Mike Disfarmer comes to life

Puppeteer Tom Lee with Mike Disfarmer

I kept expecting Mike Disfarmer, the reclusive small-town Arkansas portrait photographer at the heart of Dan Hurlin’s puppet performance, to impatiently shake off his puppeteer handlers. “I can do this myself, leave me alone!,” I could almost hear him saying. Happily for the audience, Disfarmer didn’t succeed in completely coming to life and shedding his larger companions because the interaction between the puppeteers and the Disfarmer puppet was one of the most arresting pieces of a fascinating performance.

There was so much to marvel at. The lighting design a true tour de force from Tyler Micoleau; I didn’t know light could be manipulated so delicately on a stage. The original music by Dan Moses Schreier with violins, banjo, and accordian all used to amazing affect. The narration by Dan Hurlin, done in perfect cantankerosity. And so I found that I could absorb the production on Thursday night at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center on several different levels.

I could be engaged only in the sheer technical ingenuity of the production. At times I found myself floating along like a small child might, content to grasp the story and the mood from the evocative music alone. At other times I got lost in tiny details and would wonder at it for several seconds before moving on to the next tiny, perfect moment, such as how Disfarmer gently tucks his hand in between his legs while nestling into bed, as if to comfort himself. Sometimes I had to remind myself that the puppeteers were not supposed to be the main point of focus. Maybe it’s just my over-infatuation with the human body, but the image of a puppeteer standing aloof from the group, his silhouette against a blue background, leaning slightly away from the group but taut and ready to assist as needed…. it was as compelling as anything that the puppet did.

But I wasn’t involved with every cell in my body until Disfarmer started shrinking. The photographer continued to go about his day-to-day, but getting smaller each time, which proved to be an ingeniously open and ambiguous device. I read it as a disability narrative, as Disfarmer kept compensating and adjusting as his life became increasingly difficult to navigate. But he was no less alive, no less human. Or he could have been simply aging, or becoming circumscribed by his own madness, or choosing an ever-more-complete isolation.

The end was no less ambiguous. I was watching keenly the whole time, expecting death for Disfarmer and curious to see what it was going to look like. Eyes peeled. And yet somehow, I missed it. He climbed up into the cloth drape of his camera and then he was gone. I know I missed other bits as well, but I’m glad to have had a glimpse into the life of tornado foundling Mike Disfarmer, and to have witnessed the affection and tenderness flowing into him from his expert puppeteers.

November picks

It’s November already, eek!! Here are some Widening the I picks for the upcoming weeks.

The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at University of Maryland is presenting Dan Hurlin’s bunraku puppet performance piece that focuses on the life of American photographer and hermit Mike Disfarmer. The always-astute Claudia LaRocco had this praise for the work: “Dan Hurlin’s puppet-theater meditation on the remarkable portrait photographer Mike Disfarmer was one of the most satisfying shows I’ve seen in a long time, and one of the best commentaries on the slow, maddening drip of artistic creation I can remember seeing.” So you have banjo music, puppetry, and a solid endorsement from Claudia. Sounds like a sure-fire ticket. Buy yourself one or two here.

If you weren’t able to make it up to Philadelphia to see local talent Kelly Bond earlier this fall, now is your chance to catch her in DC. Fall Fringe November features three favorite former Fringe performers doing their thing to keep the Fringe alive all year long. Kelly will be doing six performances so there’s bound to be at least one that fits your schedule. Mississippi color guard mixes with European avant-garde. See what comes out of the mixture.

Aysha Upchurch and her Life, Rhythm, Move Project come to Dance Place on November 7 and 8. Dance Place says, “Retrofuturistic is a play on time travel and science fiction, all while examining the theme of ‘men are from Mars and women are from Venus.’ It is has all the fun, entertaining appeal of hip hop dance, but also raises some questions about what we are doing to our planet, environmentally and socially.” Their performance at the DC Metro Dance Awards looked pretty tight, and a whole evening of the group should be a treat. Plus it’s at Dance Place, where the positive community vibe could keep you warm all winter long.

Loving explored

If you missed the National Equality March in DC last weekend, attending the performance of The Loving Project: E-Race, the latest evening-length work by Stephen Clapp and Laura Schandelmeier, at Dance Place could have been a satisfying substitute. Both were loud and articulate calls for the right for humans to marry whomever they’d like, in the company of a community of others who feel the same way. The performance was facilitated by Peter diMuro who led the audience in a series of participatory exercises and provided gently comic relief. You had to be willing to play along with the small dose of corniness, but overall the emphasis on freedom of choice on the part of the audience nearly fit with the idea of freedom to choose who to love and marry presented on stage.

