The Making of a Dance Writer
You always have to reach way out of your comfort zone to truly grow.
I knew I’d be doing that, and that it could be a painfully wonderful process when I applied to the NEA Arts Journalism Institute for dance writers and critics at Duke University. I won’t bore everyone with “what I learned at dance camp,” but three weeks of writing workshops and delving into the rich world of modern dance at the American Dance Festival in Durham, N.C., has been a thoroughly enriching, intense, invigorating and mind-stretching experience.
It has confirmed my suspicion that I do have a dance critic inside me, much as I love to analyze theater and help make it come alive for readers in my community. I’ve learned that dance can make you both laugh for joy and cry your eyes out. Finding ways to convey with meaningful language the beauty or ugliness of movement, the grace or even the brutality that movement can evoke, has been the key to my learning process. It’s about evoking moods, using imperfect language to try to capture the heavenly language of the body.
You know you’re witnessing amazing dance when you see H. Art Chaos’ emotionally wrenching “Rite of Spring” and the horrifying climax not only makes you cry the first time, you also cry just as hard the second time you see it, even though you know exactly what’s coming.
(Production photos by Sara D. Davis/American Dance Festival)
Created by Japanese choreographer Sakiko Oshima to Stravinsky’s famous score, here the traditional sacrificial lamb has been changed to a rape victim who must endure the cruelty of the prying eyes of those around here after the initial crime already has been committed.
By treating the victim brutally, they make her relive her agony, causing more violence to her. This piece employs aerial artistry to highly dramatic effect, with the victim and her persecutors suspended at various times mid-air. Dangling chairs and dancers create an eerie, noose-like effect. A breathtaking moment occurs when the victim fights back, flinging her hair back and forth magnificently in a bathtub full of water to soak those who hover nearby in androgynous black suits.
Oshima’s “Rite of Spring” inspired me to write this haiku:
The bathtub awaits.
Prying eyes wreak more violence.
Agony relived.
Both torment and beauty abound in Oshima’s “Rite of Spring” and the world premiere of her “Flower of the Bones,” also performed at ADF. “Flowers of the Bones” explores a woman’s journey through the spirit worlds into the afterlife. The lead dancer, undulating high in the air in a harness, appears to be swimming through thick water as she moves through the air. Oshima based her piece on her own near-drowning experience.
This is the stuff of high drama.
The piece has fantastic aerial and costuming images that create mysterious, otherworldly effects.
The following is a short essay I wrote about the costumes’ symbolism, which was part of a multimedia project that the 12 fellows and I created to capture and “translate” Oshima’s work.
Mermaids and metamorphosis.
One of the most striking images in the world premiere of Sakiko Oshima’s “Flowers of the Bones” occurs when three dancers don spectacularly flowing skirts that make them look like their bodies have grown the tails of otherworldly sea creatures.
The mermaid-themed costuming fits in stunningly with the feeling that lead dancer Shino Kido is swimming through spirit worlds as she is slowly drained of life.
“It’s like a metamorphosis from the body to the spirit – something changes,’’ choreographer Oshima says.
The skirts’ symbolism of water and transformation extends further: Japanese high-fashion designer Shinjiro Asatsuki originally created the costumes for the opera Daphne. In Greek mythology, the nymph Daphne, whose father is the river god Peneus, metamorphoses into a laurel tree.
In the dance “Flowers of the Bones,” the highly textured skirts look animate, with an intricately layered jumble of “scales’’ created out of brown, seafoam, bluish-green, white, gray, black and copper swatches of fabrics in chiffon, satin, tulle and silk brocade. Some of the fabrics may have an unfinished, frayed or cut-up look, but together, they create a stunningly cohesive flow.
The skirt design creates gorgeous movement within the garment itself. But it becomes all the more breathtaking with the three “mermaid’’ dancers’ long, flowing motions as they preen on tables as if they’re resting on rocks in the sea. Later, they stand behind the tables scattering confetti as their lovely tails trail behind them.
Great to see you back blogging. Intense images — sounds like you got a lot out of that experience.
Village Green
July 14, 2009
Thanks so much, Wendy. It was a hard-core experience, and they weren’t kidding when they said it was boot camp! It was entirely well worth my three weeks of study. I’ll be posting my other reviews from the experience. How are you doing?
Kerry
July 17, 2009