Gimp, Artistic Director Heidi Latsky, Institute for Contemporary Art, Boston, April, 2009
Reviewed by Ellen Chenoweth, Texas Woman’s University
Gimp, which premiered in Albuquerque in November 2008, was choreographed by Heidi Latsky for a mixed abilities group of dancers. The program notes open with five dictionary definitions of the word gimp, “1. a ribbon like, braided fabric, 2. fighting spirit; vigor, 3. a lame person, 4. slang; a halting, lame walk, and 5. to turn, vacillate, tremble ecstatically.” The second definition was operating in full force during Gimp, with the performers delivering a dynamic and vital experience.
The production of Gimp that I saw in Boston on April 24, 2009, featured eight dancers and one musician. The prologue took place outside of the Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) on the museum’s porch, open to both ticket-holders and anyone else who came along. Two aerial performers, Jennifer Bricker and Nathan Crawford, began the section by lounging on steel poles that were part of a triangular structure with a long stretch of red fabric suspended from the top point of the triangle. They began to play with the fabric, performing acrobatic moves with the red sleeve. At one point, Bricker and Crawford were nestled inside the fabric, as if it were a seed pod, with only one arm emerging. It seemed as if Crawford’s legs got in the way from time to time, as they were painfully swept against the ground while he was traveling through the air, while Bricker was immune to this problem, since she does not have lower limbs. Crawford seemed to do the majority of the supporting choreography but there was a good deal of mutuality as well, with both dancers assisting the other for various movements. The sound score consisted of a violin and the musician, Stan Strickland, doing a series of increasingly rapid breathing exercises, which gave the sequence a nerve-wracking feel. Costumed in meshy black material, the two performers maintained a visibly erotic and intense connection throughout the work.
The audience was then invited to transition into the theatre of the ICA for the main course of the evening. The space was technically wheelchair accessible but would not qualify as wheelchair friendly, as there were no cut-outs in the theatre (despite being built within the last three years) and wheelchair users and their companions had only the front row as a seating option. Before the performance in the theatre began, an audio describer narrated what had taken place outside and announced that audio description was available through headsets for the rest of the performance. The vocal narration was a thought-provoking way of experiencing the prologue in a different setting and introducing many of the audience members to the idea of audio description. There were two sign interpreters, as well, who rotated duties during the performance.
Gimp began with the dancers entering the stage wearing t-shirts from the no pity school, from “keep staring I might do a trick” and “let’s get ready to stumble,” to a simple exclamation point, and a “what?” Lawrence Carter-Long fixed the audience with a long, deliberate stare, while the other dancers carried out a series of unison movements on the ground. There were many elements that worked well in Gimp for this particular observer. A solo by Lezlie Frye was mesmerizing. Frye has one arm that is shorter than the other, and her solo began with the shorter arm facing away from the audience, mostly obscured, and ended with a gorgeous and intricate solo for that same arm. Frye has only been dancing for a year, but her section was one of the most compelling pieces of the evening for me. Another favorite morsel was Carter-Long’s monologue in the middle of the work. He began by confrontationally exclaiming, “I’ve been watching you, and I think you’re beautiful.” The monologue continued with lines such as, “I’ve got to tell my friends,” and “I thought you were going to be weird,” and the audience gradually realized that the monologue text consisted of typical audience responses to performers with disabilities. In the post-performance discussion, Carter-Long explained that the section was designed to give people permission to feel those emotions and then move on. It demonstrated a willingness to work with people where they are in their disability consciousness (or lack thereof) and hopefully move them a little further along the continuum.
Unfortunately, the audience at the ICA demonstrated a collective need for improvement as they applauded only after the section featuring two non-disabled dancers, Latsky and Jeffrey Freeze, doing the most traditional virtuosic dance. At times, the literalness of the production was intrusive. While it was heartening to see the sexuality of the dancers with disabilities emphasized, and not necessarily male-female partnering to boot, there was a good amount of the performers just making out or groping that seemed too obvious and easy. The music sometimes veered into the too literal camp as well, with the overly loud “I Like the Way You Move” by the Bodyrockers making sure that one couldn’t miss the point. The mishmash of musical styles, ranging from Renee Fleming to Cyndi Lauper, was jarring. There were enough ideas percolating through the piece from the text delivered and the movement included that the lyrics in the popular music were distracting and unnecessary.
Frye stated in the post-performance discussion that she saw the work as a deeply radical political statement, noting the incredible tension and power that came from the collective of all of the various bodies moving together. She summarized, “some of us have intuitive knowledge of dance, and some of us have an intuitive knowledge of disability and this exchange happens and that exchange is productive.” I believe that those two strands are not mutually exclusive and some of us have an intuitive knowledge of both, but I applaud the collision of dance and disability that Latsky and her dancers have put forward.
Reprinted from Vol. 29, No. 3 of Disability Studies Quarterly.
