her title from that poem\u2019s penultimate query: \u201cHow will it be\/ to lie in the sky\/ without roof or door\/ and wind for an eye.\u201d<\/p>\n

These are not thoughts a young person might be drawn to. Catterson\u2014whose piece was shown at La Guardia High School\u2019s Little Flower Theater, February 17th and 18th\u2014has been choreographing and dancing and teaching since the late 1960s. She\u2019s garnered grants, awards, and fellowships (a Guggenheim in 2011). The child of vaudevillians, she has created innovative tap pieces along with her barefoot forays into postmodernism. Since 1999, she\u2019s been performing with Yvonne Rainer\u2019s resurrected, reconstructed company and serving as a rehearsal assistant.<\/p>\n

To Lie in the Sky<\/em> unrolls both like a road linking the countries that Catterson has traveled in and the road through a life. Nadia Lesy\u2019s intermittent projections include countryside and street scenes contributed by videographers in nine different countries, and Quentin Chiappetta\u2019s subtle sound design heightens our awareness of places\u2014their serenity, their bustle, their sirens, their sweet music. Philip W. Sandstrom\u2019s lighting skillfully alters the space. A trenchcoat hangs high overhead (one of the many recorded voices we hear reading from a variety of writings mentions that a traveler must be prepared for anything).<\/p>\n

The medium-sized Little Flower has steeply raked, almost semi-circular banks of seats, and while the audience is settling, several dancers are posing and stretching in the aisles, as if calculating distances (one of them gives me a picture of daffodils in a vase on someone\u2019s floor). The first projection on the back wall is of low waves rolling up a beach. The first dancer to enter the stage, Alexandra Berger bends slowly down to feel the ground, then looks at her hands. Jesse Dunham strokes her own arms carefully. Another woman (I forget which) bolts down an aisle to join them, and Timothy Emmett Lee Ward propels himself down another aisle, on his back and headfirst. They all wear variously cut gray clothes by Juanita Cadenas.<\/p>\n

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Suzanne Thomas, Becky Chaleff, Liesbeth Demaer Ingenito, Alexandra Berger, Jesse Dunham. Photo: Steven Schreiber<\/p><\/div>\n

From this understated beginning, the dancing swells\u2014never becoming violent, varying in dynamics and patterns without the performers ever losing their air of exploration, of sensing the environment. When Suzanne Thomas, just once, slowly unfolds one leg into what would be a developp\u00e9 in ballet, it looks like a probe. At times, the seven performers appear to be on private errands, spaced out around the stage\u2014some of them perhaps still and gazing outward. In one passage, a person settles into a pose, and another comes up and carefully, almost tenderly, fits into that pose\u2014altering and augmenting it; after a moment the first person may leave to form another temporary alliance. Every now and then, as they walk or run, they toss off a dance step or two\u2014a leap, a spin, the high swing of a leg.<\/p>\n

Some of the words spoken in To Lie in the Sky<\/em> tell of research into the brain and the mysterious interconnections between its right and left hemispheres. If you like, you can let the words drift down onto dance patterns that bespeak synapses and the flow of sensations. Five of the seven dancers stand pressed together in a chain. Ward and Samuel Swanton dance in a canon that slips into unison. Berger, Dunham, Thomas, Becky Chaleff, and Liesbeth Demaer Ingenito, line up and sit on their heels like geishas, each one\u2019s head inclined to rest on the shoulder of the colleague on her right. All of them periodically assemble in clumps, with a single explorer or a pair emerging from it to make a brief, private voyage.<\/p>\n

They share certain repeated gestures\u2014lifting both arms high or spreading them as if to open themselves to the sky, or, in a more obviously significant movement, hugging themselves and shivering in a suddenly frigid climate. When this happens, we hear the sound of feet running, and coats fall from the sky. The dancers put them on and leave.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not over yet. Another figure appears, curling up in a front-row seat, then walking along the low wall that separates spectators from the stage. Whether Maia Ramnath represents a transfigured soul or, like the choreographer, a seeker of truth, she\u2019s extraordinary. Ramnast is an experienced aerial dancer, as well as an on-the-ground one; with her short hair, lean body, and high-definition muscles, she could be one of those grave, androgynous angels of Renaissance painting. And she dances gorgeously\u2014fluently, amply, without strain. Running in swift circles, turning, jumping, she\u2019s making the climactic voyage to the stars.<\/p>\n

Swenson\u2019s poem asks its final question: \u201cWith cloud for shift\/ how will I hide?\u201d Perhaps Catterson\u2019s unspoken answer is \u201cYou won\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Reaching out, taking off. To Lie in the Sky<\/em> (Samuel Swanton, foreground). Photo: Steven Schreiber<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the very end of Pat Catterson\u2019s gentle, beautifully crafted new dance, To Lie in the Sky, a voice recites the plangent opening lines of May Swenson\u2019s \u201cThe Question\u201d\u2014 \u201cBody my house\/ my horse my hound\/ what will I do when you are fallen.\u201d Catterson took her title from that poem\u2019s penultimate query: \u201cHow will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":536,"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":[6],"tags":[259],"class_list":{"0":"post-533","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-postmodern-new-york","8":"tag-pat-catterson","9":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533","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=533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}