Black and white, I thought, except for the bright sneakers. “Cesena” by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker was a rendition of the typical contrasts of life; between white and black, life and death, enlightenment and despair. The piece started with a dimly lit setting used to evoke effort in the squinting audience. As the steps repeated themselves and the vocals started sounding like chants, the performance started taking the form of a religious ritual. What struck as rather interesting was the use of a well-rehearsed rhythm to choreograph the rustling steps. The randomness of those very steps emphasized the idea of a flawless synchronization of timing among dancers.
What added to the confusion I felt towards the piece was the large white circles outlined by a chalky type of sand. This shape I assumed to be a sort of boundary, or perhaps an outline relevant to the whole performance, but as the performers stepped over the circle, the outline faded and wore away and dimmed against the black pavement. An idea that occurred was that perhaps the circle was a symbolic representation of life and how the struggles and calamities of an individual’s lifespan can cause it to wear and damage, but yet still exist and guide – as sometimes the dancers would go back to the outline of the circle and perform along its circumference. With such in mind, the performance became even more spiritual as the people stepped in and out of the boundary: falling, crawling, dragging, running, or plainly walking.
The irony to the circle of life, however, was given by such subtle repetition of crosses through the show. Performers would be lifted and carried around as crosses, they would walk and run with arms sprawled open in an embrace-like manner. The crosses were not the only religious givens in “Cesena”. The very antique chant-like vocalists aimed to highlight the rituals of Catholicism during the older Gregorian era. These hymns were a laudable performance of all dancers whose fluid movements were equaled by well synchronized harmonies.
As a main point, to which I was confused, De Keersmaeker looked to integrate religion in the aspects of life and death and tie the entire show together with a performance comparable to the dramatic events of life. Oftentimes, she would highlight movements with clear contrasts in meaning, from the running of a shunned performer, to the matching dance pieces by partners; De Keersmaeker aimed to make contrasts a major theme to her performance, perhaps to emphasis how life itself is a huge contrast, between good and bad, right and wrong, light and dark.
Keith Merlin Anne Ilagan (Blog B)
Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker truly intended to challenge her viewers in the creation of her piece “Cesena.” The dance is relentless in its subtleties, giving nothing away clearly to the audience, while simultaneously asking–demanding–that the audience throw itself into a journey of complete belief in de Keersmaeker’s artistic vision. It is a difficult piece to dissect to be sure, largely in part because de Keersmaeker introduces so many concepts into her piece, attempting to connect its specificities with such broad, universal truths as the contrast between and dualities of light and dark or life and death.
Like Keith, I was struck by this notion of contrast and the ways in which it was emphasized by de Keersmaeker in her piece. The most obvious duality was portrayed through her use of lighting and how it transitioned over the course of the piece. What little lighting we were given in the opening movements of the work was intended to represent dawn, the last fleeting moments of darkness prior to the rising of the morning sun. While the lighting could admittedly have been brighter and less straining on the eyes, de Keersmaeker was extremely deliberate with her choice to leave the stage almost entirely in the dark for the opening sections of the performance. Through our impaired view of our stage, our other senses were forced to come to life to appreciate what the performers were doing. We had to listen more intently and use our feelings and imagination to make up for the nuances and details that we could not fully see with our eyes. The result was a much more visceral and raw experience than we would otherwise have anticipated from a dance performance, one that asked us to not just witness the dance, but to think and feel deeply about it as well.
While I felt that the large chalk circle drawn on the floor did possess symbolic meaning, I saw it less as a representation of life, as Keith did, and more specifically as a representation of the repetition of struggle. The dancing being performed in this piece involved a lot of physical contact, both with other performers and with the ground. There was constant repetition of movement, particularly in motions that involved the dancers attempting to get up from the ground but immediately being pushed back down by some greater power. Many of the movements were violent and aggressive, as if the dancers were fighting against some unseen force. Others were constantly running or jumping away, as if to avoid or escape the same force. It seemed to me that through her choreography, de Keersmaeker was making a statement about the consuming struggle that we must often face in life–the ways that we may allow the struggling to overcome us with its perpetuation, but ultimately also the ways that we can choose instead to overcome it with strength and conviction.
In retrospect, many of de Keersmaeker’s choices that I found more questionable–lighting, music, costumes–were made to effect an overall experience. Lighting is one of the easiest and most effective methods for setting the atmosphere of a piece, and like I said earlier, de Keersmaeker knew what she was doing when she made the choice of keeping the lights dim and allowing them to transition into brightness over time. The same can be said of her choice in music. At times haunting and at others beautifully spiritual, the music didn’t always seem to fit the tone of the piece and I sometimes even found it to be distracting. But de Keersmaeker chose such ethereal and otherworldly music to complement her piece because of the overall effect it would create when combined with the movement of the dancers. In the same vein, the costumes and frequent costume changes on stage sometimes distracted attention from what the performers were doing, and I wondered why de Keersmaeker chose to have her dancers wear brightly colored sneakers, which contrasted so greatly with the dark, solid hues of their shirts, pants, and skirts. From an outside perspective, I can only attribute such potentially controversial choices to de Keersmaeker’s devotion to her art. Although I was often troubled or confused by her vision, I could not help but appreciate and respect her dedication, ambition, and conviction towards creating this piece. Like many other forms of art we have been exposed to over the course of this semester, “Cesena” did not always satisfy or please, but it was, without a doubt, an engaging and impressive work of art nonetheless.