Nov
26
Spellbeamed: a Deconstruction of Conventions
November 26, 2012 | Reviews | Leave a Comment
Spellbeamed, a work of conceptual music performed by Zeena Parkins and the Ne(x)tworks Ensemble with JACK Quartet at the Roulette Theatre, is a surprising, creative, multi-layered exploration of sound, communication, and people’s relationships to objects. The performance defies conventional understanding of instruments such as the harp and violin by rejecting their traditional production of classical music in favor of complicated and original discordant sound.
The performance begins with vocal artist Joan La Barbara reading a piece based on the work of German philosopher Walter Benjamin, but her words become obscured through the static effects of her microphone. This creates language that can almost, but not quite, be understood; it is information buried by digital translation; it is like the language of music, which can’t be understood as words but instead must be contemplated for its composition, movement, volume, and progression. This establishes that the performance will communicate in unusual forms, such as through images, sounds, and numbers. Traditional ideas, not only of communication, but of music and art, are torn apart and reconstructed through the delicate and extremely difficult composition of the music, as well as through the use of abstract images and vocal sounds.
Instead of a clear reading of a text, there are quiet, muffled, almost-understood words. Instead of harmonious, classical music, there are wild, compelling, upsetting, complex waves of sound. Instead of recognizable images that directly complement the music, they are abstract, disconnected, and yet relevant.
The instruments are played in extremely inventive ways; the performers pluck, scrape, and break strings, they create beats by tapping on the bodies of their instruments, and they toe the line between harmony and chaos by overlapping sounds and notes. The musicians follow complicated and precise sheet music and the composition of each piece transcends its base in a classical understanding of music to create an innovative and surprising sound that is both vibrant and deeply pensive, like a great cat just barely constrained by ropes or a cage. The music is capable of movement, volume, and tension that is more intense than many classical pieces because it is not constrained by formal rules; Spellbeamed makes use of these rules only to bend and break them to achieve raw and purely creative, original music. This seems to make many audience members uncomfortable, as it flips convention on its head and explores chaos, darkness, language, and emotion on a level that is not possible through other forms of music.
Spellbeamed not only explores new forms of communication and music, it also focuses on the relationships between people and objects. Each part is based on a different object and examines its abstract shape, color, and physical qualities, as well as the meaning they are given through human ownership and interaction. This returns to the theme of communication and how ideas can be expressed through means other than spoken language. Spellbeamed causes the audience to consider what certain objects express to them, what certain notes and arrangements of sound communicate to them, and what certain colors and images convey to them. This forces the viewers to think about their relationships with the objects and people around them and asks them to reconsider the possibilities of nonverbal language and sound. The noises created by the instruments are at times familiar and yet surprising and strange, sometimes sounding almost like bells, other times almost like power tools. This keeps the audience in a tension between what they think they know and what is possible, a tone that is reflected in the music, which slides from chaotic noise to soothing classical sound.
Spellbeamed is neither a clean nor obvious work of art—it is a downhill bike ride with no brakes—but it has a specific inspiration, vision, and direction, and it is a work of abstraction that is meant to be contemplated and digested by the viewer. It is meant to be appreciated for its careful construction, complex layers of sound, its movement and expression. It allows the viewer to rethink his preconceptions about himself, his relationships, and about music itself.
Nov
18
Ivanov: a Modern Hamlet
November 18, 2012 | Reviews | Leave a Comment
In his interpretation of Chekhov’s Ivanov at the Classic Stage Company, director Austin Pendleton draws the audience into the dark, emotional story of modern Russian Hamlet Nikolai Ivanov through his use of movement, colors, lighting, and the careful development of flawed, complex characters and relationships. The play reflects Chekhov’s original writing in its ability to alternate between sly, witty black humor and solemn, intense meditations on death, guilt, and purpose. The cast, which includes Ethan Hawke, Joely Richardson, and Glenn Fitzgerald, create realistic and relatable portraits of their characters through acting that is naturalistic, fluid, and modern.
The set is simple and functional, with most of its focus on Ivanov’s bed. Several of the central themes of the play are expressed through this prop, as beds not only can be slept on, but they can also imply sex and death. In the opening scene, Borkin playfully threatens Ivanov with a gun, which presents comedy and mortality together, a theme that continues throughout the play. The sparse set only emphasizes the movement and action of each scene. The movements of the actors either enhance or juxtapose the dialogue; when Ivanov tells his wife Anna that he loves her, they are separate and stiff, revealing the complexity and tension to his truths, while when Ivanov and his young love interest Sasha speak of their feelings, their movements are dance-like and sensual. Pendleton also frequently places characters at opposite corners of the stage, using distance to create tension between them. Set changes happen with characters still on stage, caught in the whirl of movement, creating an interesting relationship between the realities of the play and of the audience. This direct relationship is strengthened as characters stare directly at audience members during their monologues and move among the audience.
