{"id":553,"date":"2012-03-03T14:29:33","date_gmt":"2012-03-03T19:29:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=553"},"modified":"2012-03-04T12:28:49","modified_gmt":"2012-03-04T17:28:49","slug":"walking-backward-in-devotion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2012\/03\/walking-backward-in-devotion\/","title":{"rendered":"Walking Backward in Devotion"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Nicole Mannarino in Sarah Michelson's Devotion Study #1\u2014The American Dancer<\/em>. Photo: Paula Court<\/p><\/div>\n

The first time I saw dancing at the Whitney Museum of American Art, it was 1971 and Trisha Brown\u2019s dancers were walking on two walls of one of the huge galleries, via ropes, pulleys, and tracks mounted on the ceilings. The last time I saw dancing at the Whitney, it was 2012 (March 1 to be exact), and Sarah Michelson\u2019s Devotion Study #1\u2014The American Dancer<\/em> had taken over most of the museum\u2019s fourth floor, as one of the many elements on view in the 67th<\/sup> edition of the Whitney Biennial. Brown skewed the viewers\u2019 sense of gravity and altered their spatial perspective. \u00a0Michelson plays with our perception of time and impetus.<\/p>\n

Unlike many of Michelson\u2019s brainy theatrical deconstructions, Devotion<\/em> is simple in terms of its materials\u2014the spare beauty of its design contrasting to the drama of energy expenditure on the part of its performers. The repetitive nature of the choreography reminds me slightly of Laura Dean\u2019s early works in the 1970s, but, unlike Dean, Michelson avoids the look and escalation of ritual.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeauty\u201d is a word that comes up near the end of a spoken dialogue between Michelson and Richard Maxell, who wrote the text for this (as he did for Michelson\u2019s original Devotion<\/em> at the Kitchen in 2011). As the piece starts, Michelson and curator Jay Sanders (as Maxwell) are heard talking quietly about art and what drives them to make it. The conversation (we experience it twice) sounds both natural and artificed, as if the readers were two actors seeing the words for the first time. At one point, Michelson remarks, \u201c\u2018Make it very beautiful,\u2019 she said, surprising her dancers.\u201d<\/p>\n

While listening to the words, we are watching dancing that becomes increasingly amazing. The gallery is entirely white or grayish white, with two banks of chairs on risers on either side of the elevators. On the wall at one end hangs a portrait outline of Michelson in green neon. The entire floor \u2014nearly 5000 square feet in size\u2014is covered by a surface on which has been painted the floor plan for the original Marcel Breuer building that\u2019s now only part of the museum complex.\u00a0 While Michelson and Maxwell talk, Nicole Mannarino begins to dance at the left end of the long space. She\u2019s wearing a trim, electric-blue jumpsuit with full pantlegs, kimono sleeves, and a V-shaped split from neck to waist that partially exposes her breasts (costumes by Michelson and James Kidd). White jazz shoes cover her feet, and her brown hair has been teased into a sizeable Afro.<\/p>\n

Arms held out to either side, Mannarino begins walking backward on tiptoe, tracing counter-clockwise circles with her steps. Sometimes she seems to be traveling gradually toward the right, sometimes her steps cover more space, sometimes she pauses for a few seconds, sometimes she reverses the way she\u2019s facing by means of a little loop. The constant ticking of a row of small speakers at the feet of the front-row spectators enforces the rhythms. For all Mannarino\u2019s clarity and precision, she\u2019s a mystery, and you have no idea how long she will travel these paths. Her spread arms and almost iridescent, hanging sleeves give her the semblance of wings. And when I look to my left, where a triangular, windowed promontory opens out of the room, I see her smaller reflected image flying among the neighboring buildings.<\/p>\n

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Eleanor Hullihan and Nicole Mannarino. Photo: Paula Court<\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s worth noting that Michelson quotes George Balanchine on the luminous coolness he treasures in American dancers, a quality he terms \u201cangelic\u201d\u2014by which he means, \u201cthe quality supposedly enjoyed by the angels, who, when they relate a tragic situation, do not themselves suffer.\u201d \u00a0If Mannerino is calm, Eleanor Hullihan is even more serenely strong. She enters looking like a woman warrior, with her short, khaki, kimono-sleeved tunic and low matching boots. Side by side, the two carve parallel circles over the floor, maintaining a perfect spacing in relation to each other. When they separate into separate wheels, collision becomes a dramatic possibility. As they continue imperturbably mapping out their courses, gradually expanding their orbits toward the right end of the room, James Lo\u2019s soundscore begins to lay out its own patterns, in which low soft tones are penetrated by subtle variations in pitch and quality.<\/p>\n

