Reconstituted dance: As unappealing as reconstituted meat, or an unavoidable, cheap part of the modern diet?
Our wonderful friend Lizzie Sells is moving to Mexico this month. We will miss her and wanted to publish an article she wrote after attending the talk A feeling for practice. Revivals: Moving beyond the steps, during Dance Umbrella 2011. Her approach is gutsy and refreshingly uncompromising when it comes to critiquing the effect of reviving dance works on dance performers. Take it away Lizzie!!
Who and What? Choreographer Richard Alston talked about reviving his own worksWildlife (1983)and Rainbow Bandit (1974). Both pieces are currently being reconstructed by Alston on his own company.
Pedro Machado, Co-Artistic Director of Candoco commented on the process of re-staging Trisha Brown’s Set and Reset (1983) by Candoco with the support of Trisha Brown Dance Company.
Why? If I was in Alston’s shoes, I too would think about the fact that while “I’m still alive”, this might be a good time to transmit my knowledge, honed over the past X number of years, onto a company who already moves in a way I approve of. Who better to learn the choreographies I made decades ago, thus maintaining their place in the ever-elusive history of dance and that unknown beast, the dance archive? I could avoid bastardisation of my work, and make sure it’s done properly. Very considerate, don’t you think?
But where does the work exist, and whose is it really? Alston’s references to the dancers he works with suggest that they are equally as important for realizing, or making a work as his initial concepts and creative ideas for a piece. When speaking about the making of dance works, Alston admits, “It’s about the dancers I work with”. You can tell how significant the dancers are by the fond way he reminisces about them… “Long, lanky, red-haired Texan…” Tom, whose role current Alston dancer Andres de Blust-Mommaerts re-creates in Rainbow Bandit. Alston explains he can see Andres “making the lines of energy that I remember Tom making”, even though he’s a different height and physique. Well done Andres. I wonder if you are aware of the uneasy tension in the audience who watch the video of the original Rainbow Bandit projected behind you while you’re dancing? We’ve already heard that the role you’re dancing was made on a man at least 6 feet tall. How do you feel about stepping into his shoes?
We are jokingly asked to compare the accuracy of the ‘revival’ by Alston. I don’t want to watch a video thanks very much, even if it is on the big screen. I trust you to impart your choreographic knowledge, Richard, and I trust your dancers more importantly, to dance the dance. I am too easily trusting. I don’t see dancing, I see a desperate race to keep up with a video. Ok ok, so you’re still in the rehearsal process, but at least show one thing and then the other if you’re truly asking for comparison rather than judgment.
So, on the subject of comparisons, how do we know where the identity of the artwork lies? Is it in the steps? The movement quality? The production values? The performers? If for example, a choreographer has a reciprocal relationship with dancers who then perform the dance made, and who may well be videoed doing so and then inadvertently teach those steps and performances through the medium of video across time, do they not equally ‘own’ part of the dance and its identity? Can you ever even have two performances of the same dance work if the dancers are different people? Hasn’t the work had been transformed, and become a different piece altogether? Put simply, if you change the steps = different dance. If you change the dancers = different dance.
Alston seems convinced of the importance of revivals, I’m still not sure I know why. How, Richard, is the re-staging, re-dancing of your work important to your practice? What do you gain from it? Ah, perhaps you don’t do it for yourself, but for the young’uns to have the chance to see the old classics live? Do tell.
I was hoping to come away from the talk a little clearer on the idea of why we need to reconstruct dance works… Pedro Machado talked about the preservation of dances. It’s true that dance has a problem with archives and doesn’t necessarily archive very well. Seeing a piece on video doesn’t compare to seeing it live. I can learn so much as a dancer/ student/ audience member from watching great classics. But beware, reviving a work doesn’t mean you’re seeing the original. That’s impossible, and the beauty of the live art-form.
Machado acknowledged that a key reason for choosing to reconstruct Brown’s Set and Reset for Candoco’s 20th Anniversary this year, was the impact the piece had on him as an audience member years ago. He carried the impression through life until today, when it seemed an appropriate work to reconstruct (admittedly indirectly) on the current Candoco Company. He evoked the qualities of the work for us as he saw them, “…just physical… relentless…human but abstract…playful… intelligent”. Again, there was a strong sense of reverence in Machado’s words for the choreography in its original form, and for the dancers on the original video of the work from 1983. But there was also a keen sense of the work inspiring something new for Candoco today. He suggested one reason for choosing to create Set and Reset/ Reset was to celebrate the idiosyncrasies of the performers past and present. Yes, I like this idea much more. I go to see performance to watch performers after all.
P.S. When preparing this article to go ‘live’, I started to think about the financial implications of reconstructions. Surely, all things considered, it is cheaper to reproduce a dance work, than to create something new. So we are saving a nice bit of cash by reconstituting an old ‘classic’, as well as investing in history. But, when I look at the ingredients of Co-Op ham – some as low as 47% pork – I think, I would rather pay more to eat meat that is truly meat, and if I can’t afford that, then I’d rather avoid eating it at all.
