Over in Dublin, it looks like Gavin Quinn’s Pan Pan has worked wonders with Samuel Beckett’s 1956 radio play All That Fall. Irish Theatre Magazine has both an interview with Quinn as well as a glowing review of the show, which plays at Project Arts Centre though Sept. 2, both of which are well worth reading.

It’s a fascinating concept, because, as previously mentioned, it’s a radio play, and the Beckett estate being notoriously tight-fisted about any production that deviates from the established norm, it’s hard to imagine a production that’s not, as I recently described it, a Masterpiece Theater-version. As even ITM‘s critic Patrick Lonergan notes:

[P]erhaps the second important point [about the production] is how refreshing (and unusual) it is to be surprised by an Irish production of a play by Beckett – a writer whose works are usually treated so reverentially that they’re in danger of becoming museum pieces. While this is a very faithful rendition of the play, Pan Pan provide an experience that is genuinely different from anything you’ll have encountered in the theatre before.

Photo by Ros Kavanaugh

Overly protective literary estates should take note–preventing innovation in theatrical presentations of old plays is killing the oeuvres they purport to defend. The idea that an intelligent critic could be saying that about Samuel Beckett is a distressing thing; Beckett was one of the most innovative dramatists of the 20th Century, and was a product of a combative avant-garde that opposed canonization. Whatever the merits of his draconian prescriptions during his life (he once compared having  a woman perform in Godot to having a soprano sing a baritone part), by my recollection, he’s been dead for more than 20 years. If white directors like Bart Sher can now stage August Wilson, surely Mabou Mines should get to have their subway-car Endgame.

Anyway, the point is that under those circumstances, it’s hard to breathe life into Beckett, but Pan Pan has done it, apparently. It turns out that Pan Pan has staged a recording of the performance, in a room replete with rocking chairs and a charming if be-numbing lighting scheme. As Lonergan describes it:

[T]he surprise – and the real pleasure – of this production lies in the design by Aedín Cosgrove. As we enter the Project Space, we’re confronted not with a conventional performance area but with a room full of rocking-chairs. On the wall to the right of the entrance, there’s an enormous bank of lights, which flood the auditorium with a soft yellow and gold haze; on the left a smaller cluster of blue lights soften that mood. To sit between the two sets of lights creates the impression of occupying a space somewhere between an intense and interrogative sunlight and a comforting moonlight – and indeed as the performance progresses, the lights seem to shift us gradually from day to night…What Pan Pan have done, then, is to create a space that is almost entirely free of sensory distractions, allowing us to listen to the play with a profound concentration. That technique allows for a better appreciation of the text, but it also imposes upon the audience many of the sensations that are described by Maddy and the other characters: a sense of blindness, a feeling of isolation despite being surrounded by others, perhaps even a sense of abandonment in space.

Anyway, the entire review is well worth reading, as is Fintan Walsh’s interview with Quinn. Unfortunately I know of no plans for the show to head elsewhere once it finishes its run at Project, Dublin’s historic and rather lovely contemporary arts space, but New York won’t be lacking for Beckett this season. Not only will Dublin’s Gate Theatre be bringing in a production of Krapp’s Last Tape for BAM’s Next Wave, starring John Hurt (which, sadly, I suspect will be overly reverential–how could it not?), but Baryshnikov Arts Center is hosting Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord/Peter Brook‘s Fragments in November, which is surely one of the can’t-miss-it events of the season.
Update: It’s come to my attention (thanks to Sarah Bishop-Stone, thank you!) that Pan Pan will in fact be in NYC in November with The Rehearsal, Playing the Dane at the Skirball Center in November.

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Palissimo in Pavel Zustiak's "Amidst" Photo: Robert Flynt

Pavel Zustiak’s Amidst, at Baryshnikov Arts Center (BAC) this past weekend, lived up to its name. The performers did indeed move “amidst” the audience, although the dangling modifier is also suggestive of a host of emotions and ideas hovering around the work.

