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Random Dance CompanyNovember 1-3, 2001
Dance Center of Columbia College Perhaps the hardest thing for novice dance-goers is knowing where to look. Many sit tensely, eyes darting back and forth, terrified of missing what's really happening. Eventually, though, they realize that the choreographer's job is precisely to direct their eyes to the most important action, and then they can relax and enjoy. In their new work The Trilogy, Wayne MacGregor and his extraordinary Random Dance Company turn this simple observation into an extended meditation on the difficulties of communication and the responsibilities of communicants, speakers and the spoken-to alike. The 70-minute piece features video projections as well as live dancing, and though the former sometimes overwhelm the latter, that seems to be the point: the more noise there is, the more important it is to speak clearly and listen closely. Or perhaps a visual metaphor does more justice to the choreography's sharp athleticism and the stunning clarity of the dancing: make big gestures in the half-light or be content with invisibility. Peer through the fog of images, or resign yourself to blindness. The piece works on many other levels as well: as a comment about short attention spans and the distractibility of the contemporary mind; as a reminder that dance, and any other art featuring actual people, is threatened by other sources of stimulation now available; as a good-natured example of information overload. Each of these is in some sense a complaint, and works of complaint are rarely moving. What is moving is MacGregor's mourning of the loss of connection, to one another or to God: he keeps his dancers behind a scrim as a literal representation of seeing through a glass darkly. Yet the evening is anything but mournful; rather, it is characterized by vigorous attempts to break through barriers and reestablish connection. Particularly in the first movement, the eight dancers are in relentless hyperkinetic movement, with a change of position to every buzz and pound of the non-musical soundtrack. But the more they move, the less they get anywhere, as MacGregor makes clear by letting the opening solo drag on slightly too long. He deliberately toys with the audience's attention span to drive home the difficulty of paying attention to what matters, and then abruptly shifts his own focus to something new. That "something new" is a head-to-head battle between the images on the scrim and the dancers behind it. Those images, created by animator Timo Arnall, range from Hubble space telescope pictures, to diagrams of circuitry, to visual static; but all contrive to distort the dancers into something weird and cartoonish, raising the question what is alive and what's merely animated. The choreography does its part to make this point, putting dancers in odd crouches where only a buttock and the curve of a shoulder are visible. So contorted, they form a blob both meaningful and comic, like Bugs Bunny after encountering a frying pan. The dancing is magnificently athletic, with midair splits and lunges, and witty, as when three dancers leap up and down behind a projection of horizontal bars like living notes on a staff. Anything but subtle: no small gestures would do for real people competing with enormous projections of themselves and other dancers. Random Dance Company's press release refers to the projections as "virtual partners" which sounds like Gene Kelly dancing with Tom and Jerry in Anchors Aweigh. In fact, no one onstage dances with a projection; rather, the projection offers an alternative version of what's happening onstage -- the choreographer's second thoughts, perhaps, or the distortions he fears the audience may see. There is more interaction between stage and screen in the second movement, Sulphur 16 (Fire). The first dancer appears between the huge projected legs of a bare-breasted woman, and then moves forward to reveal that she is the woman in the projection. The others join her in identical androgynous red jumpsuits, and now the topic seems to be the mutability of gender, shown in unexpected lifts of men by women and of women by each other. But again the central point is the mutability of everything, the fragility of connections. They break and reform at near-light speed into unpredictable pairings and three-ways. MacGregor's stunt-filled vocabulary, in which being upside down is as routine as being upright, is perfect for this message of disconnection. Though the dancers are utterly controlled, they convey their namesake randomness through sheer recklessness in tearing through the moves. That speed is essential to give such intellectual work its visceral kick: there's a lot to think about but no time to think it in an experience so electric. The third movement begins with a satire of eroticism, as underwear-clad people make seductive moves on each other without striking the smallest sexual sparks. On screen, though, the same movements by the same people are blurred and erotically charged: if love isn't blind it should be! But then the visuals turn red, and MacGregor himself, times eight, is projected across the front of the stage break-dancing and then high-kicking like the complete Rockette. Behind him, each dancer jumps in with a different move to complement his, until the entire ensemble (virtual and real) is caught up in a buoyant, precise chorus line. It's the most joyous, and most visually stunning, moment of the piece. Once again, though, it abruptly changes direction: no matter how ebullient the dance, there's always something lurking behind, the skull behind the smiling mask. As a single dancer in black strides onstage, the projections change to portraits of men looking gaunt and miserable, and what comes to mind is Eliot's lament: "We are the hollow men." The man in black finds a partner in a red jumpsuit and they dance to the sound of fire popping, while on screen the androgynous red person is blurred to look like a flame. Then a reversal: virtual pas de deux, actual solo. It's frustrating because you can't take your eyes off the screen -- until the soloist is projected, hugely magnified. He's so close his flesh looks gross, as though human beings were just meat puppets -- or meat cartoons. At last the scrim rises, and all the dancers are dressed in white and bathed in warm light. Now there's old-fashioned romantic music instead of industrial noise, and a traditional pas de deux right down to the glittering costumes -- even if the glitter is attached to underwear. Lifts and twirls are so exaggerated that the dancers look comic instead of accomplished. They're tossed and caught like baseballs, as though the choreographer were saying, "Here! Is this any more 'real' than what went before?" And then he answers himself, transferring the graceful pas de deux to the screen and leaving the dancers onstage with only the most awkward real-life moves: slapping their own butts, not knowing what to do with their hands. Final instructions, perhaps: "Be sure to look at what's actually there, not what's being projected about it." Perhaps, as the Beatles say, there's nothing you can see that isn't shown, but MacGregor urges us to try looking. The Trilogy is an exceptionally rewarding place to start. --Kelly Kleiman |
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