A quiet evening of watching A Quiet Evening of Dance
Last Friday I was having dinner with some of my mates who are in the classical music and opera world, and one of them suggested, jokingly:
After college, you read not just because you want to, but because without reading you wouldn’t be culturally literate. The same thing goes for dance. You have to see dance.
I hadn’t seen a dance show for about two years ago, so I thought I was way overdue. I told him that I haven’t been to watch dance in a while. After a brief jibe, he recommended:
I had never been to the Shed either, so a couple of friends and I decided to go.
A Quiet Evening of Dance
The evening started with William Forsyth coming out and explaining to us the importance of Quiet in this evening. He made a ritual of everyone turning their phones on silent (but he also acknowledged that some people needed to stay connected, nice).
I thought he was being hyperbolic until the show started.
Part 1: Prologue, Dialogue, Catalogue, Epilogue
The only sounds in the Prologue were artificial bird sounds (barely), and the sounds made by dancers.
Breaths, both natural and punctuated, as if scored.
Socked feet slid on the stage. Bright socks that went with the bright gloves that the dancers were wearing that put your eyes exactly where the choreographer meant you to look.
Punctuating claps.
The quiet made it very intimate. The gaze of the dancers, and their expression, it seemed to extend from them like a limb.
Then the bird sounds stops. Until that moment the bird sounds weren’t even in mind, so when it stopped it was deafening.
Here, the dancers were rooted in their spot, dancing with their bodies but not moving their feet. A dimension is taken away from the dance. Again Forsythe plays with your internalization of rules, your persistence of vision. As soon as the dancers not moving their feet becomes a rule, they move away from the audience. It is as if a statue was moving.
This is also the point where I understood that Forsythe was playing with the lines between tradition and ballet, #Serious Modernism and popular culture. There was a tension that he held between “I am serious and this is serious” and “All dance is play, let's have fun with this”.
When the piano started, it was the most minimalist piano music, but it seemed almost loud or too bright, after the delicateness of the quiet before it.
The next pair came on—one of the dancers, more built and dancing in a less ballet/modern way than the previous dancers, seemed to nod to street dance, breakdancing. One of the dancers flossed on stage.
The pair that finished the first half was incredible, a ballerino with incredible grace and the most expressive dancer who held that tension between Seriousness and playfulness within himself.
The gentleman who recommended this performance said that the first half was the dance equivalent of chamber music. In its intimacy, and in the way that that the performers kept tempo with each other as if they had a psychic connection, and in the way that the interaction between individuals was so intrinsic to the performance, I’d have to agree.
Part 2: Seventeen/Twenty-One
The second half was set to baroque music punctuated by harpsichord. Again, after the sound in the first half, it was almost maximalist. This started with an ensemble, the first time (I think) that we had more than two people on the stage at once. Another maximalism. And another thing that in any other performance would not have been remarkable.
This half was a story about tradition and unorthodox. But it wasn’t one of conflict, it was about complement. There was a ballet that was interrupted by breakdancing (to the entertainment and applause of the audience). But this didn’t start a round of one-upmanship. Rather, that breach between styles and orthodoxies was bridged by a relationship that the breakdancer had with one of the ballerinas.
She moved in a manner intimately connected with him, preserving her ballet whilst incorporating some of his movements.
This brought him into the group, and like salt on chocolate, the contrast made the entire dance sweeter.
Takeaways
I had two major takeaways from this performance:
First,
choreography is not only about movement, it is also about allocating the audience's attention
The balance of the stage and of the performance is dependent on this: four dancers echoing each other's movements can be less of an attention pull than a single dancer with a contrasting style.
Silence and stillness can draw attention just as much as dance. A person on side-stage with a known difference in style can have just as much attention pulling power, or more, than when that dancer comes on stage.
This allocation of attention and the tension of split attention was one of the most exciting parts of the performance.
We can learn a lot about our own practice by considering where we direct attention.
Second,
the idea of generous orthodoxy is as powerful in art as it is in politics and social sciences
Only by showing respect to tradition and ballet was Forsythe able to push this performance so far. Without that respect, the performance would not have been in the same dialogue, and would not have held the same weight.
Or, to put it simply, the ballet helped to contextualize the flossing, breakdancing, and humor.
This was an incredible performance, and I’d recommend it to anybody.
Postscripts
The Shed
The shed is doing things right.
- Giant space shwarma Stairmaster outside?
Yep. - Super modern hall with friendly staff and cellphone activated coat check?
Yep. - Can you drink beer in the theatre?
Yep.
I think I’m going to try to come here more.
Actively watching
Since I hadn’t seen dance in a long time, I thought that I would try to watch this more actively. I took notes from my seat, to record what I saw and what I felt.
This changed the way I watched, changed what I was looking for and the way that I compared parts of the piece.
It amplified my experience enough that I think that I’ll try to incorporate this into all of the art I consume.
