Devotion 4—Aiming for Ecstasy, if Not Perfection

Rachel Berman. Photo: Paula Court

Sarah Michelson's 4 is the final installment in the four-part Devotion project, and the second in the Whitney's fourth floor gallery; other parts took were presented at the Kitchen and MoMA. Michelson's work seems to have organically burrowed into the visual art world in part because she places such an emphasis on the entire performance environment—literally every detail that might be visible to audience members becomes an element in a vast installation/performance. To an extent, every choreographer does this, but Michelson has always taken it as close as possible to her idea of perfection.

This could mean painting an entire floor and wall panels, precisely managing every lighting angle and cue, specifying the type of seating and its immediate surrounds, or flipping the orientation of a venue. There is also the movement itself, around which everything else revolves, but it is one—albeit important—part of the whole. In that sense, it approaches the  operatic, in which every element is deliberate and interlocked (with one caveat*).

On its own, 4 stands as a study of jumping moves and forward rolls, spins, endurance, and the nature of a performance itself. There are numerous variants on the jump, and each dancer has her/his own signature version: straight up, hands darting out in okay signs; legs straight out; landing on one leg in a pose, or in a squat or lunge. (The spot where most of the jumping takes place appears to be a springy mat.) The dancers do forward rolls, outlining "D" shapes or circles, often wearing sweatshirts with padding on the spine, but often without that protection. Nicole Mannarino is once again a primary figure (Holy Spirit), as she was in Devotion Study #1 which was previously in the same space; in addition to jumps, she pivots on her toes in zig zags, crossing one foot coyly. Rachel Berman, in addition to being the Narrator, is the other Holy Spirit; her vocabulary includes deep, turned out lunges with a contracted torso and shooting arms that evoke a bit of Martha Graham's dogma. The movements are not from the dance canon; they derive from daily life and playing, but they are codified precisely according to Michelson's own vision.

Photo: Paula Court

The title is subject to varied interpretation. Is it religious? The obsessive retracings of pathways do evoke walking the Chartres labyrinth, and the repetitive jumping the whirling of Dervishes. Or does devotion refer to the relationship between the choreographer and her dancers and other collaborators? Not just with Michelson, but the trust implicit in the studio during the creation of any dance? Or is it Michelson's shorthand for what's required for a life as a choreographer?

The audience sits on hassocks covered in white canvas, lined three deep along the long wall opposite the elevators. (Among a laundry list of pre-show warnings, we were ominously informed that we would be sharing a seat with someone, but mercifully that did not happen.) We were split into sections by aisles used by the dancers as staging areas, in lieu of a true offstage. Guards are stationed at the stair entrance and in front of the elevators to prevent people from entering during the performance; they become nearly immobile statues that move occasionally, and are thanked by Michelson at the beginning of the performance. 

Michelson and curator Jay Sanders sit in the gallery speaking text by playwright Richard Maxwell. (Words caught in my notes: Proust, Milton, Shelley, a whole new level of choreography in the context of history, you always go home.) Near the end, Michelson recites numbers which correspondingly (or not) appear in green LEDs on the far wall of the gallery. Their dialogue intermixes with R&B played softly, as if at a distance; late in the work, Philip Glass' In the Upper Room begins, and with it the possibility of the ecstatic. (The same music, famous from the Twyla Tharp ballet of the same name, was used at the Kitchen.) *That said, music seems to be the weakest piece. In a January interview with Gia Kourlas, she admitted that she wasn't certain what the music would be, and in the end, it seems to be primarily ambient, other than the Glass.    

Indeed, Mannarino, sweating and in the zone, after several costume changes and a good hour of work behind her, smiles genuinely for the first time. A level of formality in the house had broken down; the dancers waved and signaled at one another, as Michelson held up fingers to signify a countdown. Now and then, she picked up discarded sweatshirts. She wore sloppy looking sweatpants covered with paint stains that matched the floor—clearly a reminder that she had painted the panels in abstract patterns of largely green and earth tones. While she is implicit in everything we're seeing, her immediate presence is in our ears, on the periphery, as a custodian.

