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photo by Mathew Pokoik

Monica Bill Barnes + Company, Mount Tremper Arts, August 7, 2009

Conversation between painter Dion Yannatos and dancer/choreographer clyde forth.

Dion: It was interesting having seen the beginnings of Suddenly Summer Somewhere last year, what it has become this year. I saw the kernel, where it came from her solo last year, in the movement elements. But now it’s really full and fleshed out into more of a – I don’t want to say story, but complete picture.

clyde: The character she embodied last year was more at the mercy of I Love Vegas. It felt like she was this eccentric, downtrodden character fighting imaginary aspects of the Vegas scene, and poking fun at Dean Martin’s legendary drunkenness. The duet has less of that; it’s more under control in a way, more specific. Poking at something more serious.

D: (in his tragic voice) I think it was tragic.

c: (laughing) But it was funny.

D. Tragic

c: (still laughing) It was both. The beginning part was definitely tragic though, when they were on top of the table.

D. …and getting off of it.

c: …falling in slow motion, yeah. There was a contrast from the very beginning, especially after the pre-show sing-along was so silly and fun, in the way they sang “You Make Me Feel So Young” completely deadpan, and off key. When the lights came up and they were suddenly on top of the table in that embrace -- from that moment on with the lighting design…

D: …the shadows…

c: …yeah, it was such a strong, emotionally fragile image. The scene and the movement felt like someone’s cramped apartment the way it was set back into the corner, or a cramped marriage. But they’re on top of the table. It felt like impending disaster; it made me really anxious.

D: Yes. It was a strange relationship. At moments very light and comic, and yet here were these two lost souls living in some strange other world left behind by memory, or in memory.

c: I got the feeling that was the world of aging love.

D: Right

c: The restrained movement they did on top of the table was pretty amazing. Making just the right amount of dishware fall to the floor…

D: …and that they didn’t fall off.

photo by Mathew Pokoik

c: The holds and the lifts too, watching the way they moved around that tiny space. They’d get so close to the corner, and those subtle leans and off center lifts with the strange expressions…I was thinking where is the weight going??

D: …a lot of dancing with the face too…almost like an animated comic type, the extreme facial expressions and the…

c: …later in the piece you mean, after the tragic table-top part?

D: Yeah, but even in the tragic part when Monica is on the floor after getting off the table. Her chin against the floor, her mouth wide open and the lighting on her face - it seemed unreal in a way, something so exaggerated…

c: It seemed to me as if she was silently screaming, landing all bent in that phrase with the twisted leg. Like she had fallen in slow motion. That phrase was gorgeous when they reprised it together too.

D: And the coats with the bare legs, the strange incongruity.

c: Did you think the coats made them seem androgynous or did you see them as two women?

D: Mostly as two women, now and again one of them could become more of a male figure. But generally as two women, I thought.

c: They were androgynous to me even though they were wearing women’s coats. There was something about the way they moved together -- they felt like a couple, but it could have been any gender combination. I felt most of the time Monica was the dominant one in the pair though…

D: Yes, she was the one grabbing the back of the other dancer’s [Anna Bass] coat, and leaning onto her.

It also brought to mind the animated film “The Triplets of Belleville”…with the three old crones and the thinness of their arms against the oversized coats.

c: …and I see that in the movement too…

c and D: …in the hunching and the punching…

c: …that really wide leg stance they took at times, like a kind of fighter stance. Eventually they were actually shadow-boxing. That was a really intricate sequence.

D: Very tightly choreographed, synchronized down to the facial expressions and everything.

c: When they were in unison they were a really tight unit. I noticed that about most of the piece. Either they were making related but separate shapes or gestures in different parts of the stage or they were together moving in unison in the same floor pattern around the stage. Not all the time, but that seemed to be the underlying structure.

D: They did really use the whole stage though. And it came as such a relief when we’d see them actually “dancing”, like after the fight-punching scene.

c: Space opened up a lot during the “I Love Vegas” song. It became funnier and had more air.

D: The last piece, I Feel Like, got some real belly laughs out of me.

c: Me too! I liked the reprisal of the boxing phrase, but with the different attitude. In their high-school girl turtleneck sweaters and tweed skirts. The brooches were a nice touch there too.

