YES to dance.
If I Sing to You by Deborah Hay
Spiraling Down by Yvonne Rainer
Baryshnikov Arts Center
November 17-19, 2009
Legendary postmodern choreographers Deborah Hay and Yvonne Rainer gave a shared program as part of Performa 09. Both used DIY music, that is, the performers vocalized, in a much anticipated BAC season that opened November 17.
In Hay’s If I Sing to You, the queer characters hold uncanny charm, and make us laugh with feigned sexual or scatological acts. They play personae non gratis. As barefoot, lost souls, the group of top contemporary dancers looks alien on Baryshnikov’s urban concert stage.
They sing in harmony, "If I sing to you, you would hear so many things about...” The line drops off into incomprehensible mumbling and this sums up the piece. Alas, we never do learn the dance’s reason for being. The opaque characters amuse us but not enough to string together the several expertly crafted, gem-like solos and duets.
Jeanine Durning and a mustachioed Ros Warby perform a hilarious, animalistic, ‘courtship’ duet. Amelia Reeber’s plaintive dog solo is a tour de force. Alana Elmer’s skipping exit is the ending’s perfect moment, signaling wonderful conclusion.
We watch life’s underbelly, adorned with cuteness, in this hundred-minute dance. The audience stayed through. The reward was Rainer’s concise, interesting, and accessible Spiraling Down.
Rainer's grandiose comeback last year with Rite did not set the stage for a next act. But happily, the lucid Spiraling Down made the BAC evening worth our while.
Figures from Rainer’s history and from arts history inspired her narrative, which is spoken at a dais by the dancers or related in her own recorded voice. The story about a runner, and Maurice Ravel’s Bolero make up the sound score. That and the strange musicality of the dancing, congeal the piece.
The dancers’ movement illustrates the story about athletics and it would make no sense on its own. We cannot call it ‘athletic movement.’ However, Pat Catterson, Emily Coates, and Pat Hoffbauer, in Rainer's usual, varied, crew, have ample presence. Veteran dancer and choreographer Sally Silvers wore unflattering madras shorts and ambled with indelicate steps. This brave, bad-girl character presented Rainer’s bold challenge. What can one get away with? The choreographer laid out the rules in her famous 1965 manifesto that begins with "No to spectacle." Sticking to every emphatic point, (each beginning with No,) Spiraling Down reveals fresh, fertile ground.