SADLERS WELLS
060907
FIREBIRD – Maurice Béjart
THE GOLDEN SECTION – Twyla Tharp
REVELATIONS – Alvin Ailey
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~ Maurice Béjart – circular floor patterns enclosing dancers, or linear tight group facing audience in centre of stage – circles and centre – I can’t see past the ballet! – can’t even apply my theories – lot of stiff forced lines – a very small and repetitive vocabulary of movement - what does this indicate? – emphasis on a static physical geometry of extended lines – symmetrical patterns – how do I view these? Static snapshots – movement as transition, not as subject matter – unless a held position is seen as a kind of movement – what is going on in this kind of dance? It is obviously stylised – very stylised – bodies detouring into experiential places that most bodies don’t do – but what is that sharing, sociokinetically? Symmetry is an emphasis on balance and order – security and stability – it is overt – a projected overt-ness trying to enclose bodies in communities of care – the care associated with being in a group or being enclosed and protected by a group – or trapped by it – or the group sticking together out of vulnerability and fear - the forced extended shapes become threatening, like weapons – pointed weapons, projectiles – accusatory, sharp, directional – self protecting as well as dangerous to others – like the needles on the porcupine – the solo dancer depicts/enacts the hero/martyr narrative, echoed as a double-dose of grace by the second spirit figure emerging upstage out of the dark of the heavens – his entrance towards the audience orients him as a benefactor that has come out of the infinitesimal recesses of the disappearing perspectival vanishing point, and so his passage and offering is directed into the world (as his pathway extends across the proscenium to embrace every seat in the auditorium) – saviour myths rankle me, they are obviously deep-rooted, but in this form lack a sense of personal – even though the dancers are clad mostly by skin, which gives them the vulnerability of exposed-ness – it still looks formulaic, the clichéd modern tribal in a world that has nothing similar to which to connect it to – tradition encrusting truth
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~ Twyla Tharp raises a different range of questions – the movement vocabulary was less restricted, with attempts to free up and animate hips and shoulders by incorporating popular dance-jazz-funk moves – in contrast to the rigid spatial emphasis on formal lines, circles, symmetry, and perspectivalism in Béjart, Tharp is deliberately destroying the boundaries and messing up the pathways as much as possible – a mayhem of activity masquerading as communal celebration and joy – so what of it sociokinetically? This is an avoidance of the circularity of the tribal ritual and a depiction of the business of the city street – celebration of life in the overcrowded congestion of the metropolis – narrow passageways, near misses, not enough time to engage with others other than emphatically and with impact – in attempting clarity amidst rush, what is created is a borderline whose edges are continually dissolving into messiness and blur – this is a freneticism faking its own joy because the pace destroys clarity, depth, satisfaction, and completion – life on the run – running is an exuberance, an energy, an abundance, a vitality – but it is also an escape, a departure, a getting away – a lack of commitment to the moment – no staying power – like the dance – flashes of attempted visual impact, like the gloss of advertising – contemporary advertising in the capitalist metropolis is about sex, impact, and shine – the costumes were skimpy shiny gold – reference, like Béjart, but this time with lots of lifting and partnering as the central activity, to mythologising human life as communal and vital – but the smiles are the smiles of professionals (the professional politician, the professional salesperson, the professional celebrity, the professional performer) and were echoed on my face as a grimace
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~ Alvin Ailey freed up the space in a more nuanced and crafted way than the other two, albeit conventionally – the movement fitted the dancers more securely, perhaps the material has been performed more often – what did I see in terms of my sociokinetic agenda? The same emphasis on creating a body world peopled by the architecture of movement – as with Béjart, the group featured as a community, but the tribal was given an overt Christian subjectivity, colonised – sensuality was present in this as a current and a flow, represented tangibly in the river section/symbolism, that streamlined sexuality with spiritual grace, a device that sublimates it – and craftily incorporates it into the camp of the opposition – use of diagonal, sultry swaying steps, lack of fear of pause and slowness, stillness’s that weren’t forced – deliberate use of time, but a time that suggests unhurried travelling, but still purposeful – it’s a pulling back that is about moving forward in a coordinated way and making do – climaxes strangely with men and women in church in synchronised uniformity of attire and attitude – individuality that pits the sexes against each other but centralises and elevates the women as the guardians and moralisers overseeing the swaggering men circling beneath them – a climax of regimentation in the grid-o-sphere – boxed by the urban trap – a community populated by the innumerable nuclei of two – being faithful to partner and lord – the transition from river to temple – natural to urbane
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