{"id":793,"date":"2012-05-16T10:14:10","date_gmt":"2012-05-16T14:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=793"},"modified":"2012-05-16T19:31:21","modified_gmt":"2012-05-16T23:31:21","slug":"consider-the-body","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2012\/05\/consider-the-body\/","title":{"rendered":"Consider the Body"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Burr Johnson and Benjamin Asriel (seated) in John Jasperse's Fort Blossom revisited<\/em>. Photo: Ian Douglas<\/p><\/div>\n

Maybe this is something you haven\u2019t scrutinized before; maybe it\u2019s a familiar sight. But I imagine you haven\u2019t noticed an asshole in quite this way. To begin John Jasperse\u2019s Fort Blossom revisited<\/em>, Benjamin Asriel begins an arduous trek on his belly across the floor of New York Live Arts; arms at his sides, he undulates along by a smooth process of humping and arching. Depending on where you\u2019re sitting, you may notice that the action makes the crack between his buttocks widen and narrow rhythmically). Among the several thoughts this image can evoke is this: it\u2019s like watching a bivalve at work underwater.<\/p>\n

Fort Blossom<\/em> isn\u2019t the first piece in which Jasperse has juxtaposed hot material to cool form with an aim to discomfit us. \u00a0In a memorable sequence in his earlier Excessories<\/em>, two men and two women, standing shoulder to shoulder, blank-faced, opened their jackets or flies, took out their genitals or breasts, and made them dance in fastidious synchrony. Fort Blossom<\/em> (expanded from its 2000 version) confronts us more obliquely with questions about the way we look at dancers in performance, in particular, the erotic reaction we may indulge in or suppress. He also invites us to compare dressed bodies with unclothed ones, male with females, controlled actions with spontaneous ones, and individuals with pairs with a group.<\/p>\n

As Asriel worms his way across the two-toned floor from its white half onto the black part, designer Stan Pressner initially bathes his pale body in almost mortuary light\u2014a moving anatomy lesson. When he arrives at his destination and halts, Burr Johnson, also naked, rises from the large, square, clear plastic pillow he\u2019s been draped over, advances on Asriel, lays the pillow over him, and lies on top of both. Then he pulls the plug on the pillow and, by grinding his pelvis, causes it to deflate. You could think of the pillow as a mega-condom, but also as a disappearing barrier. Or you could define the whole stack as a surreal machine and focus on the two women who have been taming their own pillows on the white area of the stage.<\/p>\n

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(L to R) Erika Hand and Lindsay Clark. Photo: Ian Douglas<\/p><\/div>\n

Jasperse has overturned the prevalent vision of female nudity in painting. Think of Manet\u2019s Le D\u00e9jeuner sur l\u2019Herbe<\/em>, with its two smartly clad gentlemen picknickers and a naked woman who looks out at us from the canvas, with a half-clad woman bathing in a stream. Lindsay Clark and Erika Hand wear short, long-sleeved, loose-fitting, rust-red dresses in a stretch jersey. As they settle down on orange-tinted ottomans, the plastic emits unruly squeaks and mild groans. To dance, the women snap the pillows on like backpacks. <\/p>\n

When I first saw the re-vamped Fort Blossom<\/em> at Bryn Mawr College, I was in Philadelphia to lead sessions of the ThinkingDance Project. Afterward the participants reviewed and discussed the performance. The word \u201crobotic\u201d came up frequently in descriptions of the women, also \u201cstewardesses.\u201d \u00a0I think the latter image has something to do with the costumes, but also the straight-armed or angled gestures that Clark and Hand perform in unison could call to mind those airplane pantomimes that point out exits and the intricacies of seatbelts. As the women, perfectly synchronized, angle their bodies and fall back and swing their arms, they sometimes invest their gazes with traces of emotion (fear perhaps) that bely the preciseness that makes us think \u201crobot.\u201d \u00a0Or perhaps: \u201cretro-futuristic.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Entangled: Johnson on Asriel. Photo: Ian Douglas<\/p><\/div>\n

