Performance | Performance Space New York

Sentence

Titled “Sentence,” the evening of David Neumann’s choreography, presented at P.S. 122, takes clever inspiration from Donald Barthelme’s notion of a sentence. While Barthelme’s writings claim the sentence is a man-made construction to be treasured for its weakness, rather than its strength, Neumann’s multidisciplinary dance piece demonstrates the value of loosening conventional rules of focus and logic toward the creation of strong theatrical expression.

Neumann’s work delivers potent food for thought, but is so fluidly constructed that viewers must play active roles in the making of the presentation—deciding which of the many activities to focus on, figuring out how, or if, to connect them, and even determining what is part of the performance and what isn’t. The show ends with the performers sitting in chairs, gazing out at us, as if we are now expected to provide “Act II.”

The program’s centerpiece, “Sentence,” is preceded by an excerpt from “Deep Six,” which segues so gracefully into the following work that it seems to be all one dance. A nervous security guard, whom we’ve seen roaming about the space earlier, walks on stage and, though the action halts, it feels like things are still proceeding. In Neumann’s work, it often appears as if nothing important is going on, yet so much is happening. His sly sense of juxtaposition dares us to decide what to ignore. While we’re waiting for some dancing to “begin,” a techie suddenly races down from the back of the house to flip a light switch. Someone has forgotten to turn off the work lights. Or have they? When a curtain is accidentally caught in scaffolding during a set change, a woman is revealed coming out of the dressing room, half-naked. If it looks like an accident, and quacks like an accident… Or is it Neumann commenting on the imperfectness of communication?

Despite the fun of batting at the intellectual absurdities Neumann pitches, the evening’s high points were the extended dance passages—a sheepish solo performed with skilled awkwardness by Adrienne Truscott, an absorbing male quartet, and a duet in which Neumann performs his beautifully blurred vocabulary of modern and club dance styles.

Bitter Bierce

Journalist. War Veteran. Cynic. Author. Ambrose Bierce invites audiences into the depths of his eventful life, lacing his tale with his sarcastic definitions from “The Devil’s Dictionary.” Rich with history, humor, and tragedy, Bierce tells us the tumultuous story of his life and times, from his experiences in the Civil War and his newspaper career, to his travels and amusing run-ins with famous public figures.

https://www.macwellman.com/bio.html

Trick Saddle

With a synchronized underwater cowboy ballet as its cinematic backdrop, Trick Saddle presents a posse of women in pursuit of cowboy mythology. Armed with grit and unerring wit, these trick riders turn the cowboy legend inside out and upside down through music, song, dance, dialogue, video, and of course, trick saddle routines. Rogers & Galilee continue their visual dance work in this fractured Western with a gender twist. It’s Busby Berkeley meets classic cowboy flick; the Wild West meets Esther Williams.
Hope Clark
Gender is a trick – it’s the saddle you wear and the saddle you ride. Ride on.

CREATED & CONCEIVED BY
Clove Galilee & Jenny Rogers

DIRECTED & DESIGNED BY
Jenny Rogers

CHOREOGRAPHED BY
Clove Galilee

FEATURING
Karen Kandel
Francesca Harper
Hope Clark
LoMa Familar
Clove Galilee

ORIGINAL LIVE MUSIC BY
Allison Cornell

LIGHTING BY
Kevin Taylor

Stable

Stable begins with the audience entering a very brightly lit theater and seeing three identical Rottweilers, outfitted in cowboy costumes, confined within a plexiglass corral the size of the stage. While the sound track, a Country Western Line Dance instructor calling out and teaching the steps for particular line dances with accompanying Country Western Music, plays loudly, the dogs perform or do not perform. As the piece unfolds, or performs the refusal to unfold, towards the end of the first 20 minutes of the piece, the only certain choreographic action is 3 to 5 tennis balls, one at a time in three-minute intervals, fall from the grid into the corral. The first creates great excitement for the dogs but, by the last, it becomes predictable for them (and the audience) and their once spirited reaction fades. At the 25-minute mark, on the back wall of the stage, suddenly a life-size projection of the audience begins. The video is the documentation of the audience in the first 15 minutes of the piece. Using a hidden videographer behind the back wall of the stage or hidden in the grid, the audience is shown in a timedelayed reflection of themselves. At first the camera records in a wide-shot, which replicates exactly the dimensions of the audience and creates the spatial effect of turning the theater around 90 degrees. During the 15 minutes of video documentation, the camera steadily and slowly moves in for close-ups. Eventually every member of the audience is recorded in either close-up or a small group-shot. Towards the end of the 15-minute video projection, the camera returns to a wider wide-shot revealing that there is a small black box stage behind the audience containing a dancer. This female dancer is naked except for a saddle and cowboy boots and hat and is performing a slower and sexier version of the choreography described by the Country Western Line Dance instructor in the soundtrack. At this moment the audience of course realizes that there was in fact a “dance performance” but situated behind them and the reaction is to turn around to see the dancer live but, by the time the video is being projected, the dancer has exited and only her costume remains. A photo of this naked cowgirl character is the only image used for the publicity of the piece. The audience, when finally seeing the solo dancer behind them in the projected video connects her to the seductive promotion for the show. After the 15-minute video projection is completed the lights and sound have reached the final stages of an almost imperceptible 45-minute fade to complete silence and darkness. For the final 5 minutes of the piece there is the sensation of a kind deletion or blanking or putting the theater to sleep. After a 30-second hold in complete black, the lights abruptly return to house and the show is over. There is no curtain call.

The intent is to create an environment where it is impossible for the audience to perform as audiences generally do. With Stable, I am working to shift the focus and bring to the audience an awareness of their own behavior and desire by setting up expectations for the audience and then not delivering. By experimenting with thresholds of intensity (and the lack thereof), assumptions about expertise, the different tolerance levels for live vs. mediated experience, and at the same time not asking the question “what is entertaining?” but rather asking, “WHO is entertaining?”Stable demonstrates how the rehearsed and automatic behavior of an art consumer controls the

development of expectations during the course of art consumption and while collapsing this system, I simultaneously, generously, gives the audience what they ultimately want: to see themselves inside the artwork.

Art, Life, & Show-Biz

P.S. 122, in conjunction with the Pick-Up Performance Company, presents the world premiere of Art, Life, & Show-Biz, A Non-Fiction Play. Written, transcribed and directed by Ain Gordon, the piece is culled from interviews, archival research and stories from his cast: Helen Gallagher, of Broadway musical theater fame; Lola Pashalinski, a founding member of Charles Ludlam’s Theater of the Ridiculous; and Valda Setterfield, British-born long-time Merce Cunningham dancer.