photo credit: Serena Davidson
These days, there are as many definitions of postmodernism as there are well, I was going to say Eskimo words for snow, but a little research revealed that 1. Inuit don’t like being called Eskimos and 2. They don’t have very many words for snow. It’s a myth.
Postmodern can mean “self-referential,” “appropriative,” “critical of the mythologizing of the role of the artist,” “from the era after which the succession of ‘modern’ movements in any particular creative field are commonly seen to have ‘ended’” etc. Sometimes, it’s just convenient shorthand for “weird and abstruse.” Instead of saying, “I just finished watching a performance in which a dancer wearing orthopedic shoes twitchily shook a tambourine and occasionally yelled out, ‘Next! Pony!’ or ‘Nest!Pony!’ I’m not sure which,” I simply told a friend who called me immediately after a performance of Deborah Hay’s Mountain, “I’ve been watching postmodern dance.” Which is not to say that I didn’t like this piece; I did. After responding negatively to Jennifer Monson/iLand as well as the more accomplished BeBe Miller Company, I wondered if I could actually like contemporary dance stripped of the eyecandy and high energy antics that helped me access Nature Theater of Oklahoma and Yubiwa Hotel.
When the woman next to me in the theater asked if I’d seen anything else I liked, I immediately replied, “Nature Theater of Oklahoma.” Asked to elaborate, I commented that NTO toyed with conventions in dance and theater by building a performance around props and movements from everyday life. “Like a spoof?” Kind of, but more complex, because it was also using dance to spoof everyday life. “That sounds delightful.”
Then the houselights dimmed, and a woman wearing what looked like a scrunchy made of cotton balls appeared before us, shaking maracas. I immediately noted the spare, beautiful stage lighting, which was employed successfully throughout the performance, the effective costuming choices, the skilled, likable dancers, the way that having the dancers make music to their dancing with maracas, tambourine and chimes was a clever reversal of the usual order of things, but more than anything else, I noticed myself noticing these things and waiting to see if I could become truly absorbed. Eventually, it happened. The turning point was an interlude in which one of the dancers changed into a grimacing troll-like embodiment of the human impulse to torture and kill others of our kind. It was grotesquely comedic, nauseating, but also provocatively pushing whatever buttons packed Romans into the amphitheater to watch people be devoured by lions. At that point, I started to sense the dancers sensing our reactions to them, to feel like they were dancing to me, not at me. It was a conversation, no less interesting because it was without words, except, occasionally “Nest!Pony!” or something equally bizarre. Eventually I became so absorbed in the performance that I didn’t need narrative aides; the dancers’ simple movements commanded my attention like twitching strings before a cat.
This post is getting long, so please bear with me. Or don’t–the review is over, but I wanted to comment on a comment on a post that was written awhile ago, but which I just got around to reading, about Nature Theater of Oklahoma. Self-indulgent? Probably. But isn’t self-indulgence at the heart of blogging? Reclaiming cultural discourse from the squares with word counts, editors, journalism degrees, advertisers, fact-checkers and critical templates? Not according to Bryan Markovitz, who would like us to “describe the methodology and formal techniques that [writers and choreographers] present within the historical context from which they draw inspiration.” Markovitz expressed this idea in response to Kirsten Collins’ post on NTO, critiquing her approach to writing about NTO (which surprised me because I’ve found her posts to be among the most consistently eloquent and insightful on the blog. Singling out her thoughtful piece on NTO over say, my own contribution–comprised largely of musings on such important topics as beards and making out–may have been a compliment of sorts) He acknowledges that what he’s truly critical of is the popular misconception that NTO is cutting-edge theater, adding intriguingly that “Pavol [ Poetics:a ballet brut’s director] is a very perverse fellow.”
It made me think back to the beginning of TBA and James Yarker of Stan’s Cafe saying in his lecture, Why be a professional artist? that his theater group was ignored early on because they didn’t have the right haircuts, the right trainers. Meaning British sneakers. That he learned that artists without a lot of depth can get far with the right look and a knack for hitting the zeitgeist. Nature Theater? has excellent trainers. And as I’ve noted earlier on the blog, powerful, zeitgeist-hitting hair. And yes, the theatrical techniques they employ are likely played out as impetuses for provoking sweeping paradigm shifts about the role of art and artists, at least for those familiar with the history of postmodern theatrical experimentation. And they seem to know that and not care. The fact that this territory is already mapped makes it easier to goof around in. But, I still think NTO is doing something valuable by making theater fun and insinuating the uniquely life-affirming qualities of live performance into the realm of viable entertainment. And their performance inspired me to become more interested in performances of all kinds, including more challenging work.