Not only are the characters connected to the audience through their actions, they are presented as complex and multi-faceted and thus emotionally relatable—especially the anti-hero Ivanov, who could easily have been depicted as cold, selfish, and manipulative, but was instead complicated and easy to empathize with, pity, and understand. One way this is achieved is through a long, mournful, passionate monologue by Ivanov. The audience is led to connect to Ivanov and pity his struggles—feelings that are only increased when passionate, bright, pure, lovable Sasha shows undying devotion and love for him. However, Ivanov is not presented as simply misunderstood and miserable; like the other characters in the play, Ivanov is flawed and at times the audience is led to doubt him by emphasizing the opinions and doubts of the other characters towards him. Colors are also used to further develop the characters; Ivanov wears cream and off-white clothing, representing his confusion, indecision, and possibly impure motives, while Sasha and Anna both wear pink, representing sweetness, femininity, and love. Many characters wear black to signify death or corruption. Lighting is also used to show the nature of each character, with Ivanov often sitting in darkness or half-darkness to show his internal struggle between right and wrong, purpose and depression.
The play, overall, is extremely well done. It is modern, intriguing, and complex, with very funny moments and very emotional, somber moments. Both the acting and choices of the director emphasize the complexity of human nature, relationships, and the comedy, honesty, and love that can be found among a loss of purpose, direction, and passion in life. Although the actors all had slightly different accents, with some sounding British, others American, others Russian, it hardly took away from the careful, skilled, varied, and natural representations of Chekhov’s characters. I found myself, to my surprise, empathizing with Ivanov and feeling as conflicted over his relationship with Sasha as he does. The play was intelligently crafted and beautifully performed and I would absolutely go see it again.
Nov
15
Caribbean Arts: El Museo Del Barrio
November 15, 2012 | Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
East Harlem, home to El Museo Del Barrio, is a vibrant and diverse neighborhood with a largely Latino population. El Museo displays art that portrays the juxtaposition of themes central to Hispanic history as well as the current culture and struggles of its peoples. Many of the works highlight motifs of cultural crossover and movement, natural and bodily elements such as food, blood, and sweat, and the effects of imperialism and conflict. The interior of the museum itself is reminiscent of its neighborhood; bright and lively, with most of its information written in Spanish, it contains complex, emotional works that reveal both deep struggles and the beauty of culture and everyday life. The viewer becomes connected to and personally involved with the art as the museum lights constantly cast his shadow on the walls and the works. Two works of art, Emergía by Mexican artist Miguel Rodriguez Sepulveda and Macondo as Seen by Leo Matiz by Colombian artist Leo Matiz, embody themes of bodily elements and oppression as well as cultural beauty.
Emergía, a conceptual work of performance art created and filmed in 2007, is displayed in El Museo as a looped video showing a succession of four different people running in place in a white room and facing away from the viewer, the camera focused onto their torsos. They each have a different image painted on their backs, and as they run, their sweat causes the paint to drip, changing the art and creating new images. The images, which include a portrait of Simón Bolívar, are symbols of liberation from the Spanish colonialism of Central and South America. Each loop runs about eight-and-a-half minutes before it begins again with no pause, creating fluid and endless actions of running and sweating. The images are painted in black, and the viewer, who may walk up to the video at any point of its duration, witnesses a slightly different and thus constantly new and evolving artwork each time he looks at the piece. At first, the images change very gradually, but as the participants continue to run and sweat, the paintings rapidly melt, warp, and drip down their backs, creating abstract art out of simple portraits.
