{"id":6490,"date":"2019-08-07T17:28:48","date_gmt":"2019-08-07T21:28:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=6490"},"modified":"2019-08-12T07:57:42","modified_gmt":"2019-08-12T11:57:42","slug":"what-stands-may-fall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2019\/08\/what-stands-may-fall\/","title":{"rendered":"What Stands May Fall"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Cellist Maya Beiser (L) and Wendy Whelan in Lucinda Childs’s the day. <\/em>Photo: Hayim Heron<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t read Maura Keefe\u2019s \nprogram essay while sitting in Jacob\u2019s Pillow\u2019s Doris Duke Theater,\nwaiting for the day <\/em> to start. I didn\u2019t read the program note by the\nversatile and highly regarded cellist Maya Beiser. I didn\u2019t read the spoken\ntext that was part of David Lang\u2019s score. And, once the piece began, I didn\u2019t\nidentify one of the projected slides as showing Santiago Calatrava\u2019s Oculus\nstructure at the World Trade Center before it fell.  Why then, did I find tears pricking at my\neyes as the piece neared its end? Perhaps because of the subtly powerful\nmerging of music and image.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The music for the day <\/em>is the 2016 prequel to the 2001 world to come<\/em>, both of which were heard at the Pillow. Lang and Beiser were working on the second score when the World Trade Center\u2019s twin towers fell.  We hear both compositions, played onstage by the marvelous Beiser while we watch the equally marvelous Wendy Whelan perform Lucinda Childs\u2019s spare, elegant choreography. There\u2019s no anguish, no falling bodies, no terror. It\u2019s as if we\u2019re watching the ultimate fragility of structures that we take for granted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Part 2: world to come. <\/em>Wendy Whelan and Maya Beiser. Photo: Hayim Heron<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The scenic design by Sara Brown makes the floor as reflective of Natasha Katz\u2019s lighting as still water. When Whelan reaches a hand down toward it, its mirror image rises as if their fingers mean to touch.\u00a0 White tape traces a polygon on one side of the black stage floor. Further away on the other side is a shallow, white-edged black ramp. A chair sits on each.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

During Part 1: the day<\/em>, both women wear white. Karen Young garbed Whelan in a complex drapery that exposes some flesh and bells out around her when she spins.  After a while, she removes the outer part of it and folds it carefully. To help us better understand the text-music congruence, closeups of Beiser’s and Whelan\u2019s heads and upper bodies appear in black-and-white video, in front of an empty, windowed dance studio. They take turns speaking lines from the text.  Here\u2019s an example that I heard: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I decided to make a significant change in my lifestyle I\/ decided to move there for good\/ I decided to quit\/ I decided to run 18 miles I\/ decided to start.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lang crowd-sourced the text, sentence by sentence, from the Internet, working his way from \u201ca\u201d through \u201cw\u201d for the word following each \u201cI.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Wendy Whelan and Maya Beiser in Part 2: world to come<\/em>. Photo: Hayim Heron<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

While Beiser plays her cello seated on the slanted platform, Whelan moves with quiet absorption, alert to things we cannot see.\u00a0 Dancing Childs\u2019s choreography\u2014her legs probing the space, twisting around each other, lunging out\u2014she often seems to be slowly measuring unseen parts of the space with devices that she acquires: a slim rod, a silver loop. She reaches into the wings and brings out what could almost be a ghost\u2014 a sheet tied below a ball the size of a child\u2019s head \u2014and once walks with it attached to her back. She forms two slender sticks into a V. From the stage-left wing, white-clad hands give her the ends of two cords that she then pulls onto the stage. \u00a0But she also handles invisible outlines\u2014stretching her empty hands far apart, grasping something and pulling it toward her. In Joshua Higginson\u2019s projections, objects that we see onstage may flash onto the backdrop. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Beiser and Whelan return to the stage after a pause, both are dressed in black, and Whelan\u2019s hair, loose in Part 1, is tied into a ponytail.  Part 2, world to come, <\/em> is darker, and you can begin to feel that the related, yet unrelated spoken phrases\u2014some prosaic, some worried, some comical\u2014are being delivered by souls being whirled through space. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Near the end of Part 2: world to come<\/em>, a collaboration by Lucinda Childs, David Lang, Maya Beiser, and Wendy Whelan. Photo: Hayim Heron<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The stage seems to have become a dangerous place. Beiser now\nsits in the floor-level area, and we hear not only her rich, fierce on-stage\nplaying, but two recorded voices of her cello vying with it and cajoling it.  Occasional thunder sounds. On the backdrop, a\nfilmed cello slowly breaks and falls in pieces. The vision of an empty studio\nbecomes one of sea and a sky of low clouds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Twice, Whelan walks an invisible tightrope on her toes. You begin to see Childs\u2019s sensitive, ingenious movement patterns being repeated.  As world to come<\/em> winds down, Whelan, standing on the ramp, pulls down the long piece of white fabric that has descended in front of her. On the backdrop, tinted greenish, images of two similar cloths appear: appallingly fragile towers, billowing as they fall. Whelan carefully lays out the real fabric and, rolls down the ramp, wrapping herself in it. That is, indeed, the end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s strange to see massive upheaval transformed into such\ndelicate abstraction, but the structure that these four collaborators have\ncreated make the instability of what we consider permanent terrifyingly clear.<\/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":"

I didn\u2019t read Maura Keefe\u2019s  program essay while sitting in Jacob\u2019s Pillow\u2019s Doris Duke Theater, waiting for the day  to start. I didn\u2019t read the program note by the versatile and highly regarded cellist Maya Beiser. I didn\u2019t read the spoken text that was part of David Lang\u2019s score. And, once the piece began, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6491,"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":[109],"tags":[1014,1656,484,2405,3181,2199,3182,146],"class_list":{"0":"post-6490","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-contemporary-dance","8":"tag-david-lang","9":"tag-jacobs-pillow-dance-festival","10":"tag-karen-young","11":"tag-lucinda-childs","12":"tag-maya-beiser","13":"tag-natasha-katz","14":"tag-sara-brown","15":"tag-wendy-whelan","16":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6490","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=6490"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6514,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6490\/revisions\/6514"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}