Last week, Bibliotheca Alexandrina’s sixth Creative Forum for Independent Theater Groups hosted vastly different dance performances.
The Italian group Milo e Frida presented “Varco on Wednesday evening, while the 6 pm and 8 pm slots on Thursday served Spain’s “La Coja Dansa (Much to Lose), followed by “Duiveldans III performed by Hillary Blake Firestone of the Netherlands.
Thursday’s back-to-back performances belonged to the same genre with immense differences in technique, capacity and form. Both utilized a modern gestural vocabulary, reminiscent of work that sprung out of environments like New York City’s 1960s Judson Church Dance Movement, a wave of the then avant-garde that embraced site specific performance, pedestrian movement and conceptual points of departure.
Performances often had indefinite running times. Conjuring the later aspect, “La Coja Dansa of Spain, asked several members of the festival to join them on stage and to remain standing in their same place for one hour. As the primary dancer noodled his way on stage, his main interaction involved nuzzling up to participants’ legs, periodically lying on the floor at their feet, then walking slowly away.
Two other dancers held video cameras, which shot live action on the stage.
The video, however, was mostly confined to still objects. From time to time, words would flash across a video screen with no connection to the movement on stage. The troupes dancers were similarly unaffected by the words. La Coja Dansa were somehow content in believing that an hour of movement class exercises before an audience could somehow substitute for a performance. To their credit, some members in the audience were equally convinced.
“Duiveldans III was a work of much deeper forethought, concept and edgy elegance. Choreographer/performer Hillary Blake Firestone, accompanied by accomplished Dutch musician Reinier van Houdt, accompanied by a grand piano presented a throwback to the work of 1960s conceptual dance icon Yvonne Rainer.
The work, originally choreographed for large cathedrals by Dutch minimalist composer Simeon ten Holte, segmented a gallery space in the Bibliotheca with lines of red tape through which Firestone coyly, energetically, and relentlessly, danced between.
In the 1960s lines of rope, games of chance, mathematic arrangement of scores in music, dance and visual arts enacted an important counter response to the unexamined nostalgia and romanticism that had ruled the arts to that point. In the years that followed, this subaltern aesthetic itself became a modus operandi and now dictates much of what is considered clever, strong or important in the West.
Departing from post-modern reserves of the night before came the poignant duet “Varca, by Frida Vannini and Carmelo Scarcella. Blending strong dance technique with deep capacity for meaningful communication with their audience, the pair wordlessly elaborated on a simple theme – the progression of the male/female relationship – without resorting to cliché.
“Varca employs a simple yet innovative use of material. A wooden table with a window cut inside becomes the portable chamber of their domestic site. A tall post with spikes evoked the image of a light house (in real life, Scarcella divides his time as a sea captain) and served a variety of functions within the piece.
Barefoot and wearing a simple wedding dress, Vannini evoked the past with a timelessness that could have been as easily set in the 1940s or 1840s. For his part Scarcella danced with wide suspenders, worn trousers and old-fashioned work boots. The two begin their story with beautifully executed unison movement, a time of new love and promise.
Times move quickly, and the couple are soon engaged in the fear and longing of a couple inextricably bound. Vannini grasps a layer of Scarcella’s white skirt and lifts it over her head, transforming her into a bride. The two trace abstract crosses over their chests, mouth exaggerated vows with a contradictory subtlety and are silently married.
Throughout the piece, Scarcella moves with substantive delicacy in and out of what becomes his unwitting obligation to oppress his partner. An elegant love is transformed into a prison of controlling gesture as he becomes obsessed with shaping his wife’s life, thoughts and simple movement.
He drags her toward him to perform compulsory tasks; she hangs crooked elbowed in his arms. He climbs the pole. She seeps under the table, tracing wooden spikes frantically on the floor. The table is turned upward and Scarcella reaches to the audience from the small window. Her bare arms twist outward, creating one of the several remarkable images the duo consciously conjure throughout the performance of vines solemnly twirling outward from a tree, seeking the sun.
The two never upstage each other. They seem to have cultivated a science of reverence; for the stage, the audience, themselves. They take their time, stretching simple gestures into meaningful moments. Contrary to pretentious space filling in empty modern dance, their pace is an act of bravery. Milo e Frida simultaneously invite us into our own pain and a deep love that lies at the edge of consciousness.
The Sixth Creative Forum for Independent Theater Groups concludes tonight. For more information, visit www.iact-eg.org. Tel: (03) 483 9999.