Sepulveda’s piece is strangely compelling. The movement of the runners creates a repetitive and tedious rhythm while the paint slowly forms intricate, abstract, and interesting shapes on their backs. The content of the work is not immediately clear to the viewer and so sparks his intrigue and curiosity, because whether he sees the piece from the beginning or from the middle, the process of running and sweating that changes the original painting cannot become apparent to the viewer unless he stays to discover the repeating pattern in the work. There is an apparent pointlessness to the action of running in place because no actual progress is made. However, examining the piece more closely reveals the many different ways in which it can be interpreted. The infinite looping of the video may reflect the constant physical and emotional struggle of Latinos to overcome colonialism. The focus on the back, which can be whipped, burnt in the sun, or bent under heavy loads, connotes the weight of imperialism, oppression, and forced labor, as well as the immense difficulty of freeing a nation from unjust colonial powers and developing a unique, thriving, and stable culture. It may also represent the idea that simple survival requires an endless struggle; the runners in the piece stay in one place although they are running and sweating. This reflects the local difficulties that East Harlem has with poverty, drug abuse, and crime as well as the similar contemporary problems faced by Central and South America. The piece could also demonstrate the relationship between Hispanic peoples and their heroes, and how over time the struggle for autonomy has changed and developed into new and modern forms that reflect the gradual yet immense progress of Latinos within their own communities.
Macondo as Seen by Leo Matiz, a series of black and white photographs taken in the northern Caribbean region of Colombia from 1930 to 1960, focuses on the simplicity and beauty of landscape and culture. The individual images are usually untitled, allowing the composition and content of the photographs to reveal their own subtle connotations to the viewer. One photograph reflects specific aspects of Latino culture especially well: it is the portrait of a woman balancing a large bowl of leaves and plantains on her head. Her expression is weathered and wise, squinting slightly in the bright sun and wearing a patient and knowing smile. The composition of the photograph, as well as the contrast between light and dark, emphasizes the woman’s strong, muscular neck and arm. Her arm is bent slightly and she is using it to balance the bowl, which visually connects the woman to the fruit as it leads the eye of the viewer up through the photograph. The vertical continuity of the bowl of bananas and the woman communicates both balance and solidity.
Matiz’s photograph is beautiful due to its composition and its content. The simple, balanced, aesthetically pleasing arrangement of shapes created by the woman, her arm, and the bowl of plantains creates a visual beauty that is only enhanced by the dramatic contrast of black and white. However, the true power and beauty of the photograph lies in its honest expression of Hispanic peoples and their distinct cultures. The emphasis on the woman’s muscles highlights Latina power, hard work, and determination, but these aspects of strength are connected through the natural visual movement of the photograph to the woman’s face, communicating the necessity of wisdom to regulate power. The plantains, so ripe that they are beginning to split open, represent the natural abundance of simple and nutritious foods in the Caribbean and importance of landscape and traditional dishes to Hispanic culture. The simple qualities of the photograph and the woman’s tattered white shirt may also reflect the physical poverty that exists in many Hispanic countries and also the beauty in a different type of poverty: the poverty of landscape, of the sky, of a bowl of fruit, which is not negative but is instead an aesthetic poverty, a minimalism, and a focus on the value in the bare and basic qualities of life. The photograph reflects the beauty in a Latino culture that is strong, resilient, nurturing, and wise.
Nov
5
New York is a Mirror: Coney Island and High Line Park
November 5, 2012 | Reviews | Leave a Comment
New York is a gridlocked city; it is not only congested, brimming, jammed, it is architecturally confined to its grid of streets and blocks. New York is a mirror; the glass, metal, and marble of the buildings reflects sky and sidewalk in a visual symbol of the ability of the city to represent the Zeitgeist. There is finite space for building, and an architect has control of one block at most, which forces a creative solution to the desire for architecture to reflect an interminable population with endlessly shifting cultures, styles, needs, and ideas. The city is tied to its inhabitants: each building is a monument to past, present, or future ideals of society, recreation, and culture. Coney Island and the High Line Park, although they reflect the ideals of two historically and culturally separate societies, both demonstrate the ability of New York City to unite and equalize the most diverse masses.
Coney Island became a popular haven for city-dwellers in the late 1800s, its newly developed roller coasters and rides made easily accessible by the construction of bridge and railway. Eventually developing several complex and fantastical theme parks within its borders, Coney Island reflected the desire of an urban population for recreation that would allow people to shed their Victorian morals and enjoy freedom, sensuality, and unrestricted mixing of classes and sexes. Rem Koolhaas, in his book Delirious New York, describes the link between architecture and idea: “If life in the metropolis creates loneliness and alienation, Coney Island counterattacks with the Barrels of Love,” a ride that is designed so that “it is impossible to remain standing. Men and women fall on top of each other. The unrelenting rotation of the machine fabricates synthetic intimacy between people who would never otherwise have met” (Koolhaas, 35). Not only does the construction of this ride represent the desires of a specific society for sensuality and freedom in recreation, it reflects the broader culture of New York City. Coney Island expressed ideas of artificiality, facility, and eternity inherent to the city; it offered false dreamlands, easy access to and instant gratification of desires, and an always-accessible beach lit with electricity at night: much like Manhattan, a sleepless city of dream and whim.