The audience entered BAC’s Howard Gilman Performance Space to a dense fog. No seating, no clear performance area, just musicians set up in a corner, and lots of milling people. Mixing the performers in with the audience trick is an old one, but a good one, and as three (Lindsay Dietz Marchant, Nicholas Bruder, Zustiak) gradually emerged, the audience followed them from one area of the space to the next.

Alternating between intensely theatrical lighting and the dim haze characteristic of pauses that aren’t quite intermissions, Amidst conjured a sense of isolation despite the throngs of people, although there were allusions to fragments of relationships in the moments of interaction between the performers. Projected images on the walls, by photographer Robert Flynn, did little to enhance the work, although the mapping on the floor was a powerful motif. Original music by Christian Frederickson, performed live, contributed ineffably to the atmosphere of intensity.

In terms of performances that eschew the proscenium stage layout, what continually perplexes me is the paradox between an apparent wish to tear down the proverbial fourth wall, countered by the performers’ insistence on living in an internal world and not reacting to an audience within sneezing distance. Zustiak’s physical use of the space seems designed not to delineate between audience/performer, yet those boundaries were still upheld on both sides. Theoretically, there was a possibility of straying from the standard roles, but the audience was a well-mannered crowd, so we stayed in the reactive mode, and distance was kept from the performers. My own movements were a continual, partially successful attempt to see what was going on; as some one who is far from Jolly Green Giant stature, this remains one of my peeves with installation-style performances.

Amidst is the middle section of Zustiak’s The Painted Bird Trilogy, and not having seen the first installment, I had no reference point. But the full trilogy is scheduled to be performed at LaMaMa next spring (2012). This is a rarity for mid-level artists and smaller presenting venues, so keep an eye out.

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The Lar Lubovitch Dance Company will present a one-week season at the Baryshnikov Arts Center (BAC), November 18–21, 2010.  The program features Legend of 10; a revival of his acclaimed North Star; and a new production of the company’s most recent premiere, Coltrane’s Favorite Things.

I’m used to your work being in much larger spaces, though I know you were at DTW a couple years ago. What prompted a season in as intimate a space as BAC?

Actually, if you look at the history of the company, I’ve always worked in a variety of spaces. I enjoy how works look different in different spaces. It gives it all a different gestalt. I wanted to intimacy. I often venture all over the city looking for different spaces to perform. I have a history of creating theaters where none existed. DTW is one I originally turned into a theater.  It was originally a rehearsal studio for the American Theater Lab. I asked the owner, who happened to be Jerome Robbins, if he’d let me use it as a theater for a series of performances and brought in lighting and bleacher seating (that I rented) and that space eventuall turned into Dance Theater Workshop. Jeff Duncan, one of DTW’s founders, saw it as I converted it into a theater and he turned it into DTW. Then, a year later, I converted a scenery storage space in the East Village and that became the La Mama space. When our touring grew and performing in more proscenium spaces became financially necessary, that led to 13-14 years at City Center during the 70s and 80s. But, different venues have always been in my thinking.

You are known for keeping a close choreographic relationship to the music you work with.  For this season, you have Coltrane, Glass and Brahms. Were you thinking about the various musical selections as part of a single program?