Photo: Paula Court

Thinking back on it, I don't believe the dancers ever face us as they go through their jumping routines. Most of their performance faces away from us, toward the guards on duty. A pair of black men's shoes hang on that wall as well. The performers (also including John Hoobyar, Madeline Wilcox, and James Tyson) frequently move to the far corners, where their movements include squatting on their haunches facing the wall. When they are "offstage," waiting in the aisles, they turn to face the stage area, enjoining us as part of their team. 

We're close enough to feel the heat coming off their bodies. One had an open contusion on her spine, perhaps from doing somersaults, which elicits a measure of protective sympathy. But if you think about what athletes endure while going about their jobs, and ballerinas—bloody toes and awful injuries of all sorts—what's a contusion or two but a badge of honor? Hardly a stigmata.

The dancers' costumes changed from gymnastic-style long sleeved leotards in blue, to unitards of flesh and white, to black tights, to a floral bathing suit worn by Mannarino in the finale. White pared-down Converse All-Stars are worn throughout. Their hair is teased into afros. The sporty costumes are reminders of the basketball court-like shape of the gallery, underscored when the dancers casually toss off their sweatshirts mid-stage like basketball players pulling off their sweatpants when re-entering a game. In the closing moment (after a group hug by the dancers), recalling Devotion Study #1, a man wearing a horse head takes center stage and lies down like an odalisque, signaling the end. The lighting is most beautiful when it is primarily natural, coming from the famous geometric recessed window; it is augmented by soft golden light from one corner, and a closely-spaced row of spotlights topping one long wall.

I had a mixed reaction to Devotion Study #1 I think because of an overriding empathy with the performers, and what connective tissue torture the unending backward running seemed to entail, while I admired the dancers' endurance. But I found the first part of the project, Devotion (at the Kitchen), awe-inspiring, with its complete transformation of the space, and its Olympic-level calisthenics that showed the human body's potential. 4 belongs alongside Devotion. It quotes from that earlier work in movement and music, and in the effortful ecstasy resulting from it. Michelson mentions that she would like to return to the theater setting. That time is eagerly anticipated.

***

Footnote: 4 (closed) coincided neatly with the Whitney exhibition Rituals of Rented Island, a survey of performance art in the 1970s. While many of those projects had a shaggy dog, ad hoc, Fluxus quality, Michelson's defines a 21st century sleekness and exactitude that has perhaps come about from the digitization of everything. The gallery in which 4 took place will house a floor of the upcoming Whitney Biennial, a moment of calm before the storm.

Dance in Museums: Up Next, MOMA

MOMA announced a new dance program for the fall, Some sweet day, to be curated by Ralph Lemon, who over the last decade has become a kind of Yoda in the field. It will team up Jérôme Bel & Steve Paxton, Dean Moss & Faustin Linyekula, and Deborah Hay & Sarah Michelson. Per the press release, the pairs will theoretically be "engaged in an aesthetic, generational, and historical dialogue about each other's work and dance in particular."

Paxton/Bel will present older pieces (including, respectively, the popular Satisfying Lover and The Show Must Go On), while the latter two pairings will create new work for the atrium. The Linyekula/Moss collaboration also includes a "two-day interstitial performance by American artist Kevin Beasley." Wow.

This comes hot on the heels of the Whitney Biennial's ramped up dance program, which coincidentally featured Michelson as well. (Michael Clark's performances begin tonight and run through April 8. I blogged about this newfound emphasis on serious dance at the Whitney recently.) It also evokes Danspace Project's platform series, wisely rekindled in recent years; 2012's—curated by Ishmael Houston Jones—is just coming to a close, fittingly with an all-day event on Mar 31 put together by... Ralph Lemon.

The Whitney turned over its fourth floor, normally galleries, to dance/theater/music residencies and performances. MOMA's program differs from the Whitney's; although the performances will occupy the ominous/awesome atrium, they won't occupy gallery space normally dedicated to exhibiting a quantity of art, although it is often given over to one large-scale installation.

