foot in mouth: August 2012 Archives

 The free outdoor shows peppering New York and and the outer boroughs each summer always have their separate agendas but this year a stark divide emerged. On one side was the community-building event, in neighbourhood parks from the South Bronx to central Brooklyn to the banks of the East River. The art mattered insofar as it drew spectators together and lifted them up. On the other side was site-specific experimental dance aimed to shock the bourgeoisie or at least the workers on their lunch breaks and tourists. It may be possible both to flout convention and to empower, but it did not happen on my watch. 

St Mary's Park is a 10-block-long, five-avenue-wide, tree-shaded oasis just beyond a grimy strip of the South Bronx that the City's sanitation department has apparently neglected for decades. At the northwest corner of the park, picnics, birthday parties, barbecues and children were everywhere, the kids dashing in and out of a makeshift fountain, lining the basketball courts to watch the pick-up games, and dancing to their gathering's particular soundtrack - salsa, reggaeton or soul. 

Up the hill and insulated from the cacophony, Ana "Rokafella" García, co-founder of the excellent Full Circle hip-hop troupe, was expertly hosting a Bronx-inflected street, folk and club dance extravaganza for the City Park Foundation's Summerstage. She kept things tight. Whether the dancers specialised in Afro-Caribbean, salsa, vogue, brukup or forms of hip-hop, segments were limited to 15 minutes. Afterwards, each troupe had a chance to describe its idiom and how we might learn the moves. Websites and practice days were shouted out. 

The organisers and dancers wanted the crowd to "aspire" - to Keep Rising to the Top, as one spunky youthful East Harlem group called itself. But when the performers included Brooklyn brukuppers capable of insane feats of double-jointedness and a salsa dancer in knee-high boots undulating her hips and swivelling her feet faster than a Dancing with the Stars pro, emulation seemed out of the question. 

The last act offered a less outlandish vision of hope. All the evening's dancers joined in a freestyle circle - a phenomenon the South Bronx invented- and took turns in the centre to pop, lock, primp, lope, spin on their heads, and more. The dancers were co-operative and individualistic - enthusiastic about one another and proud of their own signature moves. These last moments held out a beautiful promise: there will be room for each of us, in our idiosyncrasies, as long as there is room for all of us. 

Manhattan's River to River festival tends to favour, by contrast, a spiky approach to the audience. Even those who showed up expressly for the event - and River to River's focus on work embedded in the urban landscape encourages the opposite, an accidental audience - were unprepared for the startling opening of Uruguayan émigré Luciana Achugar's FEELingpleasuresatisfaction-celebrationholyFORM. 

From the far end of a covered arcade in Tribeca, four Cousin Itt mop-heads above bare womanly legs strode toward us shoulder to shoulder. Once near, the faceless women manoeuvred their jeans up to their hips without the use of their hands: they wiggled and kicked. They flopped on the concrete like beached sea lions and pressed themselves against the glass façade of the new Conrad Hotel opposite us. 

 Feel ... Form was outrageous and funny, but the humour was edged with cruelty. 

From my Financial Times review of the Tao Dance Theatre, at Lincoln Center Festival last week--one of the few modern dance companies from mainland China, and extraordinary: 

China came late to modern dance - and nothing is as deadly as a recent convert's earnest faith. So when the programme declared that Beijing choreographer Ye Tao, of the five-year-old Tao Dance Theater, "eschews representational modes of dance" even to the point of forgoing words for numerals in dance titles, I thought I knew the kind of discovery we were in for: all on their end, none on ours. What a relief to be wrong.

The 90-minute show was not easy. The impersonality of its outrageousness may have precluded hot-headed protest, but by the halfway mark of the second piece the entire row behind me had tiptoed out.

This duet, entitled 2, began with Tao and co-choreographer Ni Duan lying on their bellies for five minutes like green mould against the bright white floor while folk-punk composer He Xiao engulfed us in high-pitched static. The piece ended strangely too, with the eccentric music carrying on after the dance had finished and the dancers had re-entered to wait for it to croak its last so they could bow.

It was the first time they stood. Until then the duo had flopped about on their bellies and backs and sidled samurai-style from knee to knee in swampy, swirly, unexpectedly gorgeous patterns. But more than the low-riding style, the long freezes or the industrial detritus that Xiao mixed with fairy tinkles and swathes of chalky cello, it was 2's flouting of structure that proved bracing - or, for some, unbearable. The duet was all about starting and stopping and starting again without ever quite becoming.

Ye Tao and Ni Duan riding low in 2. Photo by Matthew G. Johnson courtesy of the Lincoln Center Festival.

I admired the squirm-inducing 2, but 4 really made me want to keep up with the young choreographer's work.

For what distinguished 4 from 2, please click. Every click is a click for dance (and you only have to free-register once for perpetuity).