What, Why and How?
Fresh 2019
"Hot Mess(Sage)", "Rock e Malta: Orientamento (a collage /study)". "1880-2015", "Queent"
Joe Goode Annex, San Francisco
January 11, 2019
For the last decade the “Fresh Festival” has become a month-long January event of “experimental” dance, music, performance and workshops. It started out modestly as a project by La Alternativa, the artistic team of dancer/choreographer Kathleen Hermesdorf and musician/composer Albert Mathias. This month it includes participants from Germany and Mexico. Coincidentally, the Festival’s ten-year anniversary also celebrates two decades of La Alternativa.
The second of the four programs, under the Festival motto of “Reckoning”, however, left yours truly feeling more than a little puzzled, full of no-answer questions and, above all, out of place. If it’s true as painter Bruce Nauman, apparently, said that “art is what the artist makes,” this was “dance is what the dancer makes.” Problematic for this viewer, the audience who packed the Joe Goode Annex, however, embraced each of the four works enthusiastically.
You don’t expect experimental art to be formally cohesive, but at least one can hope for ideas that either by their content or by the way they are expressed suggest a path to expand the perimeters of time-based art. The common theme of racism not withstanding, this was an evening where decent performances had to fill in for what too often was muddy and not sufficiently articulated material. Movement, of course, existed, since it would be hard to have live performance without it, but dance as the body’s choreographed expression was in short supply. I learned little about how Dance can develop in the years to come.
The opening part of “Hot Mess(Sage)” paired Amara Tabor-Smith and Larry Arrington in a series of improvisations, always cut short by Alexa Burrell’s intercessions. Differences abounded. One of the performers was white, the other African American. One was very athletic, the other more emotionally expressive Yet nothing, even the point of exhaustion, could keep these two dancers apart. Like magnets they were drawn together, yet repeatedly yanked apart. The message and its tensions was clear enough, the execution convincing.
But Burrell’s subsequent video-music section dealt too obviously with the still ever so painful facts about race-relationship. It needed a more focused punch. The white/black opposition was also expressed by the two dancers making patterns on the floor; the white one left a trace, the black one not. Even while factually untrue, it also was obvious as performance. In the third section of this muddled “hot mess”, Tabor-Smith, limited by a white circle on the floor, narrated her own biography. The matter of factness of her voice lent power to this monologue.
Apparently, inspired by the current constellation of stars, Arrington then invited the white-only part of the audience to write down their ancestors; subsequently these people formed a circle to contemplate their own histories, reminding them of their privilege of being white. The men were dismissed as not to be entrusted with such a reflection. Maybe this was not racist but certainly sexist. Arrington, an excellent writer in addition to a fine dancer, then initiated a simple ritual, which the women were encouraged to continue on their own. May they follow up on it.
Kim Epifano’s Epiphany Dance Theater’s “Rock e Malta: Orientamento (a collage/study)” was long in title, short in interest. Non-descript solos supplemented out-of tune quartet singing of “The Impossible Dream” against a wailing wall; a diagonal clothesline hosted multi-use sheets and items of clothing. The fine acting/dancing solo by Christine Bonasea, however, communicated. A few years ago Bonasea had moved to New York. You wondered why she came back.
Kinetech Arts’ “1880-2015”, showed the first two movements of what will be a triptych, which, according to the program notes, "investigates the interrelation between the increase of carbon, human land use and population with an exponential growth of revolutionary inventions as well as weather changes and their impact for life on this planet . . . focusing on human centric paradigm that has dominated the last centuries.” Ambitious, at the very least.
Tanja London, a wisp of a dancer, and Daiane Lopes da Silva dressed themselves into sci-fi-inspired suits. With the help of a stringent score by Richard Festinger they showed a series of structured walking encounters that divided the space equally and opening it up in unexpected ways. A long pole became a measuring stick, weapon, partner, connector and divider. Excellent visuals by Ian Winter and Weidong Yang created an effectively sliced space for the two dancers. Pieces of raw pounded meat ended up in a surprising but convincing place. The two parts – I couldn’t tell them apart — finished on a wonderfully theatrical note. “1880-2015”— especially the pole parts — needs tightening, but I look forward to the completed work.
“Queent” by drag performers Fauxnique and VivvyAnne ForeverMORE, paired two physically very different artists in identical movements, at first winding themselves through the audience who welcomed the welcome easy comedy of this—very long evening of what was announced as experimental art — with prolonged applause. The performance was funny though the finale was not. But the opportunity to see just how brilliant and nuanced Fauxnique can be as a performer was also welcome.
copyright © 2019 by Rita Felciano
