Dance Against Nature: Interiors Review
by Brian Kubarycz [knairb@hotmail.com]
Online Exclusive / Posted February 5, 2009 More Exclusives
Dance Against Nature:Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company presentsCharlotte Boye-Christensen’s InteriorsFor almost half a century, The Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company has been Salt Lake City’s premier source of modern dance. As part of its 45-Anniversary Season, the company hosted "Interiors", and evening of dance choreographed entirely by Danish native Charlotte Boye-Christensen, who has been artistic director of Ririe-Woodbury since 2002. The entire performance consisted a set of five pieces, each of which was described to foreground the physicality of the dance, using either furniture and other props, or the actual dimensions of the performance space itself, to create dances which seemed as immediate and this-worldly as any athletic performance. The intent of Boye-Christensen, it would seems is akin to that of many sculptures whose work we called postmodern. Just as these postmodern sculptors, at war with fantasy and escapism, aim to take art off the pedestal, so Boye-Christensen aims to take dance off the stage. Her intent, it seems, is to make modern dance less other-worldly, to make the stage seem more a part of the audience’s lived reality.
The first of the four pieces, "Lost", was inspired by four Mexican-American writers and artists who, though raised within United States’ borders, were not legally documented citizens. The result was a highly energetic and mobile composition which didn’t directly depict so much as abstractly express the dangers and thrills of struggling for survival in a foreign culture and under hostile conditions. The dance included a variety of swooping and hovering movements reminiscent of the gathering and scattering of birds. Another notable feature of the dance was the use of rock music ( The Doors and Nick Cave) and ensemble work at times evocative of Jerome Robbin’s choreography for West Side Story. What made "Lost" unique, however, was the far great sense of mechanical and gas-powered locomotion. Instead of creeping down the sidewalks and alleys of New York, Boye-Christensen’s gangsters are far more familiar with the open spaces of the Western Desert, and they used the entire stage to prove it.
"The Visit", rather than dealing with fugitives in an inland empire, deals with the architecture of office space and its relation to the psychological interiority. Here Boye-Christensen drew upon case studies published by the famous neurologist Oliver Sacks, as well as scenes from Milos Forman’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. Neither morbid nor morose, this piece, like the writings of Sacks, chose to celebrate the bounty of the psychopathological garden, and the singularity of each individual case. Though the dancers did wear mutton sleeves evocative of the straight jackets which were such a staple of dated genre films, in this case they seemed more decorative the restrictive, as if wearing them were badges indicative of unusual creative powers, or wings freeing the wearer to leap into sudden flights of fancy.
Completing the first half of the performance was "Bridge", a piece orchestrated around the highly-repetitive music of American composer John Adams. The mechanical quality so often associated with minimalist sculptors like Tony Smith and Carl Andre, or minimalist composers like Philip Glass and Steve Reich, was imbued with a feeling of humanity and dignity which turned the robotic into the ritual. The director’s intention here seemed to be to suggest the severe constraints involved in living in close proximity with others, and yet the impossibility of living, or in this case dancing, without the support of some community.
The first of the four pieces, "Lost", was inspired by four Mexican-American writers and artists who, though raised within United States’ borders, were not legally documented citizens. The result was a highly energetic and mobile composition which didn’t directly depict so much as abstractly express the dangers and thrills of struggling for survival in a foreign culture and under hostile conditions. The dance included a variety of swooping and hovering movements reminiscent of the gathering and scattering of birds. Another notable feature of the dance was the use of rock music ( The Doors and Nick Cave) and ensemble work at times evocative of Jerome Robbin’s choreography for West Side Story. What made "Lost" unique, however, was the far great sense of mechanical and gas-powered locomotion. Instead of creeping down the sidewalks and alleys of New York, Boye-Christensen’s gangsters are far more familiar with the open spaces of the Western Desert, and they used the entire stage to prove it.
"The Visit", rather than dealing with fugitives in an inland empire, deals with the architecture of office space and its relation to the psychological interiority. Here Boye-Christensen drew upon case studies published by the famous neurologist Oliver Sacks, as well as scenes from Milos Forman’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. Neither morbid nor morose, this piece, like the writings of Sacks, chose to celebrate the bounty of the psychopathological garden, and the singularity of each individual case. Though the dancers did wear mutton sleeves evocative of the straight jackets which were such a staple of dated genre films, in this case they seemed more decorative the restrictive, as if wearing them were badges indicative of unusual creative powers, or wings freeing the wearer to leap into sudden flights of fancy.
Completing the first half of the performance was "Bridge", a piece orchestrated around the highly-repetitive music of American composer John Adams. The mechanical quality so often associated with minimalist sculptors like Tony Smith and Carl Andre, or minimalist composers like Philip Glass and Steve Reich, was imbued with a feeling of humanity and dignity which turned the robotic into the ritual. The director’s intention here seemed to be to suggest the severe constraints involved in living in close proximity with others, and yet the impossibility of living, or in this case dancing, without the support of some community.
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