Fortunately, the dancing of Schandelmeier and Clapp fit together so tightly that the seams of the performance were not only invisible, they were unimaginable. The two were like one rolling, lifting, mesmerizing organism, one half with long swishy blond hair and the other with long swishy black hair. It is a rare and phenomenal treat to see two dancers who are so beautifully in tune with each other, with their partnering carefully honed and developed through years of kinesthetic communication. Their duet was featured in one of four sections, It Takes Three, performed first at the Friday night performance. The choreography included several richly-laden movements; one dancer pointing out their cheek, or presenting a shoulder as if to point out the source of the pain. This provoked various responses from the other, ranging from supportive to antagonistic, or some mixture of the two. A movement that looked as if Schandelmeier was rubbing out a stain on her own hand looked engagingly original. A pleasant surprise came as Schandelmeier and Clapp took other partners and were equally compelling, Clapp dancing with the Ken Yamaguchi-Clark and Schandelmeier with Ilana Faye Silverstein. The diminuitive Clapp paired with the commanding figure of Yamaguchi-Clark led to some especially poignant moments. After the series of duets, the section ended with a trio between Silverstein, Schandelmeier, and Clapp, with each person rotating into the center position of the three. I was left somewhat confused about the title; why does it take three? Were the choreographers making a case for group marriage in addition to same-sex marriage?

The second section of the evening, Leon Theremin and Levinia Williams, presented the story of African American dancer Lavinia Williams and her Russian husband Leon Theremin, inventor of one of the first electronic instruments. It seems likely that modern dance and the theremin have been combined before, but I had never seen such a thing and it was drop dead cool. Clapp coaxed the theremin to produce music while maintaining an intense connection with the audience and using every bit of his body. The section provided an absorbing synthesis of dance and music, as one body simultaneously produced both. Some of the fascination got lost as Clapp turned his back to the audience for later sections and the performance aspect drooped, but the introductory piece more than made up for it.

Schandelmeier included her virtuostic solo, Their Then Now/Doin’ the Shorty George, previously swooned about here. I love being able to see work multiple times and this was especially rewarding as Dance Place allowed for a good view of Schandelmeier’s facial expressions and movement nuances. Strange and lovely use of repetition as Schandelmeier seemed bossed around by the music, which relentlessly looped through groups of notes. In this iteration, Schandelmeier shared the work with Clapp and Silverstein, with each of them performing pieces of the solo, but it seems so perfectly suited to her own angles and mechanical qualities that I was a bit sad. The evening concluded with Loving vs. Virginia, and this section worked so well as an ending that I would scrap the whole device of letting the audience decide which section gets to go where. Even for those familiar with the case, it was stirring to hear the details recounted as the inter-racial couple of Mildred and Richard Loving were roused from their beds by the police and thrown in jail in 1959. Clapp and Schandelmeier danced the scene while DiMuro narrated, with DiMuro arriving at the moment when the couple plead guilty at the same time that Clapp proposed to Schandelmeier on one knee.

E-Race proved a powerful example of combining dance and political text without coming across as preachy or didactic, an uncommon feat. (One of the few disappointments of the evening was the post-performance discussion, in which the dancers responded to perceptive audience questions with comically evasive non-answers. Both sides might as well skip this component of a performance if it’s treated so lightly.)

Donald McKayle and Judith Jamison visit the Cosbys

Came across this amazing artifact of the mid 80s the other day. Judith Jamison and Donald McKayle, incognito as “Marie” and “Ralph”, come by the Huxtable house to take Cliff and Claire out to go dancing. But daughter Denise is having a little dance party of her own in the living room. Ralph and Marie get talked into joining (love the dialogue: “you want *us* to dance?”, “Claire, what is going on here?”), and the youngsters and the adults all dance together. I love the openness and generosity; everyone learns some new moves. Although, the awesomeness would have been even more over-the-top if the scene continued and Jamison kicked off her high heels and did some classic barefoot modern.

This episode aired in January of 1985. Breakdancing was hot. Jamison had begun choreographing but hadn’t yet been named artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (Ailey passed in 89). McKayle had choreographed his signature early works and was in the midst of his active career. What would the equivalent be today? Mark Morris doing a guest appearance on Mad Men? Bill T. Jones taking a comedic turn on 30 Rock?

Jacalyn Carley lecture at GWU

Wanted to let you all know about this event happening at GW next week. Tanzfabrik is a dance hotspot in Berlin and this should be really interesting. (I plan on hiding in Jacalyn’s bag and being secretly ferried away back to Berlin!, where I will happily while away my days drinking coffee, admiring street art, and soaking up delicious contemporary dance….) Also, just in case there are any undergraduate dance students reading this, check out the last line of the biography below. I can’t think of a better place for a study abroad program focusing on dance and culture.