Created roughly a century after Coney Island, the High Line Park illustrates the consistency of certain societal values as well as changes in ideas of culture and recreation over time. Both sites separate visitors from reality and reveal the power of the city to connect people through its architecture; woman and man, rich and poor mingle in the crowds of both theme park and garden, all interacting directly with the environment and structure of the twins of city and culture. High Line Park, however, reflects the slightly different ideas and values of its own time and society: the role of the flâneur, art as a physical part of the city, and the desire for nature within an urban setting. The park was recycled from an old freight rail track and now acts as an elevated pedestrian walkway; visitors are separated from the city and yet immersed in it, as people were on the rides at Coney Island, but this anonymity allows for the existence of the flâneur described by Michel de Certeau in his book The Practice of Everyday Life rather than the sensuality of the theme parks. He describes an experience that is characteristic of the High Line Park: “His elevation transfigures him into a voyeur. It puts him at a distance. It transforms the bewitching world by which one was “possessed” into a text that lies before one’s eyes. It allows one to read it, to be a solar Eye, looking down like a god” (Certeau, 93). In this way, the park reflects the desire of modern man to observe, to reject egocentricity, and to view, objectively, the city and himself in every stage of evolution.
The park also embodies an even deeper modern impulse for the presence of the minimal beauty of nature in the city. The High Line is full of grasses, flowers, and trees and is designed with clean, simple, natural lines. Roger Scruton discusses the importance of this type of aesthetic structure in his book Beauty: A Very Short Introduction, arguing that “a tree in a garden is not like a tree in a forest or a field…it takes its place as an extension of the human world, mediating between the built environment and the world of nature,” (Scruton, 68-69). Not only are the natural elements of the High Line independently beautiful in form, their placement reflects the need of modern urban society to feel a sense of belonging and security by balancing the paradoxes existing in city life: flesh and concrete, city and nature, night and day. This harmony created by the High Line Park is only part of the reflection of the ideas and values of society; the old railway acts as a fixed “road”, uniting visitors under the same journey, direction, and purpose; the mix of people elevated above the street allows visitors to observe themselves, the city, and each other with an objective and all-seeing eye; the graffiti, architecture, and landscape allow visitors to build a more direct and sensual relationship from art outside of the confines of a museum.
In order to examine how both Coney Island and the High Line Park convey the culture and ideas of their times, I took a day trip to each area to observe, consider, and record my modern day experiences of each site. I traveled with two friends to Coney Island on a cool, sunny day. We passed shops selling phone cases, watches, beads, t-shirts, ice cream, flip-flops, lighters: disposable and harmless and fun. We took off our shoes when we got to the sand, dipped our feet in the water, watched people collecting shells or holding hands. In a moment of wildness and abandon, and a perfect demonstration of the free and sensual culture of Coney Island, all three of us swam in the ocean, wearing our underwear, surrounded by jellyfish and an occasional plastic bag or leaf of seaweed, laughing from the pureness of our childish, carefree joy and the intimacy of the sea, the crowd, and the body. After we dried off we danced to music on the boardwalk and walked towards its southern end. We saw children, people on bikes, people walking, shoeless, with shoes, long hair, dark skin, pale faces, young, old; we became flâneurs in the spirit of de Certeau, we became mixed with the poor and rich in the spirit of Coney Island, we bought hot dogs and watched people ride roller coasters.
Walking through the High Line Park created a similar feeling of being an flâneur, although it resulted in a very different experience of environment, culture, and recreation. I walked through streams of people, absorbing the buildings, the light, the color, the trees, the streets. Elevated above the cars and pedestrians below, I was in a position of seeing all and being seen by all in the evaluation of the city and self caused by the structure of the High Line Park. The walk was modern, surrounded by graffiti and architecture, and involved an overwhelming sense of progress, movement, and the present; the old railroad tracks recycled into a park, the old building transformed into an art gallery, the old warehouse turned into a clothing store. The High Line communicates the need of the city to constantly re-build itself within the confines of a pre-existing structure and the nature of our current society to value temporality, innovation, and trends; in the sleepless city, everything is re-born each day, graffiti is painted over and replaced with more graffiti, nature is molded to our notions of our city and ourselves, we swim, uncovered, in the freedom of the oceans womb, and return to the motion of urban life.