MOMA's best-known featured performance in recent memory has to be Marina Abramovic's in The Artist is Present, when visitors waited hours to sit across from her and be stared at. It was part of her much-hyped retrospective, which felt alternately elegiac and glib, with its live recreations of her historical performances that to me, begged to be left as one-time events, marking a moment in time and space. On the outset, Some sweet day avoids the aura of provocation and sensationalism that Abramovic's events had.

Of course both museums have had performance programs in the past, it's just that now they seem to be more prominent. It may take real estate and energy away from visual art, but it's good for dance, and it gives the museums some of the (literally) poor dance world's priceless cachet. And in fact, choreography that tilts toward the conceptual might fit better in a museum context than a theater.

Can't buy love, but at least you can borrow it.

The Whitney Biennial Spreads Its Wings

Eleanor Hullihan and Nicole Mannarino in Devotion Study #1—The American Dancer, Photo: Paula Court

Sarah Michelson’s Devotion Study #1—The American Dancer is essentially 90 minutes of six dancers (Nicole Mannarino and Eleanor Hullihan do the lion's share) walking backwards in circles, arms extended 90º most of the time. It's alternately awe-inspiring, like an act of penance—doing the Chartres maze backwards—mind-numbing, hypnotic, sublime, impenetrable, enlightening, and exhausting. The sound (by Michelson with James Lo) includes a constant metronome ticking, a building/diminishing chord, a starting dialogue between her and Richard Maxwell that repeats right away, and a closing monologue spoken by Michelson live. Dancers join, and later leave, Mannarino one by one, folding a wing down as they veer close to one another, scribing loop after loop, like invisibly crocheting in space, occasionally stopping in relevé, or posed in a line. Mannarino has drenched her longsleeved jumpsuit with sweat by the end of what is, undeniably, devotion, but with scant rewards for the viewer.

Michelson’s set/lighting/costume designs have always been meticulous, even meriting an  exhibition at the American Realness festival last January. A huge neon caricature portrait appears on the far wall, and on the dancers’ booties, adding to self-aggrandizing feel, ironic or not. (Devotion, at the Kitchen, featured Socialist Realist style oil paintings of Michelson and others.)

The prominence of dance at the Biennial—the stage takes up most of the entire fourth floor—is in part a response to the idea that performance art was steadily encroaching, so why not feature “serious choreography”? But when there are many serious dance presenters throughout the city, what responsibility does the Whitney Museum of American Art hold in giving over so much territory to dance by two British-born choreographers (Michael Clark will take up residency later on)? With the dedication of thousands of square feet to this stage, they are taking away rare major exhibition opportunities for visual artists. (It should be noted that performing arts presenters are similarly expanding their purview to include visual arts where possible—the Met Opera’s gallery, BAM’s art program, and the Kitchen’s gallery among them.)

Other time-based art to occupy the fourth floor includes a residency by Charles Atlas, and  Maxwell's company will hold open rehearsals. Performances by Georgia Sagri (integrated into her cozy own room installation on the mezzanine level) and Dawn Kasper (think Collyer Brothers), music performances, and film screenings will take place as well, including Werner Herzog's Hearsay of the Soul, and a video selection by George Kuchar.

The visual art appropriately, feels like a survey of the moment. Trends are elusive, although some outlined by the curatorial staff (Elisabeth Sussman, Sondra Gilman, and Jay Sanders) are the acknowledgement of work by other artists, and the blurring of lines between media. Notes on some of the art: Sam Lewitt, who makes floor pieces with magnetic fluid that evoke some bubbling prehistoric swampground. Wu Tsang's atmospheric "green room" in a carved out niche on the fourth floor, next to Michelson's dressing room. Elaine Reichek, who has been a fixture on the New York scene for years, getting some well-deserved attention, with statements in needlework. K8 Hardy's wall of displaced feminine iconography. Cameron Crawford's handsome sculptures that straddle found-object abstraction and environmental activism. 