I’ve always used a wide range of music in my programs. I’ve done an “all jazz” and an “all Mozart” program. Both times I’ve thought it was a terrible mistake. I know that today it is considered old fashioned to make dances to music, but it is what I’ve always done. I’ve always shown a range of music. The program includes a wide range of years from 1978 to Meadow from 2001, Coltrane from last year, and Legend of 10 to Brahms Piano Quintet, which is quite romantic – lush and poignant.  I do what I do because I’ve found my truth as an artist and it runs to the bone of my integrity and in my 43 year history it’s as truthful as I can be. My relationship to music is a personal expression. I listen to a lot of music. I’m always looking for music. I attend a lot of live music events. Sometimes I come to it by recommendation, but, more often, I am interested in a specific composer and go through their music. It’s much easier online now. I’m focusing on Brahms because I wanted to do a chamber piece and went through many other composers and then ended up back at Brahms. I had developed a work several years ago to Brahms. Balanchine had once claimed that it’s impossible to choreograph to him. Those kind of statements give me an itch that I have to respond to. So, I choreographed A Brahms Symphony in the 80s. This particular Brahms piece provides an emotional range and a constancy of sound that creates a very fluid aural environment and, choreographically, I’ve been creating works with a constancy of motion and this is in that vein. It doesn’t mean constant music; it’s more like a ribbon caught in a wind. The legend in Legend of 10 refers to the codes and symbols by which one reads a map and the company of 10 dancers. For this work, the dancers are cartographers who are mapping the music.

You mentioned your 43 years of working and being truthful to yourself as an artist. When did your truth begin presenting itself?

When I came into the dance world there were a few very extremely distinct voices. Graham, Limon, Balanchine, and then Cunningham.  The idea that an artist had to find their own voice was implanted early on. It’s difficult to say how one arrives at one’s own voice or how one distinguishes one’s truth. I think it comes from being honest about what stimulates your inner eye and shying away from the commentary by others who may not see clearly what it is you are doing and spend more time discussing what you could or should be doing. I don’t think one arrives at a singular place and stays.  It shifts; your truth shifts. After choreographing for some years, I found it illuminating to see the first work I’d ever made. I started at U. Iowa and, even coming to dance so late, I made a dance right away.  Someone made a film of it. I did it to audition for Julliard.  Once I started studying dance, I realized I had to go to New York, and when I found that I had to submit a dance, I made one up.  The filmmaker brought that back and I’d not seen it before.  I saw that I already had a voice and could appreciate that, years later it was still there – even after all the influences of the dance world.

You see a lot of work.  You’re always out seeing dance.  Where do you think dance is now after several decades?

That is a many-layered questioned.  Lifers like me – people who have been doing it for a long time – we have to put on blinders to make it through this path sometimes. I do see a lot of dance, many others don’t.  I think it has grown exponentially in creative directions. There are many more things called dance than there used to be. That is thrilling.  But, it’s also lost its civic direction because the amount of ideas have sent it in so many directions that many people don’t know what dance is. I think dance is in a holding pattern; I don’t think we are at a high point and it’s not quite  a plateau.  There’s a higher plane coming where it will have a larger resonance.  Right now, it feels as though so many people are reaching for difference for it’s own sake. Rather than a forward motion, we’re forgetting our history and re-inventing things. I do see a lot of work and see younger dancers and younger critics getting excited and think “I’ve been there and done that.”  There was a time when new was new and that’s very exciting. When someone does something new and original I want to be in a seat and seeing it. The focus on new takes away from accurate, specific, craft.  We lose our grip if all we focus on is “new-ness” rather than honing in to focus on our work and creative faculties. New will give birth to itself.

This burden of innovation often makes us forget quickly, which makes the NEA’s American Masterpieces: Dance program so interesting. It brings us older works that many of us haven’t ever seen, have no memory of. That’s how North Star came back into circulation, right?

Yes, most of us don’t want to spend time, energy, and money to bring old stuff back. But, there is a value in bringing things back. But, I probably wouldn’t have chosen to bring North Star back. Some one else asks. Some one else is identifying the demand.  But, it’s interesting to see these works in their new context. We try to keep every step the same so that it is the time in which we’re doing it and the dancers who are doing it that are different. These are very different times than late 70s. Counterculture was burgeoning and, it seemed, that thought was changing. We thought societally, that everything was changing.  And now, that is lost.  It’s in a very different light. It’s removed from how unusual the work was, when it was first done. “North Star” was one of the first concert dances to minimal music. Since then, who hasn’t choreographed to Glass or Reich. At the time that was new. Now, it has to be taken at face value. I can’t tell if that’s good or not.  But, we’re keeping it in the company repertory.  The AM grant pays part of the fee to presenters if this dance stays on the program.  So, it stays.  It helps with touring because it supports presenters and helps them get us there. That’s the business of dance.

