Monday, September 24, 2012

Freudian Critiques


Two words: ballet recital. What comes to mind?

Six year olds in powder pink leotards and floppy ballet shoes trying to keep up with each other while a frantic instructor coaches from the wings? Not tonight, not at Walt Disney Concert Hall, and not on Benjamin Millepied's watch.

Photo courtesy of LA Weekly
The acclaimed French dancer turned choreographer on Saturday debuted his curatorial collective of six dancers who form the Los Angeles Dance Project. The remarkably talented sextet -- Julia Eichten, Nathan B. Makolandra, Amanda Wells, Frances Chiverini, Morgan Lugo, and, my personal favorite, Charlie Hodges -- performed three pieces on the concert hall's BP Hall stage:

First was a 1993 William Forsythe piece called Quintett, which saw five of the performers engaging the audience with incredible physical balletic movement and a display of the farthest reaches of human capability to the tune of the monotonous, repetitive, yet flowing "Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet" by Gavin Bryars. For my personal taste, this piece was not cohesive enough and, despite the dancer's superhuman physical abilities and mastery of the difficult choreography with which they were tasked, it left me a bit bored and confused. Searching for meaning, I got the sense it was a comment on domestic abuse and the abused consistently returning to their abuser....but upon reading the printed description of the piece it seems to be simply an ode to movement. I felt like there was a message waiting to be conveyed that was ignored or didn't make it across, and the dancers' costumes in this piece were also a let down, with no cohesion in color, fabric, or style. The end result of the costumes looked like a frantic group had snatched whatever they could grab from a 1970's discard pile in 30 seconds in pitch darkness. And after hearing the same 30 seconds of (what seemed to be) a nostalgic geriatric crooner singing one line repeated with minimal variation for 26 minutes, I felt as if I'd just spent the evening visiting someone with Alzheimer's.

The second piece was vehemently panned by most of the audience, but for me it was unspeakably inspirational. Choreographed by Merce Cunningham in 1964, Winterbranch featured all six dancers dressed in simple black tight-fitting sweatsuits, with black football-esque warpaint under their eyes and a nontraditional lighting display (modeled after walking along a freeway at night) that featured random flashes of illumination in various colors, intensities, and patterns -- often, it resembled lightning, and other times the black-clad dancers were in complete darkness save for some off-stage lighting from the wings. To me, it loaned an intoxicating sense of mystery and closeness to the performance. The piece was choreographed by Cunningham to highlight two motions of dance: rising and falling. The dancers rose and fell in a wide variety of motions and speeds, at times tumbling over each other in slow motion or holding an extended pause mid-rise, while in other instances the six came together in a whirling human tornado or breathed up and down, in and out, like a massive organ of human bodies. It certainly breathed life into me.

The highly experimental music piece by La Monte Young was what offended most of the audience: entitled 2 Sounds, it was an overlapping of the sound of ashtrays being rubbed against a mirror and wood being rubbed against a Chinese gong -- if those are not sounds you've ever had the pleasure of hearing, imagine a screaming tea kettle meeting an impossibly heavy iron table being dragged across a hardwood floor. Many patrons plugged their ears, some walked out and others booed, but I found the jarring music combined with the serene dancing to be a liberating comment on duality, the expansiveness of life's experiences, and how people must continue peacefully along their path of life -- rising and falling with the tides -- in the face of distractions or turbulence. During the second intermission after this 16-minute performance, a man I spoke to said he felt the piece to be insulting to the attendee's artistic intelligence -- he felt that, by including it, Millepied doubted the artistic intelligence of Californians (as opposed to New Yorkers) and was purposely presenting a piece that the audience was sure to hate simply so he could prove that they don't "get" performance art. Which, to me, was the night's Freudian Critique. It's one thing to dislike a piece and know why, but if you dislike it because you feel you were expected to understand it and can't, I don't consider that a fault of the artist. I consider that a fault of a too-narrow perspective coupled with a lack of curiosity and courage to ask questions.