Every tiny alteration\u2014a quick pivot, say\u2014 that the women introduce seems momentous. Also, because of the repetitive nature of the backward walking, your mind travels around. You can\u2019t imagine how Michelson devised this piece and how the performers rehearsed it. You wonder how anyone can walk backward for so long. You watch the way sweat expands its own dark designs over the women\u2019s costumes. You notice, when Maggie Cloud (wearing a white leotard and dark blue boots) fits herself into the ongoing parabolas, that her arms with their hyper-extended elbows look like wings, even though her sleeves are tight. Your attention is caught by the dancers\u2019 shadows when they near the back wall: Three people, nine shadows. You imagine what curlicues they would be drawing on Breuer\u2019s straight-lined plans if their shoes had crayons attached.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s a man too: James Tyson, bare-chested and in black pants. Then Moriah Evans in a short, oversized gray smock and gray shoes. Now there are possibilities for solo orbits set against interlocking group circles. The size of the steps and the directions may vary, but the pace never does. Tick-tick-tick go the speakers, insistent spidery voices within Lo\u2019s altering web of sound.<\/p>\n

The clear, white lighting by Michelson and Zach Tinkelman is augmented by the gradually intensifying glare of a suspended, upside-down bouquet of big lamps. The last performer to arrive, Kira Alker, is wearing a brown unitard and a matching horse\u2019s head. By now Mannerino\u2019s costume is drenched, and I can sense a tightness in her neck and shoulders.\u00a0 Evans exits via the open portal that has \u201cexit\u201d over it in neat red. While the lights brighten, the others pose in a line, extending one bent leg forward along the floor, as if to paw it. They rest there for what seems like a long time, occasionally (in unison) changing legs. The horse leaves.<\/p>\n

A few moments before Tyson exits, something new happens. For a few seconds, the women bend over and look down as they walk, then they arch slightly to the right and lift one arm higher than the other. Suddenly beauty moves into capital letters. Mannarino looks rejuvenated.<\/p>\n

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Nicole Mannarino, neon Michelson looking on. Photo: Paula Court<\/p><\/div>\n

You might think the spectators would be restless, but I don\u2019t hear much shifting around. We\u2019ve got something new to think about: anxiety over when the next person will exit. Devotion Study #1<\/em> has been going on for over an hour when Cloud drops out of the pattern. Shortly, just before exiting, Hullihan\u2014oh my god!\u2014 leaps forward<\/em> in a circle.\u00a0 As Mannarino keeps tracing her paths, Michelson\u2019s voice begins to speak of faith, whose existence, she says, we can\u2019t deny, even if we don\u2019t buy religion. She tells an enigmatic story of an accident at the time of Jesus\u2019s birth that left God with another kid\u2014a girl named Marjorie, whom He kept by his side until the year 2K. Then He gave her the world.<\/p>\n

Mannarino exits; she has danced for an hour and twenty minutes.<\/p>\n

Do not seek to understand the ins and outs of the fable Michelson tells. She has given us hero angels in the form of dancers making inscrutable patterns that nevertheless have an order, a logic, and a beauty in endurance that we might well aspire to.<\/p>\n

Devotion Study #1\u2014The American Dancer<\/em> will be performed again at the Whitney March 4, 7, 8, 10, 11 at 4PM, and March 9 at 7.<\/p>\n

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

The first time I saw dancing at the Whitney Museum of American Art, it was 1971 and Trisha Brown\u2019s dancers were walking on two walls of one of the huge galleries, via ropes, pulleys, and tracks mounted on the ceilings. The last time I saw dancing at the Whitney, it was 2012 (March 1 to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":555,"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":[263,264],"class_list":{"0":"post-553","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-postmodern-new-york","8":"tag-sarah-michelson","9":"tag-whitney-museum-of-american-art","10":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553","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=553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}