D. (laughing) The licking of the shoulder and the taking of the pulse!

c: There are so many ways that she uses pedestrian movement, but puts it in another…I don’t know…a special little box so it doesn’t seem pedestrian anymore. The boxing, the hugging, the facial movement is like that, and some of the running phrases- the way they shift their weight in some of the bigger movement. It doesn’t look like formal dance movement but it isn’t anti-technical either. Then all of a sudden BOOM there’ll be something really precise, technical, stop-on-a-dime. I love seeing that. In a lot of dance I see where that contrast exists, the pedestrian movement is just lazy and the anti-technical movement is floppy and …self indulgent. There was nothing self indulgent about this.

D: …or affected.

c: The solos were nice too. What I remember is how the first solo, on Monica, has many fast changes from one piece of movement material to another. There were a lot of dance elements used, in sort of an A B A C A D, etc. pattern, but A never really repeated exactly the same way. In the one Anna performed there was a shorter cycle of repetition of the same phrase. It was funnier too. Monica’s seemed somewhat tortured and Anna’s was a little more tongue-in-cheek.

What was your absolutely favorite thing about the whole show?

D: There was a lot! But I really appreciate the dramatic quality of the facial movement and how important it was to the choreography. How it related to the other movement. Monica has the ability to do so much with standing still in contrast to the larger movement. And then the humor combined with the tragedy.

c: Yes, I think my favorite thing about the whole evening was the way she combines what’s funny with what’s really terrible. I felt that all the time, if I was laughing at something--well, first of all because they just both have funny presences, funny expressions--but most of what was funny was funny because it felt like there was something true and kind of icky behind it. Especially the coupling themes in Suddenly Summer Somewhere. That quality of being able to make something humorous, but not just angling for laughs.

D: In the last piece, just the desperation of these two characters trying to get a date…

c: …the scenario was so frat party!

D: …it was hilarious, but there was still something poignant and tragic about the lengths they would go to, or the inner turmoil that they were obviously having.

c: Oh, yeah, that reminds me I want to say something about their relationship with “the absent people”. In the last piece, it really felt like there was another set of characters they were playing with offstage. That was really convincing. At one point I even looked behind me to see if there was someone back there who Monica was reacting to. Did you feel that? There was this other imagined audience during the first piece, a Las Vegas sized audience out there behind us who they were also winking at and playing to. Then there were times when they were playing to us actually sitting there. A disconcerting amount of eye contact, which I like.

D: Yeah.

c: As a painter, was there anything about this work that you related to specifically from that perspective?

D: Well, the characterization I guess…building these caricatures.

c: portraiture?

D: Often looking at somebody trying to find the stronger aspects of the person that stand out or speak to some sort of inner character as well as the external appearance. Creating these characters obviously there’s some thought of the inner relating to the outer. Use of costume too.

c: Visually, I noticed the palette was muted. I didn’t see much like a ‘movement drawing’ or ‘painterly process’ of using the space. It was, like you said, more about the characters.

D: Caricatures.

c: Yeah, those were big and bright, but the costumes were muted, the lighting was kind of muted (and really good for the instruments that have). There was a lot of beige and brown.

D: But even with the muted colors the shapes of the costumes and the shapes of the bodies still made me think of cartoons. The fairly uptight conservative style of dress in the last piece especially, compared to what they’re trying to do – get a date - In these blah kinds of outfits.

c: Did you notice the time period thing with the costumes and the music?

D: Yeah, in Suddenly Summer Somewhere the coats were more 40’s and 50’s shape and in I Feel Like maybe more a 70’s or even late 60’s feel.

c: Really subtle but definitely there...

D: …fantastic program all around though.

c: Yea, Monica and Anna!

D: Yup, we wanna see more!

Dion Yannatos: is a painter and dance appreciator. He lived and worked in NYC and Seattle, and now resides in the Woodstock area. His work relating to old growth forests of the Pacific Northwest has been shown in museums and galleries on the West Coast and in the Hudson Valley. He has taught painting and drawing at University of Washington and various community colleges in the Seattle area.

clyde forth: is an interdisciplinary dance artist and choreographer working between the boundaries of dance and visual art. Her company, Clyde Forth Visual Theatre, is based in Saugerties and NYC and will be presenting its sixth season of original work at Merce Cunningham Studios on September 11th and 12th. She currently teaches Dance and Art History at SUNY Ulster and teaches Dance and Pilates at her own studio, Circle House, and at The Moving Body in Woodstock.