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Photo: Julieta Cervantes

The bio for Les SlovaKs, who made their NYC debut with a mid-week run of Opening Night at Baryshnikov Arts Center this week, describes them as a “brotherly collective.” Indeed, the five men (Milan Herich, Peter Jasko, Anton Lachky, Milan Tomasik, and Martin Kilvády) exude a familiarity and comfort with one another that verges on the familial, replete with hair pulling and feet-in-face moments. They’ve known one another for decades and while all are now based in Brussels, they began their training in their native Slovakia—well before officially meeting, all five shared a stage at a folk dance festival as youngsters. Opening Night is their first creation as a collective, and they’ve been touring the piece throughout Europe since its premiere in 2007.

The men are all extraordinarily agile, articulate movers—their performance credits encompass Akram Khan, Anne de Keersmaeker’s Rosas, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, and David Zambrano. Each has his own distinct style, and the movement for Opening Night is primarily improvised within a set structure. It’s all very playful, with liquid, reflex-defying level and direction changes, plus a bit of one-upmanship tossed in.

What makes Les SlovaKs more than just a group of interesting movers is the affectionate sense of national identity that pervades Opening Night. This came through in the snippets of folk dance elements that were continually coalescing and dissolving into a post-modern vocabulary, and also in French violinist and composer Simon Thierré’s music, which sampled and looped upon itself while referencing traditional Slovakian melodies. The piece opened with a Slovakian folk song, sung in tight harmony, and on the night I saw it, closed with another one, this one about Slovakian migrant workers in the US.

I saw sly allusions to Slovakian history in the performers’ periodic puffed up, heroic poses and sweeping, declamatory gestures, and couldn’t help but consider that the men grew up in communist Czechoslovakia. They have seen remarkable changes in their country, from the Velvet Revolution that ended the communist regime in 1989 to the peaceful separation of The Czech Republic from Slovakia in the early 1990s, to Slovakia’s entrance into the European Union in 2004. I can only imagine that, despite these social and political upheavals, a strong Slovakian cultural identity has been a constant, and Les SlovaKs have found a way of bringing this heritage—however abstractly—into their movement and the moment.

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In 2004, I facilitated a residency in Phnom Penh for Dance Theater Workshop’s Mekong Project.  Several artists from the Mekong Delta region (Yunnan Province in China, Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand) gathered with a group of Asian Americans and Cambodians for 3 weeks.  Based primarily out of Delphine Kassem and Mann Khosal’s Sovanna Phum shadow puppet theater, the group met to share and develop ideas and working relationships together.  There were no immediate outcomes expected though artists showed some of their own work and developed brief collaborations.  Among those participating, there was  a young dancer Chumvan Sodhachivy (commonly known as “Belle”), who had trained in the giant role in the classical khmer repertory at the Royal University of Fine Arts, but was already trying to do something different during Sovanna Phum’s weekly Friday night free-for-all performances.

Tonight, at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, she revealed how far she has come in that pursuit as a member of the troupe of dancers working with Brussels-based choreographer Emmanuele Phuon, who I interviewed earlier this week. The work begins with Belle facing upstage and a scratching, blast of German experimental band Einsturzende Neubauten. This seemed to serve as a shorthand way of saying “just so you know, this won’t be a typical, classical, Cambodian court dance.”  As Phuon detailed her own experiences as a dancer with White Oak being an educational process from the inside out (as she performed in the repertories of the likes of Yvonne Rainier), I found myself considering the great value of this work in providing these dancers, especially ones like Belle and Chey Chankethya and Phon Sopheap, with the opportunity to begin to understand the potential explorations and possibility of expressions in movement from within their familiar traditional vocabularies and against noticeably foreign aesthetics that are unlike those commonly imported via Karaoke lounges or YouTube.