Oct
15
Political Mother: BAM, boom, ba-da-dum
October 15, 2012 | Reviews | Leave a Comment
Even before the curtain lifts, Political Mother has begun. The dim, smoky lighting and cacophonous murmuring of the audience, along with the impassive face of the red curtain shielding the stage, create an initial tone of tension, wildness, and mystery.
As the theatre goes dark, the audience is hushed, forcing silence and darkness to take on volume and shape.
As the music starts, there is a wild yet rhythmic beating of drums: the auditorium becomes a jungle, a battlefield.
A samurai warrior reenacts seppuku onstage; it is a counter-instinctual sacrifice, a suicide, an end.
These separate experiences of contrast are united as the main themes of the performance, expressed through the intricacy, creativity, intimacy, and power of Hofesh Shechter’s choreography and the beauty of the movement of dancer and music. Political Mother is a powerful, complex exploration of light and dark, contact and space, geometry and repetition, silence and noise, and of wildness and control.
The lighting, which shifted from dim greys and ochres to bright white spotlights and violet o’s, mimicked the technique of “tenebrism” used by many painters in the Baroque period by maintaining a dramatic contrast between light and shadow. At times, the bodies of the dancers became abstracted—fluid, faceless movement and shape—while the shadows they cast and the darkness of the stage took on their own forms, creating a multi-layered expression of dance and music, united by the purity of conceptual structures.
In a reflection of the non-physical intimacy that can be experienced when walking in the city, through streets and around buildings and crowds, (such as the role of the flâneur described by authors Paul Auster and Michel Certeau) the dancers would perform identical movements—separate in body but united by choreography—and move together without touching, the darkness and space in-between again playing a role in the volume, emotion, and power expressed by Political Mother. When the dancers did come into contact, they were partially hidden by each other’s movements and shadows: dark embraces expressing the raw, violent power of soul and soul, a perfect contrast and harmony in one. It was a uniting of opposites, much like the architecture of New York City itself, especially the “vertical schism” described by Rem Koolhaas in his book Delirious New York: the co-existence of skyscraper (body) with life on the streets (chaos, energy, movement).
The choreography also included geometric forms created by the arms and moves of the dancers, and a more metaphorical sense of geometry in the steady rhythms of guitar and drums. The majority of the music was performed live on stage, which added both a raw power and the potential for human error, leading to a relationship between dancer and song that was realer and more intense than live dancing to recorded audio. Throughout the performance, there was also a repetition of crawling, writhing, shaking, and rigidity followed by fluidity, all of which communicated a wild energy barely contained, barely under control: a careful toeing of the line between dance and seizure.
The use of silence as a means of communication was reflected during parts of the performance when the music would stop but the dancers would continue, their movements unbroken. In contrast, the stage would sometimes be devoid of dancers and the music, switching abruptly from gritty rock to classical to silence to American folk, would fill the theatre. Near the end of the performance, a red neon sign lit up the stage: “Where there is pressure there is folk dance”, each segment revealed one by one, maintaining tension and mystery and directly involving the audience in the performance.
Of course, Political Mother is a piece of conceptual art and so should be analyzed in the style of Susan Sontag: as a form of beauty in the purity of movement, composition, and form. There can be no one specific “meaning” assigned to Shechter’s choreography, merely an appreciation of his use of contrast, light, and space to highlight the ability of the human body to move and create new shapes, to express power and intimacy, to maintain a delicate control over muscle and tension and wildness. Roger Scruton points out in his book Beauty: A Very Short Introduction:
“Music… is not telling a story about a state of mind, that could have been told in another way by another work: it is unfolding its own singular grave expression… performers show their understanding of an expressive work of music not by identifying some state of mind which it is ‘about’, but by playing with understanding. They must fit themselves into the groove of the work.” (Scruton, 99)
As both dancer and music are united—not only figuratively, but literally on stage—each is an understanding of the other and of the indefinable expression of each art form alone: separate, not touching, contrasting, but harmonious. The music and the dance are shadows, silence; shapes and concepts that the audience can feel and hear but never quite pin down. Overall, the performance was complex, breathtaking, and brimming with raw creative talent and energy.
(photograph by Brittany Beyer for The Dance Enthusiast)