LECTURE PRESENTATION

“From Political Revolutionaries to Cultural Missionaries:
German Dancers from 1900 – 2009”

Jacalyn Carley, Founder, Tanzfabrik, Berlin, Germany
Choreography and Author

What:
Jacalyn Carley, founder and director of Tanzfabrik in Berlin, Germany, and GW dance alumni, will give a special presentation devoted to the major Germany choreographers and their works from a political perspective – a view showing the interconnectedness between politics, money and dance that continues to exist today. The lecture is open and free to students, faculty, and the general public.

When:
Tuesday, October 20, 2009 – 2:30 to 3:45 PM – OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

Where:
The George Washington University,
Department of Theatre and Dance – Studio J
2131 G Street NW (rear)
Washington, DC

Description:
After finishing her BS in Dance with Special Honors in 1974 at The George Washington University, Jacalyn Carley moved to Philadelphia to work professionally with the improvisation company, Group Motion, run by Berliners. Shortly thereafter Jacalyn moved to Berlin and became co-founder and director of Tanzfabrik Berlin, the first modern dance studio of its size and scope to open in West Berlin after WWII. Her evening-length dance works were featured in festivals such as Vienna Festival Weeks, Holland Festival, Berlin-Oslo, and Berlin-Brussels. Under the auspices of the German foundation for cultural exchange, the Goethe Institute, Jacalyn’s choreographies appeared in New York, Atlanta, Houston, Rome, Lisbon and Sardenia.

In 2001 her first novel, What did the left knee say to the right knee? (Berlin: Eichborn), a tragicomic story of village life in East Germany as told by two cuckoos in a pub cuckoo clock, was published to very positive reviews. Almas Tanz (2005 Eichborn), her second novel, is set in the dance world between East and West Berlin. Spring 2010 will see publication of two non-fiction books, Community Dance, a Handbook (Henschel) as well as the autobiography she co-authored, Royston Maldoom – Dance for your Life (Fischer). In 2002 Jacalyn joined Lexia International (study abroad) as instructor and advisor, and in fall 2009 she assumes the position of Director of the “Dance and Culture in Berlin” program.

UMove, youtube, and the Shorty George

UMove logo, R. Sikoryak

This weekend saw the launch party of the First Annual UMove Online Videodance Festival, hosted by Movement Media, a project of Pentacle. The festival is right on target in many ways. The curators seem to have looked at where the dance field is going and determinedly positioned themselves in its path. While there seems to be some potential overlap in the categories (animation/gaming, cell phone, gone in 60 seconds, low/no budget and surprise me!), they were open enough to receive a variety of entrants and winners. I was frustrated numerous times with the short length of some of the videos. Submissions were to be no more than 8 minutes, but there were a number of ideas or dancers that I wanted to stay with for more than 8 minutes. I longed for some development. Is this a distinction between dance for camera and videodance? I will admit that I rarely watch dance on the internet for longer than 5 minutes, but in the setting of a theatre with the curated videos on a lusciously large screen, I wanted more length. But maybe this was just because the videos were taken out of their natural habitat (online) and taken into a different setting. (One thing that is awesome is that you can see all of the submissions at the Movement Media blog!)

One of the most interesting aspects of the launch party, held in New York at the Tank, was the inclusion of live performers in addition to the 12 selected videos that were screened. The evening opened with a duet (or a quartet, if you count the video projections) by Art Bridgman and Myrna Packer, performing as Bridgman/Packer. One gauzy screen was set up in front of a silver screen. First we saw the projection of Bridgman, a lone pixellated man dancing, before his pixellated companion joined. Then the flesh-and-blood versions of the same dancers joined the action. Things became increasingly fascinating as the dancers engaged with echoes of their past selves, or their future selves, as the whole piece was satisfyingly ambiguous. Eventually all four versions were grappling with each other, fighting and tangling in a mix of limbs where no one could tell the projections from the “real” bodies.

Jorge y Valdes Go for A Walk, Barbara Benas

Movement Media director Anna Brady Nuse explained that the curators wanted to bring the energy of live bodies to the event, and indeed, it would have been a mildly interesting evening, but not half the fun, vibrant event it was without Anna and Kriota Willberg’s verbal addresses to the audience and the performance by Bridgman/Packer. I’m interested in this hybrid approach where live performance is included with videowork. It does seem to require the audience to switch modes of viewing or modes of participation, but maybe we’re collectively getting better at this switching. Do ya think? I believe UMove was a successful example, and then I also think back to a performance I was lucky enough to witness recently in Richmond, Virginia.

