...The exhibition is Spiegelman's experiment, designed to see what happens when artists seize this medium; when they question, appropriate and utilize the potential of offset printing in a different way; and when they make work to be produced (and reproduced) specifically as offset prints. And so while offset printing enables the mass reproduction of a preexisting image as an affordable print or poster, Spiegelman and the artists in Offset strive to do the opposite....
...Many questions and thoughts came to mind as I watched this piece. The audience was encouraged to walk around and view this installation from all sides. It made me wonder who each of us actually sees when we look in a mirror? And what kind of box do we put ourselves into? The piece progressed to the point of the entire box and performer becoming covered with white and black paint. The images the paint created and the actual action of it being strewn inside the box were mesmerizing....
...I tried to remove any preconceived ideas about what I imagined interpretative dancing to be. This art form, while not unknown to me, has been a rare event in my life. I found myself caring for the dancer as she explored her environment, reflective on one side and clear on the other. She did not seem to acknowledge the clear side at first so I was unsure if this window into her world was only for the audience benefit or not. Only later when she seemed to reject what she experienced did she peer out, briefly, before closing herself off....
...although Marcia Johnson was able to exit the torture chamber at the end, there is no exit from the awful mess we are making of out beautiful, precious and irreplaceable planet... except through a radical transformation of human nature....
...What’s really going on is all inside our heads, in the transformation of arbitrary detail into meaning, the exploration of how memories lodge in our minds and eventually take on personal resonance. For example, how does an image of God’s hands, starting out as big goofy Mickey Mouse-like hands attached to an unremarkable naked guy change from being completely silly to being a symbol for the creative spark that gives something like a dance performance life and an image that gives you goosebumps?
...Punning, lexical stopgaps, and rhyming riffs that match rhyming patterns of movement give the choreography its head. Sonya and Layla’s collaborative planning is repeated and dramatized in a French-style film that is shown—which, in its café-time pacing, serves to establish the work’s overall rhythmic structure. God is introduced as an idea and then as a nude boy with giant hand mitts whose movements are at once imperious and amateurish—retro hand chairs are also utilized as metonymic props which seem to imply the transferability of divinity....
...Later in the performance, when the dance vocabulary is repeated without language, you remember all of the associations of the spoken phrases, so that the now-wordless dance is imbued with meanings that you recognize. This is something that is difficult to achieve in a dance work, since movement, unlike language, does not carry a codified meaning, and so it is difficult to create meaning and recognition by using movement. I think this is something they are able to achieve through their reduced vocabulary and their way of re-using it and recycling it in new ways, with new configurations of dancers, so that new meanings are constantly being generated. In this way, it is a very ecological piece, employing the motto of “reduce, re-use, and recycle”…using reduced means to create rich results.....
"...The piece was mesmerizing to watch as each layer was revealed, shoved and manipulated through different speakers and movements. An accordion of perception, as each word was shaken and thrown..."
I never much liked modern dance when growing up. Once I remember arriving at Lincoln Center too late to get in to see Martha Graham’s company perform. We watched her on a TV set from the lobby and it all felt cold and very far away. Another time I saw Merce Cunningham’s troupe perform at Westbeth, a loft on the lower west side of Manhattan, and was left feeling like a private ritual had been performed in front of me, one that was not to be understood by the uninitiated....
Here’s the thing: I’ve never seen anything that didn’t intrigue me at Mt. Tremper Arts. Kudos to AynsleyVandenbroucke and Mathew Pokoik for offering such a variety of work to the audiences and supporting the artists with such heart during these celebrations. This has been true since the first one I attended and the one I performed in with Vincent Thomas and was absolutely exemplified last night. Here’s my stream of consciousness response, followed by a translation into more follow-able, critical thought: Lots of solos and duets on the program. Why are those lights flashing so much? The space is filling with water and baritone. Ocean, piano, opera, nascar racing...