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Dancing Against War
- PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art
- The MIT Press
- PAJ 83 (Volume 28, Number 2), May 2006
- pp. 75-79
- Review
- Additional Information
PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 28.2 (2006) 75-79
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Dancing Against War
Deborah Garwood
Click for larger view | Figure 1 Scene from Super Vision. Photo: Stephanie Berger. Courtesy Builders Association and dbox. |
Treating music as an integral part of her choreography has been one of Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker's defining strengths during the 22-year history of her company, Rosas. The Belgian dancer/choreographer founded the company with the intention of giving the traditional relationship between dance and music a new relevance. Further, she sought to annex the intellectual dimension of theatre. Her concerns with situating dance at the center of an avant-garde theatrical form parallel, to some extent, those of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. In both companies, the dancer's body maintains its connection with the larger social sphere, and the choreography adroitly shifts between formal beauty, emotional content, and worldly implications.
Once was created in 2002 as an 80-minute solo work for de Keersmaeker herself. It premiered that same year at the Rosas Performance Space in Brussels, Belgium, then embarked upon a world tour. The final performance will take place in Hong Kong in 2006. In addition to the persentation in New York at the Joyce Theater, it will also travel to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.
The house lights stayed up while de Keersmaeker casually walked onstage, kicking one clog off in a high arc, followed by the other. She approached the front of the stage and spoke the word "Once." Her hair was pulled back and fastened tightly as a skullcap. She wore a dark blue knit tunic that clung to her torso in loose layers. As she stood there, the audience regarded her with quiet expectation. Its gaze was met by that of the performers. During this first section, there was plenty of time to observe every detail of the few spare props onstage: backdrops of canvas that looked somewhat military, tied with clothesline to rods; a thermos and its cup; a gray cover over the dance floor; most importantly, a record player on a little wire stand was placed stage left. Meanwhile, de Keersmaeker's attentive glance and occasional gestures strove to [End Page 76]
Click for larger view | Figure 2 Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker in Once. Photo: Courtesy Tina Ruisinger. |
establish an unusual rapport between performer and audience. She stretched out an arm to the people on the left; on the right; in the balconies. One of the strategies of avant-garde theatre has been its breach of the barriers between stage and audience. As they disintegrate, theatre becomes twin and mirror of the world. The chaotic sense of present time is briefly reordered into presentness at the performance. Dancers rarely interrupt the spell of introspection that surrounds them; De Keersmaeker's hybrid form of character and soloist-choreographer was unfamiliar. Her eye contact and mute gestures had an emphatic, even unsettling effect as she patiently sustained them over a prolonged period. It was as if to say, "You too are part of the performance." One became aware of tension circulating throughout the entire theatre.
When de Keersmaeker broke her gaze with the audience and began to dance, the movements had an idiosyncratic vocabulary. She stood still, cupped her hand, moved a few fingers. She adopted long, static poses that required great strength and balance. At times she seemed to be rehearsing a synthesis of ballet, modern dance, and acting. Only after she set the needle on the record and began to dance again, this time as Joan Baez's voice filled the hall, would an alert viewer perceive that at least some movements from the initial section were being repeated. Enigmatic shifts between improvisation, pantomime, and choreography would continue throughout the piece.
The music in Once, Joan Baez in Concert, Part 2 from 1963, was originally a vinyl LP recording on the Vanguard label. Bob Dylan also...
