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...
Almost from the first beat of the performance, I felt the breath in my belly deepen and slow down. This is a typical response of mine to artistic expression, but I was watching a dance called Noise + Speed. The music was dissonant and the dancers’ staccato, angular movements reflected that. So, why was I feeling so relaxed? Noise and a fast and frenzied existence usually engender sensations I struggle to keep at bay. The dancers in front of me, however, were choosing a different response: they were allowing these sensations to penetrate them and to embody the dissonance they heard. How did that embodiment make them feel? Did they, too, feel relaxed, and was that feeling of relaxation communicating itself to me....
Hilary Easton + Company’s performance of Noise + Speed last night left my head swirling. In a good way. During the course of the hour-long performance, set to music and text, I found myself drawn in again and again and again. Which brings me to my first observation: the challenge of staying totally present to a work of art like a dance performance. Much of my experience of art has been limited to queuing up behind a line of other spectators to stand for a few moments in front of a painting, photograph or sculpture in a crowded museum. Only in recent years have I learned to sit in front of piece for a half hour or more, letting it work on me. But watching a dance performance demands a sustained close attention to the action and a wider awareness that can take in the music, the energy inside the space, movements happening on the periphery, etc....
Dear Aynsley and Mathew:
I want to congratulate you on the success of your festival, Mt. Tremper Arts.
By creating anything new, we embody the spirit of Walt Whitman, who believed in nothing more than he believed in the possibility inherent in the American experience to set precedent; to do what has not been done before; to decide for ourselves that, yes, this is how we want things to be, even if it means breaking from tradition and/or propriety.
Although, with new things come risks. I’m sure you both know, as artists, that it is impossible to satisfy the taste of every person who comes into contact with artwork. Artists are always aware of this conundrum, and each finds her/his own relationship between their work and the public. We must agree, though, that, in terms of art, it is always better to err on the side of risk. Risk is how we grow, discover, and learn.
That is why I would like to commend you for the risk you both took to program–without interference–the dance work of Elke Rindfleisch, whose two dances I found compelling, bold, enigmatic, incisive, and thoroughly brave.
“…This was back in the 70’s. I was sitting with my dad and his friends in a cloud of blue pot smoke looking at cigarette ads for subliminal messages. That’s how I learned about photography—that there could be a lot of meaning packed into a photographic image, whether it’s real or not.” Thus began “SIGNS and the Language of Photography,” the final installment in Mt. Tremper Arts’s Thursday Night Lecture Series. The above quote is from Tim Davis, who along with Lisa Kereszi and Mathew Pokoik (who curated SIGNS) showed slides of their work and talked about how and why they photograph signs....
On Saturday I went to see Dusan Tynek’s Dance Theatre perform two pieces, Fleur-de-Lis and Apian Way, at Mount Tremper Arts. As a poet and writer, I find much of my expression through words, and was blown away by the dancers’ precision and communication through the body. In both pieces there was a commitment from the dancers to connect with one another and the audience in such a concentrated way over an extended period of time with a clear and conscious ability to express story and emotion. Wordlessly....
I couldn’t help thinking that I have had very little exposure to dance and movement in my lifetime, so consequently it is very new art form for me. Like many of us who have grown up in this culture, we are exposed to a variety of art forms; painting, sculpture, music, photography etc. but movement seems to be the one form that we don’t experience much of. So to see last night’s performance was new, intriguing and I’d have to say refreshing....
Audience Review
By Martha Sherman
I did get up to the Mt Tremper Arts festival (did I mention it’s in the Catskills??) for a remarkable collaborative piece between (among?) Jonah Bokaer, Anne Carson, Peter Cole, and the performers. The first piece was an improv — Jonah danced it (ooh, what a dancer) to Anne’s reading of a lecture/prose poem “Falling” which she’d originally collaborated with Elizabeth Streb to present. The words really fit (and honored) Streb’s work. (Anne’s voice is soft and monotonal, but sort of relentless, especially about fear and danger. It worked). And Jonah’s falling was totally his own. He arched his back achingly slowly, to a place where human bodies are probably not meant to go, and his falling metaphors, not surprisingly, were completely different than anything the Streb dancers do. And it worked, too.
STACKS rehearsal at Mount Tremper Arts
Audience Review
By Mika Dashman
Last night I attended a performance by dancer/choreographer Jonah Bokaer and poet Anne Carson. I have seen plenty of mixed-media performance events over the years and I find they often suffer from a certain imbalance, where one aspect of what is going on on stage captures the attention much more than the other. This was not such an occasion. In two pieces “Falling” & “Stacks” the choreographer and the writer collaborated with a sculptor, Peter Cole.
STACKS at Mount Tremper Arts
The stage was filled with stacks of cardboard boxes which were stacked, re-stacked, knocked down and manipulated in a a wide variety of ways by the dancers...