Phuon divorces the traditional forms from their outer trappings.  Here there are no masks, no costumes that take 5 hours to get sewn into, almost no distinguishable khmer music of any kind.  The cultural signifiers are of the body, both the movements of the bodies and the actual bodies performing.  This stripping down alone would make it noticeably contemporary in the context of classical Cambodian dance, but it is the various explorations of level, facing, speed, thrust, and repetition that compel me as a viewer.  Several solos throughout the program reveal fascinating initial investigations.  I could have stayed with just the physical work, however, the work had to carry its own context with it.  The simplistic structure of young dancers who wish to do something new versus the older, master teacher, performed by Sam Sathya, trying to impart the value of beauty is probably necessary for certain audiences who may not understand how deeply the master/acolyte dynamic runs in the culture of Cambodian classical dance.  Note: when Princess Boppha Devi, Cambodia’s first royal “ballerina,” was Minister of Culture and Fine Arts, certain classical dances (the Apsaras, as I recall) were not allowed to be altered in any way.  When it’s illegal to chance a dance form, where does innovation begin?

This 1,000 year old form survived the Cambodian holocaust, but may not withstand the onslaught of globalization.  However, the earnestness and narrative are bearable when the dancers are moving.  There are many interesting connections and deconstructions at work in the physical tale and I forgive the performers their earnestness, knowing what the living and working conditions are for most of them at home.  Knowing that anyone capable of seeing this show or reading this post have little to complain about and could take a lesson from these artists.  Knowing that we live a very good life, comparatively. Remembering that Belle was the last surviving child in her family, after all 12 of her siblings died under Pol Pot’s genocide.  Thinking that perhaps progress or contemporary shouldn’t have to always mean ironic or wry.  Noticing that the final solo by Sam Sathya is haunting.  At that moment, the true narrative of a dancer who was one of the first generation trained after the fall of the Khmer Rouge only to see it systematically destroyed by pop culture was truly moving and absolutely genuine.

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Photo by John Vink/ Magnum Photos

The New York premiere of Brussels-based, French-Cambodian choreographer Emmanuèle Phuon’s fascinating collaborative investigation Khmeropédies I & II will be at BAC this week. Over the past two years, she has worked in Cambodia with dancers trained in classical Khmer dance.

I’m very excited about this project, having spent time facilitating exchange projects between SE Asian and Asian American artists in Phnom Penh several years ago for DTW’s Mekong Project.  Cambodian dance is so rich and the focus there is a deep, strict, effort for preservation.  How did you approach making a contemporary work with traditional artists?

As a member of White Oak [from 1995-2001], I was exposed to the work of artists like Lucinda Childs and Yvonne Rainier, among others, which allowed me to know historically important western contemporary ideas from inside in my body. So, when I started the project, every time we worked on a new idea that came from an artist or practice I knew, I would try to share where it came from.  I have many videos and I would show the dancers the tradition that these ideas came from.  For example, when we used Chance, I would show them a Cunningham video so that they understand where it came from. I don’t like this word, because I am also learning so much, but I try to make this whole experience educational. We were looking at how it was done and then the dancers would look at how to apply it to their heritage.  I was trying not go overboard and just force foreign concepts or movements on them.

You have some body knowledge from when you studied at The Royal Ballet of Cambodia as a child too, right? Does that inform you?

I was too little. Some of it is in my body, so I can “fake” it but it doesn’t look anything like it really should.  But, because I have not been trained in it completely, while I love the form and respect it, it isn’t sacred to me.  So, while I have a familiarity, all the meanings of the hands don’t mean as much, which allows me the freedom to deconstruct it.

The Khmer Rouge decimated their country, including the arts and artistic population, so I understand why the effort to resurrect and preserve the traditional forms is so strong in Cambodia.  But, I have seen how that creates a struggle for creative artists.  You mention the freedom from being too sacred with the material. Did the mandate for preservation get in the way for your work?