On September 26, the Virginia Commonwealth University Department of Dance produced an evening entitled “Move, A Tribute to Richard Carlyon.” Carlyon taught at VCU for many years and was an amazing polymath; he danced, he painted, his artist statements would put many a professional writer to shame, he created video works, and appears to have been a consummate arts educator. One of the most interesting pieces of the evening was a screening of Carlyon’s work “Their Then Now.” Carlyon took a scene of Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth dancing the Shorty George and through video editing, re-choreographed the number. In Carlyon’s version, a gesture would be repeated 7 or 8 times, giving the viewer a chance to savor a particular movement, or driving her to near-madness, depending on temperament.

This video was paired with a live performance by DC dancer Laura Schandelmeier. Schandelmeier adapted the footwork of “Their Then Now” and choreographed a solo on herself, “Their Then Now/Doin’ The Shorty George” and it was gorgeous. You could see the traces of Carlyon’s work but Schandelmeier layered them with dense and unusual upper body movement, a handkerchief frantically propelled from one side to the other, a pelvis with a mind of its own, shoulders jutting out at unexpected moments. It was a shift to go from watching a gigantic video image of Fred Astaire to one solo female performer, but Schandelmeier was so captivating that everything worked out fine. So, are we getting better at shifting modes of viewing or I’ve just happened to see a few good shows recently? Do the live performers have to be particularly strong in order to pull the audience from the more passive video viewing mode? Have you been to an event recently that attempted to include both dance on camera and live dance and it just didn’t work? For myself, I am feeling like, up the hybridity all around!

Velocity DC and National Summit on Arts Journalism

Traveling far and wide at the moment but two quick items of interest.

*Velocity DC is sold out for the Friday and Saturday evening performances this weekend! This is great news for dance in DC. Bad news if you don’t already have your tickets though… But! There are still tickets available for the late night Saturday show and it is a great line-up as well! Hop on over to the festival website and get yourself some seats.

*Tomorrow there’s going to be a National Summit on Arts Journalism, sponsored by USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and the National Arts Journalism Program. They’ll be streaming it live and you can watch it on their Ustream channel (link below). The event will be held from 12-4, eastern time, and they’ll be announcing the 5 winners of a contest for innovative arts journalism ideas. Should be very interesting.
Live video by Ustream

audience competes with dance at Austrian Embassy

A tall man wearing black and his shorter female companion stands in the front row, directly blocking the view of numerous people around them, but refuse to move or sit down, almost escalating to a physical confrontation. A boy abruptly turns to his mother and audibly asks her a pointed question, “what is this about?” An older gentleman discreetly and slowly dry humps the woman with him, somehow managing to make it a tender-looking gesture. All of these took place at the presentation of Vienna-based choreographer Willi Dorner and his company at the Austrian Embassy last Monday, September 14, at first leading me to wonder if Dorner had requested audience members to be intentionally provocative. But no, I think you get people out of their chairs during a dance performance and strange things start to happen.

Bodies in Urban Spaces in Rouen, France

A woman from the embassy announced that the performers wanted the dance, above under inbetween, to take place amidst the audience, and so there couldn’t be any chairs. From the announcement I was expecting that we would all be roaming about a bit, but no. It seems the intention was just to recreate a proscenium stage setting without any seats for the audience. Perhaps the planners were taken aback by the 400 people who showed up, but the room wasn’t really conducive to all of us being able to see all of what was going on without any seating. Short women in the back craned to view the dance and elderly people gingerly lowered themselves down to the floor for a seat. If you’re going to complicate the physical accessibility of the work for a good number of the audience, it seems like there should be a pretty compelling reason and I couldn’t find it for this work. A friend of mine thought it was appropriate because the audience got to squirm and fidget, and there was no darkness to hide anything (perhaps the sexy wooer in front of me forgot this), and George Jackson thought it added to the audience’s sense of playfulness. I felt that the behavior of the audience members was at least as interesting as the work on the stage, and so maybe that was part of the point of the set-up.

more Bodies in Urban Spaces

Which is not to say that the work itself was un-interesting. The soundscore consisted of what seemed to be alien spaceships taking off and landing. The dancers were dressed in solid color t-shirts or hoodies and pedestrian pants; when they weren’t performing at the moment they stood on the side, looking neither bored nor interested in what was in front of them. Bodies accumulated in various configurations, as if Dorner had given his dancers a score to create the most unusual body piles they could come up with. Chairs and tables were used to good effect. Three dancers would nestle under a table, the table would be removed and the bodies would bear the imprint of where the object used to be. Or they would nestle within each other, three perfect zig-zag bodies stacked up one on top of each other. A formation would emerge and then one dancer would extricate herself, leaving her friends to suddenly be spooning empty space. Stakes were raised towards the end of the 50 minute work as the dancers began climbing on elements, adding elevation and speed to the body pile equation as the spaceships landed and departed with increasing frequency in the background. The finale featured a Rube Goldberg mousetrap like construction that the dancers bounced through.

