A Temporary Pair
"I Am Vertical"
Dana Tai Soon Burgess Dance Company
Kogod Courtyard
The National Portrait Gallery
Washington, DC
December 10, 2017
The poet Sylvia Plath receives attention because she wrote about herself as a passionate woman, because she committed suicide and because she was in love with another writer - Ted Hughes, the man who led their time together. Now, more than half a century after her death at the age of only 30, Plath's poems are still in print, she is the subject of an exhibit at a major museum and of a 25-minute piece of choreography. Burgess's dance, titled "I Am Vertical" after a Plath poem, is for four women and three men. All the women embody Plath and all the men represent Hughes. By tilting four against three, I think Burgess's dramaturgy avoids showing the two writers' relationship as a contest of equals but also Hughes's guidance as something that might be considered abusive. That this pair of lovers is portrayed cubistically, in diverse facets, gives the audience degrees of freedom in trying to understand what happened between the two writers and, ultimately to Plath.
The action shifts on a long diagonal between two set nodes, two desks with typewriters. Plath's desk is on the upper left and Hughes's is opposite, on the lower right of the dance floor. The different women are dressed alike in a simply cut and pleated tunic of a dress colored magenta. Often, all the Plath figures are gathered around her desk with one of them seated on a chair, bent over the typewriter. One of the men is frequently seated at the far opposite desk, with the two other Hughes figures standing some distance away. Their clothing is in grays. Burgess has made a set of sequential duets for the Sylvia Plaths and Ted Hugheses. They take place along the diagonal path between the desks. These encounters - approaches, holds, lifts, separations - are anatomically complex and dynamically diverse. The two bodies knot together for a duration, their interlocking becoming energetically and emotionally intense and yet terminating simply. One of the Plath figures abstains from any encounter with a Hughes, and dances as a solitary being. She is the one most prone to being not vertical. At the end, all four Plath figures lie supine, stretched out along the diagonal path.
Burgess's dance premiered in the courtyard of the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery and American Art Museum on December 7, and was given two more performances on December 10. I saw the later, the 4 PM performance on the 10th. "I Am Vertical" will also be on the Burgess company's June 2018 programs at Kennedy Center. The exhibit "One Life: Sylvia Plath" is at the National Portrait Gallery from 30 June 2017 to 20 May 2018. Burgess choreographed to 1950s music by the Duke Ellington Band, Morton Feldman, Olivier Messiaen and Sophia Gubaidulina, as well as to words by Plath and Hughes. Plath was danced by Christin Arthur, Joan Ayap, Christine Doyle and (as the solo Plath) Sarah Halzack. The men were Ian Ceccarelli, Sidney Hampton and Felipe Oyarzun Moltedo. The magenta of Judy Hansen's dress for the women has a dusty sunset glow that is haunting.
copyright © 2017 by George Jackson
