Terpsichore in Sneakers: Post-Modern Dance

Deborah Hay: The Cosmic Dance

Deborah Hay: The Cosmic Dance EBORAH HAY'S choreography during the 1960s and '70s has evolved from theatrical to social to almost sacred dancing. In her early dances, she stressed the raw physicality of pure movement, contrasting natural, pedestrian locomotion like running, walking, or ordinary jumpingwith abstract dance-technical steps. Later, her reductionism led to simple, natural movements and the most basic steps. Perhaps her most radical act was to blur subject and object; in some early dances, the roles of performer and prop were switched and in the later Circle Dances and The Grand Dance, distinctions between participant and observer are erased. Hay's compositional methods and her materials articulate a consistent underlying concern: what is the nature of experience, perception, and attention in dance? As she intensified physical and mental sensitivity to the dancing experience, the role of spectator grew irrelevant. As she stripped away movements and structures to find the essential qualities of dance, Hay's view of the art intersected with a vision of a life integrating a continuous, refined consciousness of changes, motion, and rhythm with all other aspects of daily living. In such a scheme, the outside observer is superfluous. Life is dance and to experience it fully one must not stand outside it. Because Hay believes that at times people need guidance to discover their innate capacities to enjoy dancing, and because she feels drawn to communicate to others her own joy in and knowledge of movement, she created a group of Circle Dances that, because they are technically and psychologically comfortable, are accessible to anyone. They are based on easy, familiar movements , yet they provide physical and social experiences that transcend munDeborah Hay, Solo Performance. Photograph © Ellen Wallenstein, 1979. D dane events. The Circle Dances are rooted in Hay's belief that "breath is movement and movement is dance and anyone can dance."1 Each of the ten dances, about an hour long, is a hybrid of meditation, folk dance, ritual, Tai Chi Chuan, and American social dancing. The dancing draws not only on the breath cycle of the individual, but also on the power of the group and the rhythmic impulse of popular music, to provide reservoirs of energy. Moments of strenuous activity exceeding normal stamina are powered by this energy, which is restored by moments of quiet, inward-directed centering. Hay's instructions for the dances provide a simple structure. The basic directions informing each movement section are read by a leader during the dance. The structure, alternating between inner and outer sensing, slow and fast movements, surges of power and times of quiescence, is shaped like a tide, generating a whole that is harmonious, balanced, and refined, despite its enormous range and freedom. The Circle Dances and later, The Grand Dance, were inspired in part by Hay's experiences with Tai Chi Chuan, a sequence of movements and postures developed over centuries in China, according to the tenets of Taoism. In order to understand how the Circle Dances operate, it is useful to look at Taoist values and methods. But before analyzing Tai Chi, I want to talk about Hay's earlier choreography and the way her prior concerns contributed to the development of the Circle Dances and The Grand Dance. Born in Brooklyn in 1941, Hay learned to dance as a small child, beginning with lessons from her mother, and continuing with classes at the Henry Street Playhouse from Bill Frank and others. Later, she studied with Mia Slavenska, James Waring, and Merce Cunningham. During a summer at Connecticut College, she performed with Jose Limon's company. At this time, her desire to dance was insatiable. She remembers that after training and rehearsing in the studio all day, she still had the stamina and enthusiasm to go out dancing socially until late at night. Hay danced in James Waring's company, and joined Merce Cunningham's company for his world tour in 1964. She had taken the Robert Dunn composition class in 1961, and performed and choreographed primarily at the Judson Church in the early '60s, as well as at Judson-related events like Surplus Dance Theater, First New York Theater Rally, and Nine Evenings: Theater and Engineering. Like many of her Judson colleagues, Hay reconsidered the experience of time during performance. Contesting the aesthetic of ballet and modern dance, which proposed an abstract, artificial meter based on either the 114 TERPSICHORE IN SNEAKERS rhythm of...