Well, it is hard because the form is already perfect and it refers to a time when they were grand, so there is a large cultural ego that surrounds it.  So, though I can make whatever work I make and am not bound to uphold the form, there is a lot discomfort with this kind of work there. They need to uphold this beautiful dance, but I’m just playing and am lucky to have four dancers who are willing to play too. It’s very complicated to have something so traditional and try to do something else with it. It’s tricky. It has to do with identity which is a powerful thing.  We were in a festival in Singapore and it was interesting to see performances from India and other countries in the region, and to see that they’re all dealing with the heaviness of tradition and whether to, or how to, evolve. Physically, you can’t just put another technique on top of it; it takes time and work.  We were part of a festival of contemporary dance and we were programmed right next to a Japanese troupe.  They’ve been after it for so much longer than we have, we’re only a few years into our exploration. We felt like dinosaurs, old and outdated. But, without the context of where we are coming from, we won’t fit into the contemporary world in that way. This is something new for Cambodia and I don’t find it interesting to impose my point of view and ideas onto the dancers. It isn’t about me in that way. It’s about them;  the dancers are having an experience. This is a contemporary process that makes sense in the context of strong preservation. As a result, sometimes the work seems naïve or “not contemporary enough,” but it is the process that is most important to me.

How was your process?

I’ve been developing this since 2007, but with these dancers we will have a 3-week residency and then wouldn’t see each other for a year, and then 3 weeks together and then a few months apart and back together. I have had support from the Asian Cultural Council, but my husband is probably my biggest sponsor. It’s expensive to go back and forth and we don’t know if the process will continue. It’s hard because I don’t think of myself as a choreographer; I am a dancer. I’ll go back to dancing for Yvonne Rainier later this summer and while I’ve been thrilled to do this project and I want to continue, I don’t know how to make it happen financially.  I’m learning so much about Cambodia, my own country. And, I want to support the artists.  One of the dancers, Belle, she’s supporting her mother through her dancing. We want to help her do something in dance.  So, my process or experience as an artist is more about the human scale. It’s about slowly changing the mentality, so that these dancers can go back to their community with more information.  Because, while it is so important to have a strong sense of respect for the elders and and for tradition, the backside can be learning by heart and not questioning. It’s the artist’s job to poke it a little bit. I’m not saying make a revolution; it doesn’t have to be political. It can be about beauty. But, if that could shift a little bit, that would be great, because, right now, dance is used primarily for tourists and government official’s visits. It is an instrument of power, but it needs to be dance in its own right.

That is a lot to ask from these dancers. Have they been up to the experience? Are they interested in questioning too?

I originally developed this work at BAC in 2007 and created Khmeropédies I, the solo performed by Chumvan Sodhachivy, on another dancer.  We worked together for 2 months and did a special showing for Sam Miller. After the showing, he was silent – he was the only one there and didn’t feel the need to applaud – so the dancer went down on her knees in front of him and apologized for not smiling, and having no music, and a costume that wasn’t very nice. We had worked for 2 months and I had no idea how uncomfortable she was. So this time, while working, I made sure the process was a dialogue and Khmeropédies II explores the master/disciple relationship, which is the tradition but allows the dancers – Sam Sathya, Chey Chankethya, Phon Sopheap, and Sodhachivy – to play with it.  We use music from the German industrial band Einstürzende Neubauten to Yves Montand to Tiny Toones (a Cambodian rap group formed by street kids) and it’s okay.  It is clear to me that they like it, they created it and own it, and run with it in performance. So, I feel happy. I believe I have achieved something, because none of the dancers apologize after the show.

Performances are June 24–26 (Thursday and Friday at 7:30pm, Saturday at 2pm and 7:30pm) at Baryshnikov Arts Center’s Howard Gilman Performance Space. Tickets are $15 and can be purchased through SmartTix at 212-868-4444 / www.smarttix.com. The Baryshnikov Arts Center is located at 450 West 37th Street (between 9th and 10th Avenues) in New York City.

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