Joanne Malinowska's Duchampian bottle rack of horns, and other mixed media pieces with her elegant aesthetic. Oscar Tuazon's simultaneously solid and transparent Escheresque ground floor room installation of passages, stairs, and doors. Vincent Fecteau's intriguing colorful biomechanical sculptures. Nicole Eisenman's eye-popping painting and monotype installation, impressive for its abundance. And Forrest Bess' small, vibrant symbolic paintings that resonate with Andrew Masullo's playful, phosphorescent-colored canvases. The scale is generally speaking on the small side, in contrast to Michelson's grand (if opaque) ambition.

Sarah Michelson: Uncompromising Devotion, 1/27/11

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Sarah Michelson's Devotion, at the Kitchen

http://www.thirteen.org/sundayarts/blog/sarah-michelson-uncompromising-devotion/1037/

Sarah Michelson's "Devotion." Photo by Paula Court.

Sarah Michelson’sDevotion, at The Kitchenthrough last weekend, is the work of an imaginative dance-theater artist able to uncompromisingly realize her specific vision. This work was based on Richard Maxwell’s elegant text, with the diverse dancers (including a game pair of his New York City Players) in the roles of Jesus, Mary, Adam, Eve, though their nonverbal actions bore scant gestural implication. Sections of the monologue (recorded by Michelson) alternated with Philip Glass’ exhilaratingDance IX, and music by Pete Drungle.

Michelson’s peculiar movement respects stasis, which punctuates stiff hops, leaps, and exaggerated Cunninghammy wide pliés in a turned-out fourth position, bodies forcibly concave. There’s a lot of plain old running, mostly by Eleanor Hullihan (Eve), whose luminous visage tops a sprinter’s muscular body. She repeatedly leaps into Jim Fletcher’s (Adam) arms, flipping directions; he also spins and dips her in the far upstage corner. The beanstalk Non Griffiths (Mary), 14, must hop and land on one foot countless times while maintaining a preternatural serenity. They’re joined by Nicole Mannarino, Rebecca Warner, and James Tyson.

Choreographers Curate, 1/29/10

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Jon Kinzel at the Kitchen, curated by Sarah Michelson.

http://www.thirteen.org/sundayarts/blog/performance/choreographers-curate/792/

There’s an interesting, welcome trendlet happening in New York dance now—choreographers as curators. Danspace Project has engaged Ralph Lemon to curate i get lost (through February 6), the first of its “platforms” designed to elucidate a distinct artistic perspective and add contextualization; Juliette Mapp curates the second platform, Back to New York City (March 1-April 10). At The Kitchen, Jon Kinzel’s Responsible Ballet And What We Need is a Bench to Put Books On runs through January 30, and is curated by Sarah Michelson.

Kinzel returns to perform in New York after a hiatus of several years, so it’s interesting to see how his work has gapped the time. In past work, he was interested in the total theater environment, with a strong emphasis on design, and in Responsible Ballet this continues. The visual elements, by Kinzel and Alexandre Kourako, are simple—white tape stripes on The Kitchen’s black brick wall which, late in the work, are stripped dramatically from the walls, and a wooden box which hides the dancers but for their legs, effecting “offstage” and partially hiding them as they contribute to the sound.

Kinzel has gathered a tremendous cast that includes many “all stars” of contemporary dance (as well as himself): Hilary Clark, Jodi Melnick, Jeremy Pheiffer, Vicky Shick, and Christopher Williams. The dancers perform duets—one exits and the other continues with another partner, melting the segues. By including dancers with such distinctive, individual onstage personalities, it was a bonus that these aspects would manifest in the work: Shick’s knack for making the simplest movement rich; Clark’s flair for injecting drama into stasis; Williams’ kinetic dartiness; Melnick’s fragile but undeniable strength. Kinzel gave each duet a subtle but legible style, grading the quality and force of each pair’s interactions, blending modified gestures and big dynamics with economy.

The sound (by Fly Ashtray, Kinzel, and Vivian Stoll) ranges from industrial to ambient to folk song, including a humming massager and Clark’s miked breathing, with troughs of silence between sections. Karen Walcott designed the effective lighting, so important in this big, very black box theater. I can’t tell you what the title means, but hopefully we’ll have a chance to puzzle over Kinzel’s next one in the near future.