Markovitz sees it differently, commenting, “My concern … is how it stalls the real progress toward a new kind of performance experience that might truly change the way we understand live art. This kind of work, which demands highly specialized sites and modes of viewing, has not yet found a way to coexist with the survival interests of the contemporary arts performing circuit, which must sell a very limited kind of culture if it is to survive.” I’m not quite informed enough to venture a rebuttal to that.
Jessica Bromer
photo credit: Serena Davidson
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Jessica,
Ostensibly, my purpose in responding to Kirsten’s blog was to rub her views against the sandpaper of history, so to speak, and to generate conversation, which I see that I have succeeded in doing.
I felt this was important because the residue of her experience with the performance, as well as the way she responded to another comment on her post, seemed to be trying to contextualize what was so wrong with most theater and so right with the Nature Theater of Oklahoma. Kirsten was already intellectualizing her experience with the performance with language, and I felt the urge to help develop and expand the polemic she introcuced (i.e. most theater is bad and this theater is good). I also just happened to read her blog on the same day that I read James Elkins’ pamphlet, “What Happened to Art Criticism?” So there you go.
But you’re perceptions are spot on. There is a slippage in what I wrote that pulls my words into a deeper and more personal frustration that I have with making performance and getting it into the world where it can be received by an audience. Specifically, my writing reveals the insecurities of an artist who feels the pressure to succeed in the marketplace of contemporary performance and art. The fundamental question at the heart of that insecurity: “What is it that fails in my decade of effort to reinvigorate the experience of a live performance while others succeed?”
Fortunately, the weather in Chicago changed to fall today and with it, I have shifted back to the other end of what it means to be an artist, which is to say that while the resources, exposure and validation that the art marketplace offers would be nice, it has nothing to do with the reason why I experiment with performance (nor with why the Nature Theater of Oklahoma does so). Neither of us has any control over why some work is amplified by institutions and offered to a broader audience, while other work is made for a smaller audience on the margins of culture.
The truth is that there are too many artificial divisions in the arena of art to count them anymore and the losses we incur are silent and unequivocal. That is why artists compete for scraps of resources and the myth of the “mainstream” versus the “avant garde” is perpetuated. That is why acting is now considered tired and irrelevant while the quotidian gesture is seen as fresh and contemporary. That is why artists try to find gimmicks that can be read as marks of originality and genius. We’ve all done it, and I would be the first to admit my own monumental effort. Clever, very. The best gimmicks are the ones that read as unintentional, unforced and natural outcomes of an artist’s need to express him or herself. But they are gimmicks nonetheless, because it is the role of the artist to make a choice – this and not that. The reason I have gone for the pejorative of “gimmick” is because I sense that what we have lost in art is the experience of pursuing something beyond cleverness or what is often called “relevance.”
What is this something? Well, that is the question. That’s why I make work, popularity be damned, and that is why TBA is actually a good thing, despite its predictable trends and effort to be relevant and trend-setting in the face of financial realities. TBA is a glimpse of what a community of art could be if it could exist outside of bureaucracies and market demands. Art becoming an ongoing experience, a way of constantly seeing the world with fresh eyes. Form, as Lyn Hejinian once said, not as a fixture, but an activity.
So, in that sense, Poetics: A Ballet Brut is spot-on and I applaud all the artists who had the power to catch the curatorial eye and deliver that message with their exceptionally “good haircuts.” The bitter truth is that only a few of the people who attended TBA will seek out a local community of artists who make work year-round (and I am not referring to the vast majority of us reading this blog). At least for a few weeks, PICA has hinted at what they are missing.
The reason I write any of this at all is because, like you, I care deeply about these issues and want to offer an antidote to the cotton candy of language used to describe the experience of this festival. Like art, TBA succeeds even when it fails.
Erratum: My last post incorrectly spelled the name of choreographer Jérôme Bel.
I actually didn’t think their haircuts were exceptional.
Other than that: Bryan, I hear you. I too wish the energy generated by TBA would spread out into the rest of the year. And not just for selfish reasons (though mostly).
