There are some works of art that reach out and grab me by the lapels (Richard Serra’s Torqued Spirals come to mind). There are others that require me to know something about the artist, or the process, or the context in which it was created, to be able to appreciate it. Mark Jarecke’s Everything Up Until Now and Including falls into the latter category.
Mount Tremper Arts is a rare venue in that after the performance, I can walk up to Mark Jarecke and say, “So help me out here.” Jarecke was very generous with his time and energy, fielding my questions and hearing me out on my experience of the piece. I’ve seen many performances at MTA, and this one was by far the most challenging. Jarecke told me he wanted to explore what dance means “when you strip away all the cues:” costumes, sets, music, fluid dance phrases, a narrative. He said there was no hidden meaning, no special club you had to belong to to “get it.” But hearing him use words like “homolateral movement” and “distal initiation” in our conversation made me wonder. Jarecke is an intellectual, and his piece brought to mind obscure, post-modern academic writing in an embodied form....
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....
...Most remarkable about this company’s work is the use of facial expressions, especially to add a comic element. Dancers are so often associated with expressing movement through their body alone, and the face is often almost a blank slate. That is fine for much work but Barnes’ style truly benefits from this holistic element. The facial choreography is distinctive from what is going on down below, but is not distracting. Rather, it’s integral, and recalls a slapstick sensibility that showcases Barnes’ and Bass’ talent not just as trained dancers but also as actresses....
...Words containers containing contain
What was that ? Who is this word
And serene was this life this one who asked who knew who went before.
Words can dance and dancers be words
Beginning...
...until the words
which cannot stay fixed
either
enter the white heart
of the woman
who is empty space
who has held
the bird the stone the dirt the grave...
...the quartet, danced to bolero was fascinating. i loved
the costumes, especially the two men , also dressed in
flamenco ladies' dresses, black and lacy and dramatic.
great... i , myself, enjoyed this piece, but being a
dinosaur, i will have to ponder on it being done without
moving on with one's legs...
Last weekend we had robbinschilds up for a residency in the studio where they were busy working on the festival opener for July 11th, Sonya and Layla Go Camping....
jill sigman/thinkdance at the Mount Tremper Arts Opening Party
(See her blog entry on this performance.)
jill sigman/thinkdance installation at the Mount Tremper Arts Festival opening.
Dusan Tynek Dance Theatre’s Apian Way deals in the movement of bees (and will be performed as part of the Mount Tremper Arts Festival on August 16).
Check out what Gerry Gomez Pearlberg (writer and bee-keeper extraordinaire) has to say on Global Swarming Honeybees.
An excerpt:
If you know anything about bees, you know they like to dance, though they probably use another word for it.
If I were in Brooklyn on June 12th and thereabouts, I’d go see the world premiere of “Apian Way,” a new piece by Dusan Tynek’s Dance Theatre premiering this week at the Brooklyn Lyceum….
Also, if per chance yer Catskills-bound in mid-August, you’ll have another chance to see Apian Way at the Mount Tremper Arts Summer Festival—a cool place for cool people.
For each performance and lecture event at MTA, we set aside one free ticket each for two people to come with the intention of writing about what they see and experience. In exchange, these people will write a piece to be posted on this blog within 48 hours of the event....