One of the selections from recordings by Ryogi Ikeda kicks in with a loud buzzing as the women unsnap their cushions and lie side by side beneath them\u2014a contrast to the men\u2019s more intimate rest-period after all the air has gone out of their pillow sandwich. But the buzz disappears and the lights change when the mens\u2019s duet begins. Here your gaze falters, keeps switching gears. The men are art objects, like the beautiful ephebes portrayed in Greek statuary, and they move slowly and unemotionally through a smooth sequence of shifting tableaux. <\/p>\n

Jasperse plumbs the subtle shading that some say distinguishes nudity from nakedness. Asriel and Johnson don\u2019t move in ways that would conceal their genitals or anuses (buttocks are indeed prominent\u2014perching on feet, grazing shoulders), and the choreography gives us time to feel the sensuousness of, say, Asriel\u2019s butt sliding down the slanted arm that Johnson, seated on the floor, braces for him. Gravely and considerately, the two work at interlocking their bodies and limbs in unusual and intricate ways that are never explicitly sexual. Sometime one levers the other off the ground. The sequence is beautifully designed\u2014gradually increasing its pace and expanding in space; occasionally Jasperse breaks the tension by having one of the partners drop out of a maneuver with an audible thump as he moves to a new position. Once, near the end of the duet, the two look each other in the face for the first time. It may be the most provocative moment of all.<\/p>\n

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At play (L to R): Clark, Johnson, Asriel. Photo: Ian Douglas<\/p><\/div>\n

I can\u2019t decipher the atmosphere in the theater. Are some of the gazes prurient?\u00a0 Are some of the viewers turned on?\u00a0 Are many simply rapt, hypnotized?\u00a0 In any case, Jasperse changes our perspective. Wielding four pillows, the performers turn what seems like an accidental collision into a game of racing around smacking into one another. The horseplay is surely improvised. They attempt individual feats with the props, many of which fail; they laugh; we laugh. The music turns raucous (do I hear a samba?). Some of the players are naked, some are clothed. So what?<\/p>\n

Jasperse isn\u2019t through with comparisons. The dancers pair up, again by gender, in double duets that explore variants of choreography we\u2019ve already seen. It\u2019s no surprise that the dresses not only shield the women from each other, they blur and minimize the intimacy of the movements (it makes me wonder what a traditional ballet pas de deux would convey were both partners naked). Jasperse rings all kinds of changes on his theme. The men dance with the women (now the duets seem slightly more manipulative). You see couples in unison, in canon, and in two different but related dances, separated in space. \u00a0Your eye travels around, parsing similarities, parsing differences. The selection of Ikeda\u2019s music is almost hymn-like.<\/p>\n

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Johnson and Clark. Photo: Ian Douglas<\/p><\/div>\n

In the final sequence, the four work in a chain\u2014sometimes side by side, sometimes pressed together into a caterpillar, sometimes linked. Equality and individuality are the new norms. One may break away and rejoin; another may start something the others pick up. Always their behavior is serene, controlled, amicable, workmanlike. This is who they are; this is what they do.<\/p>\n

At the end, the brave, very gifted performers simply step out of the dance and bow. No lights out so the men can reappear with their private parts covered. That practice has always struck me as awkward; the performer distances himself or herself from the previous nakedness, which serves to confirm the shocking aspect of public nudity. Asriel and Johnson were\/are naked. \u00a0I like it that Jasperse stirs things up\u2014risking our discomfort (or worse).\u00a0 With exquisite precision, he challenges us to consider how we view not just these dancers, but all dancing bodies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maybe this is something you haven\u2019t scrutinized before; maybe it\u2019s a familiar sight. But I imagine you haven\u2019t noticed an asshole in quite this way. To begin John Jasperse\u2019s Fort Blossom revisited, Benjamin Asriel begins an arduous trek on his belly across the floor of New York Live Arts; arms at his sides, he undulates […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":794,"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":[199],"tags":[320,321,323,319,318,322,324],"class_list":{"0":"post-793","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-postmodern-views","8":"tag-benjamin-asriel","9":"tag-burr-johnson","10":"tag-erika-hand","11":"tag-fort-blossom","12":"tag-john-jasperse","13":"tag-lindsay-clark","14":"tag-stan-pressner","15":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793","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=793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}