Dorner will present Bodies in Urban Spaces as part of the Velocity DC festival on October 3 and 4. The work looks to have many of the same ideas as above under inbetween and they might be more compelling in an outdoor street setting; the pictures from other cities where the work has been done look promising.

kickstarter dance: Make Dance with Bethany and Lily!

how can you resist these collaborators?

Just a few days after I was hoping for some dance projects on kickstarter, they appear! Trouble-making silly dancers Lily Sloan and Bethany Nelson are presenting some dance in Denton, Texas at local joint Banter on December 4 and 5, and you can be a part of it. Go check out their cute video (my favorite part is the bloopers at the end) and decide whether you’d like to be on the Caffeine Squad, the Happy Tummy Creative Process Squad, the Super Visual Party Squad, or the Straight Up Gangsta Squad. I must say, the prices are very reasonable, and I like the idea of a free snack and coffee bar at any performance. Bethany and Lily have been gathering material from various sources, like spying on Banter-loungers, and facebook statuses. I can’t wait to see what the final result will look like. If it’s half as much fun as watching Lily and Bethany improvise with each other while goofing around it’ll be a fantastic evening.

(I was interested in some of the other crop of new dance projects on kickstarter too. The Butoh Swimsuit Calendar Project for example. Hmmm! I admire how the artist, Anson Smith, has approached the artistic biography, and how the top level of backing gets you: “Special Butoh performance for you and your friends, involving one or more of the calendar’s participants. We’ll figure out how to get you to this show, or how this show gets to you.” Hmmm!)

quick report-back from the Metro DC Dance Awards

A few impressions from the 9th annual Metro DC Dance awards…

Had a great time the other night and hope you did too. Congratulations to all of the winners (list of them here) and those who were nominated as well. Both the performances and the award presentations were beautifully done and moving.

–Really lovely to see the community out in full force and beautiful diversity. There was a packed house for both the Millennium Stage portion of the evening and the section held in the Terrace Theater of the Kennedy Center. Both productions were strong and professional.

–As a dance history buff, I was happy to see Richard Move, the Martha Graham re-enactor, subtly interweave little bits of dance history into his/her performance. Humorous, educational, and a satisfying way of paying homage to our dance ancestors.

–The DC Cowboys reminded me of the Kilgore Rangerettes, whom I guiltily adore. Just transplant the Rangerettes from east Texas to DC, make them male, and gay, subtract the homophobia, and you have the DC Cowboys! Am now fantasizing about a joint performance… which would be amazing.

–ARKA Ballet. Wow. A performance so clean I would feel safe eating off of it. And when the ending came with Sona Kharatian and Jonathan Jordan ensconced in separate pools of light, I felt like I had been on a short but powerful journey with both of them.

–I was also super-impressed with the performance by Furia Flamenca. Really made me wish I could have seen the entire Lorca: Flamenco Poetry, but I’m glad to have seen this excerpt.

–Estella Velez of Furia Flamenca was awarded the Excellence in Costume Design and gave one of the most powerful speeches of the evening as she explained how her mother had taken off the beads from her own wedding dress in Puerto Rico so they could be used for the matador costume.

–Virginia Johnson, the new artistic director of Dance Theatre of Harlem, eloquently expressed her love for dance, describing it as a “continuing chain of giving, from one generation to the next” and concluding with “dance is life, life is beauty.”

–The recipients of the Dance Metro DC’s Forward 5 were announced. Forward 5 is a pilot program “intended to help dance-makers identify and realize their next steps artistically – from studio to performance to marketplace.” The organization decided there were more than 5 that deserved the opportunity, and so here are the 8 chosen:

Kelly Bond (see our interview below!)
Dancenow Productions/Stephen Clapp and Laura Schandelmeier
Deviated Theatre/Kimmie and Enoch Chan
Edgeworks/Helanius J. Wilkins
Jane Franklin Dance/Jane Franklin
Cassie Meador
Life Rhythm Move Project/Aysha Upchurch
The Playground/Daniel Burkholder

Congratulations to you all! Look forward to seeing the work that you’ll make in 2010.

(For images from the evening, hop on over to Tony Powell’s blog. Love his photo of Virginia Johnson and one of her early teachers, Therrell Smith.)