Then again… I think it’s a dilemma not unique to Portland. People often don’t know or care about work that is being done in their own city, whereas work of the same calibre from across the country/ocean/continent is considered brilliant. Even the great Jerzy Grotowski was sneered at for years in his home base of Opole; it wasn’t until the French and Americans became entranced with his work that the critics in Poland changed their tune. So maybe we’re doomed to sell our wares elsewhere, no matter what.
As for Nature Theater: I found the show delightful, which surprises me, because it was the most hyped of all. Kudos to them for figuring out how to circumvent my critical eye somehow.
Faith,
Nature Theater’s work is good because Pavol and Kelly are smart artists and skillful entertainers. There is plenty to discuss about their work when looking at it critically, but it is good that it doesn’t prevent you from engaging and enjoying the experience of the performance. The most engaging work should provoke criticism, which is severly lacking in theater and performance at present.
I think the success or failure of a work in the art market or in the history books is more complicated than geographic scope. Certainly, more people can come to appreciate an artist’s work if it is amplified by the media or positioned as exemplary by institutions of authority, especially if it comes from urban centers that are “hot.” But art is an anarchic process and there is only so much of it that can fit the personal tastes of curators or the trends of a particular moment in time.
Usually, the work that receives the attention of successful galleries or powerful institutions is going to have something about it that already rests squarely within historical precedent and/or something about it that articulates trends of cultural sensibility. That’s why Grotowski’s cathartic style of acting circa 1967 was a perfect blend of Sanislavski’s method of internalizing a character with the utopian urge to return human interaction to some primal state where morality and spiritual guidance could be sussed out. Nedless to say, Grotowski’s work would feel utterly out of place at TBA. (Though, it is funny to imagine Grotowski’s actors giving an E-Bay demonstration with Andrew Dixon.)
I should also add that while it may seem as if I am clamoring for the demise of the marketplace of high art, and thus of institutions such as PICA, I would only do so if we were all able to impact mass culture without them. In the meantime, I am satisfied to resist the political economy of art even as I am complicit with it. It’s the same reason I criticize our government while still paying my taxes and buying iPods. If we were all capable of living in peace, social freedom and prosperity without democracy, well, I’d drop it in a heartbeat and storm the glass doors of MoMa.
I suppose this is a less radical way of dealing with the problems of art and commerce than, say, the anti-art position of Fluxus, but we all see how utopia fails as soon as it lands in a museum collection. The only way out of the bind seems to be to go underground, make work for a small community and hope that it has an impact over time. It is a reasonable strategy for artists to make work that is entirely off the radar, while working on the surface of society to gather resoruces that feed underground activities. If, occasionally, the work rises to the surface and causes a stir of passion at a biennial, or garners delight with audiences at a major performance festival, well that’s good news, but the work of the artist remains underground and undeterred by trends on the surface.
Perhaps this is simply a personal strategy, since the performances I am most interested in these days use unconventional structures of time and highly re-contextualized spaces that are hard to tour, difficult to finance and almost impossible to properly document for the marketplace. But I suspect that you will find more and more artists going underground to resist the ever-increasing conservatism and homogenization of our society. It is the only graceful way to exit the stage.
Bryan,
Thank you for using my criticism as a tool for honest self-examination and for giving me (and the readers at home) some more insight into the challenges facing contemporary theater artists. This was my intention, and your response gives some indication of why Liminal’s work (at least the case of the one installation/performance I experienced, “The Ressurectory”) is so interesting. I too wish more contemporary endeavors were “rubbed against the sandpaper of history.”
Faith,
I’ll concede that only one member of the cast of Poetics had powerful hair–the bearded poster boy. But did you see Pavol and Kelly? He was hairless, except for a highly geometric moustache in the shape of a staple-gun staple. She had a nest of auburn curls piled on top of her head and held in place with what appeared to be a giant pair of dice. In my eyes, they were a personal grooming power couple.
Thanks, Jessica. The Resurrectory also had its share of quotidian gestures, albeit from a less cheerful part of reality. It’s parallels are constantly coming up in the news, including today:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/18/us/18album.html
Jessica: It’s true, I’d forgotten to include Pavol & Kelly in my considerations of the Hair of Nature Theater. Yes, what a power couple! They, along with the bearded man (whose beard was exceptional), make a Triumvirate of Holy Hair. Which is a beautiful thing.
Bryan: Maybe I will have the strength of mind to respond once I’ve had 4-5 cups of coffee. I’ll get back to you.