By Christian Viveros-Fauné
By Miriam Felton-Dansky
By Tom Sellar
By Tom Sellar
By Jessica Dawson
By Tom Sellar
By R. C. Baker
By Tom Sellar
Like all single-minded enterprises, this one invites speculation. Why hanging? For this group, perhaps because the state of being both off the ground and tethered creates a tension between freedom and constraint. In the bizarrely witty Insects, Lipovsky´ and Kamil Bystricky´ are attached to their lairs (padded columns) by their ankles; walking on their hands, they can't venture far before elastic cords tug them back. Still, one manages to kill the other. Tenderness, too, is stressful Tresnakova, suspended upside down, can barely reach to nuzzle her head against that of Lipovsky´, who's standing and leaning, feet anchored to a platform. When she and Krus(breve)elnicky´ hang together, proximity makes them edgy; they butt heads, he bites her hair.
The cables are not just leashes but lifelines. The ominous noise of ascent and descent accentuates danger, no matter how matter-of-factly the performers tie themselves on. The Gravity of Being is the grimmest of the short episodes. Tresnakova is hauled dripping wet from a trash can by her belt. Rocks hang from her feet, one wrist, and her pigtail. After a few moments of twitching her free arm, she's lowered into the can, unhooked, and wheeled away.
The performance is both fascinating and chilling. The men with their identical shaved heads, washboard stomachs, and blank demeanor evoke a millennial Metropolis of athletes, practicing punitive feats whose purpose they've long forgotten.
In the summer of 1944, John Cage wrote a piano score, Four Walls, for a "dance-play" Merce Cunningham had written to be performed at the Perry-Mansfield summer camp in Colorado. Cunningham was still somewhat in thrall to Martha Graham, and he and Julie Harris appeared as a brother and sister snared in a plot that had overtones of Greek tragedy.
Since 1985, encouraged by Cage and Cunningham, Korean choreographer Sin Cha Hong has performed four different interpretations of the 75-minute score, working with a different pianist each time. At Japan Society, her collaborators are pianist Aki Takahashi (noted for her interpretations of contemporary music), singer Lisa Bielawa (there is a brief, mystical, vocal passage with words by Cunningham), and lighting designer Brian Haynsworth.
Silence is a vital part of the rhythmic structure; perhaps the longest silences originally allowed for dialogue. Hong moves through these and sometimes disappears during a musical passage. Haynsworth has created an analogous structure of darkness and spare, foreboding light; rarely do we see the boundaries of the stage. Because Hong's full cotton garment (by Tae Ok Jin) is black, she has but to turn her back or bow her head at the end of each brief section, and as the lights dim, blackness swallows her.
Takahashi is a traveler through the music. She makes a reiterated four-note pattern sound as if she were trying it out for the first time. Hong, with her broad face and strong, earth-bound movements, seems both quester and seer a woman journeying through an enigmatic, partially hidden landscape, perhaps at times merging with it. She gives us a long time to absorb each image. In profile, she bends forward and fans her arms into wings; she lies on her belly, flexed feet off the floor, a swimmer in space; she molds a ball of air between her hands. Cracks do appear in her intrinsic serenity. She mouths words distractedly. She gestures as if she's plucking out one eye, then the other, and hurling each away; perhaps it's blindness she's discarding.
Just before the end, Hong bats at the back wall, a surprisingly literal reference to the title. In this haunting work, the power of walls lies in their invisibility.
The stunning performer Maia Claire Garrison, a onetime member of Urban Bush Women, founded M'Zawa Danz in 1995. Her program, the opening event of the 92nd Street Y's Harkness Dance Project at Playhouse 91, features rich, juicy dancing, and music by the crack members of Keep Bangin' that goes beyond accompaniment. Drummers Raymond King and Larry Wright strap pots and pans to their joints for a good-humored duel. Later they challenge each other on inverted plastic buckets. In an atmosphere that's part concert, part village party, musicians egg on dancers, and students "M'zawa Kids" clamber out of the audience to strut their stuff.