{"id":6132,"date":"2019-02-16T16:09:17","date_gmt":"2019-02-16T21:09:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=6132"},"modified":"2019-02-19T17:25:26","modified_gmt":"2019-02-19T22:25:26","slug":"finding-a-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2019\/02\/finding-a-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding a World"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Members of Gallim Dance in Andrea Miller’s To Create a World. <\/em>Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Who are <\/em>these\npeople, these inhabitants of Andrea Miller\u2019s To Create a World<\/em>? They are, of course, members of her company\nGallim and collaborators in the work\u2019s choreography, but that doesn\u2019t answer\nthe question. They seem to be part of an evolving world of fire and ice,\nthemselves perhaps evolving. In Will Epstein\u2019s score for piano, electronics,\nvoice, percussion, synthesizers, saxophone, plus violin and guitar, you may\nhear ominous rumblings, scrapings, gurgling, crashes, outcries, hesitant\nmelodies, ringing sounds, and what could be galloping hooves. Burke Brown\u2019s\nlighting turns the Joyce Theater\u2019s stage completely red, cools it down, shadows\nit at the back, pierces it with beams, softens it with smoke. Welcome to a\nprimordial world that\u2019s fiercer than anything religious texts ordain. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While we spectators are being ushered to our seats and\nconsulting our programs, something is already developing on the stage. Behind\nthe white spandex curtain stretched across the front of it, something presses\nagainst it, revealing the outlines of a human forearm, a calf, maybe a brow\n(sometimes these slight protuberances are more complex). They appear,\ndisappear, move to different locations. Just before the house lights go out, a\nnaked body slides partway out from underneath the fabric wall. It\u2019s only much\nlater that I remember the stage in a pregnancy when the faint imprint of\ninfant\u2019s foot occasionally pushes out the\nskin of its carrier\u2019s belly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wish that I\u2019d been able to see a work that Miller presented last year in three separate, bare-walled galleries of the Met Breuer. Sometimes in To Create a World<\/em>, the seven dancers (Ashley Hill, Allysen Hooks, David Maurice, Gary Reagan, Haley Sung, Isabel Umali, and Dan Walczak) are isolated, either not noticing one another or seeming thrown together by accident.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Gary Reagan (L) and David Maurice in Andrea Miller’s To Create a World. <\/em>Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

In the beginning, once the white curtain has lifted, they\u2019re flying around in dim light, appearing to be half naked. Everyone is on her\/his own. You wonder that they don\u2019t collide. Suddenly they\u2019re gone, leaving only Reagan sprawled on the floor face down and Hooks squatting some distance away, then balancing on her butt, legs and body angled up. Reagan collects himself laboriously. Tall, skinny, and extremely flexible (that he studied the technique known as \u201cgaga\u201d in Israel is obvious), he travels across the space like an inchworm. Once on his feet, he takes riskily big steps, lifting each leg high, and\u2014a shock!\u2014stumbles over Hooks and falls on top of her. The two of them are awkwardly nuzzling each other when the remaining five dancers enter, pressed together to form a different sort of caterpillar; separating, regrouping, eventually they creep away.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Miller\u2019s mysterious creatures (costumed by Jose\nSolis) come and go, they behave as if they\u2019re inventing behavior. A woman\n(Umali, as I remember, walks her feet up Walczak\u2019s leg. Maurice lies on his\nback, and Hooks sits on his raised feet, balancing herself by grasping his\nlifted hand. Hill and Hooks lean together, braced. Hooks, kneeling, picks up\none foot behind her as if she\u2019s never seen it before and then lets it fall and\nhit the floor. And sometimes it\u2019s difficult to know whether they\u2019re helping or\nchallenging one another. Alarmingly, a group grabs Sung\u2019s arms or legs, twists\nher, and then races around dragging her along the floor. Images such as these\nseem to seethe out of nowhere and as quickly dissolve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Haley Sung and Gary Reagan of Gallim Dance in To Create a World.  <\/em>Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The title To Create a World <\/em>gives me pause. Maybe these people are <\/em>creating a world, but it also seems as if they\u2019re coping with a drastically changing one\u2014fiery one moment, chilly the next. Or perhaps there are two worlds, bloodied and purified. Three of them rush on carrying a plastic sheet the width of the stage. Once it\u2019s been dropped, two of them thrash beneath it, causing it to foam up like surf; when those onstage crawl away, I thinking of waves ebbing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also, at times, think of newborn mammals blindly\nstriving to find a teat to suck on. A dancer may thrust her head against\nsomeone else in an awkward, experimental way\u2014slipping under an arm, pushing\nagainst a shoulder or a belly. However, stuck in a world whose climate changes\nmore and more often, its inhabitants often do deploy their bodies\nefficiently\u2014team up, strut in fierce unison, run in place, jump strenuously and\nrepeatedly. Certain moves recur; for example, a performer plants his\/her feet\nwide apart, knees bent, and swings one arm in a circle, as if hurling\nsomething. Awkwardness and tentativeness redesigned become virtuosic, as\ncontrolled as the tiny tiptoe steps that sometimes carry the dancers along a\npath. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Allysen Hooks (L) and Gary Reagan of Gallim Dance in Andrea Miller’s To Create a World.  <\/em>Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Midway through the piece, Reagan, alone onstage, ventures on a solo. Now he\u2019s wearing a pair of full-cut shorts made of a gleaming red fabric. What is he trying to do? He arches himself into a backbend, bracing himself not on his hands, but on his forearms. He walks with his legs spraddled, sinks to the floor in a split, then wrenches himself upward into a standing position. His joints seem made of something more malleable than bones in sockets. The lights redden again after this.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suddenly the elasticized backdrop absorbs Reagan from behind, invisible \nhands lifting him; this is just a hint of what awaits him a bit later.  \nAs the remaining, stupendously heroic dancers cluster, he and Hooks \nembrace. Then\u2014a shock\u2014he drops off the edge of the stage into the aisle,\n and climbs quickly back onto it.  The others reprise the individualized\n running and leaping and dodging they had done at the beginning of To Create a World<\/em>.\n But that\u2019s not how Miller\u2019s fascinating, thought-provoking work \nfinishes. The last thing we see is Reagan and Hooks alone together \nupstage and slightly off the floor, curled up in a white fabric nest \nthat\u2019s held there by those unseen hands. Perhaps they are waiting to be \nre-born elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


<\/p>\n\n\n\n


<\/p>\n\n\n\n


<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Who are these people, these inhabitants of Andrea Miller\u2019s To Create a World? They are, of course, members of her company Gallim and collaborators in the work\u2019s choreography, but that doesn\u2019t answer the question. They seem to be part of an evolving world of fire and ice, themselves perhaps evolving. In Will Epstein\u2019s score for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6151,"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":[931,803,3130,809,3127,811,3128,3129,1275,3132,1409,3131],"class_list":{"0":"post-6132","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-allysen-hooks","9":"tag-andrea-miller","10":"tag-burke-brown","11":"tag-dan-walczak","12":"tag-david-maurice","13":"tag-gallim-dance","14":"tag-gary-reagan","15":"tag-haley-sung","16":"tag-isabel-umali","17":"tag-jose-solis","18":"tag-joyce-theater","19":"tag-will-epstein","20":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6132","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=6132"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6187,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6132\/revisions\/6187"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}