The final and crowning piece, the world premier of Moving Parts, was Millepied's choreography, with the six dancers clad in simple, elegant pieces designed by sisters Kate and Laura Mulleavy of Rodarte and moving to music composed and performed live by Nico Muhly. This trio -- Millepied, Muhly, and Rodarte -- have already proven their success as a team through performances around the world and on the silver screen in 2010's Black Swan, and they did not disappoint on Saturday. Muhly played the organ that sits above the BP Hall stage, and was accompanied by violinist Lisa Liu and clarinetist Phil O'Connor. The whimsical organ and traditional balletic style of the piece's opening gave me a poetic sense of the dancers as children at play, and yogic poses highlighting the dancers' strength captivated me while the emotion-filled violin nearly drew me to tears at the beauty I had the privilege of witnessing. The costumes by Rodarte were simple black pieces that featured well-placed stripes in either gray, red, or yellow -- one across the dancers chest from shoulder to shoulder, and the other running down their left sides from shoulder to ankle -- that perfectly accented their motions. The women's flowy dresses had a delicate stringed back that was so indicative of the designers but also perfectly elegant without being so showy as to distract from the choreography. The set involved three large panels on wheels adorned with overlaid numbers, symbols, and lines using the same three colors featured in the costumes which were pushed around the stage throughout the performance by the dancers.

For some reason, Millepied felt the need to break his 27-minute piece into three small sections with a full black out and applause in between -- this, to me, was both unnecessary and detracted from an otherwise fluid and poetic arrangement. The second portion had a faster tempo and spectacular leaps and spins, with a stronger emphasis on performance art movement than Ballanchine-inspired dancing. At one point all six members pressed into each other, slowly evolving with the more somber tone of Muhly's composition and writhing in a massive, connected expression of human beauty and emotion. Also in the second portion was a duet featuring Makolandra and Lugo that saw many of the same movements as a male-female pairing (lifts, spins, soft closeness that resembles a heart pulsing under velvet), but with a greater variety as both participants here had the strength to lift and throw each other in entrancing whirls of motion that were ever-unexpected. The third and final portion of Moving Parts returned to more traditional ballet choreography, with Hodges making the energized moves look astoundingly easy, the ecstasy he felt evident in his face -- each of the dancers seemed, for the majority of Millepied's piece, to be blissfully unaware of the audience, lost in the music and the energy of their dance. They rode the intricate music like a wave, responding to plucking violin strings with high-knee tip-toeing and switching easily between solo performances, duets, trios, and ensemble portions. To me, the message of the piece was one of coexistence, of appreciation for both the individual self and the unity of many. When all was said and done, the dancers -- and a seemingly elated and relieved Millepied, who had spent the evening looking rather nervous -- received a standing ovation.

Photo courtesy of JustJared.com
The after-party celebrating the premiere was hosted by sponsor Van Cleef & Arpels. Joining the honored artist were, among others, his newly-blonde wife, Natalie Portman (in Christian Dior), and personal friends Robert Pattinson (in Gucci) and Dita von Teese (in Burberry). I myself took the opportunity to prove fashion does not exist exclusively at one lofty price point: my entire ensemble cost less than $150, with my beloved teal peplum stunner from Anat B on Montana Avenue ($50), black platform almond-toe pumps from ShoeDazzle.com ($30 -- no shame in the fashion game; remember: it's how you look, not what you spend!), an exceptional vintage clutch handed down from my mother, a gladiator helmet ring from new boutique 5th Stitch Collective in San Francisco's Castro district ($16), and earrings from BCBG that I bought for 75% off by working at their Union Square flagship store. I did a smokey eye with Stormy Pink Revlon Lustrous lipstick, and my hair pulled back in a ballerina bun (always my preferred hair-do for ballets -- firstly, as an ode to the performers; secondly, because I tend to wear more stand-out dresses that need not be fettered and hidden by flowing locks).


Overall, the evening gave me the feeling of a group of artists coming together and uniting for the sole purpose of fulfilled expression. There was a pronounced lack of fear for harsh criticism, and a profound connectedness, alacrity, whimsy, and support among the group as they fully committed themselves in the name of unadulterated creation and inspiration.

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