Move! Move!

Recently I had the opportunity to spend a weekend in Dublin and go to the theatre. I’m happy to say that we were very much impressed, and we saw sets and stagings that were quite 21st-century, modernist, and the likes of which we hadn’t seen used for straight plays for a long time.

We also had the pleasure of seeing Pageant by the Coiscéim Dance Theatre. Now I don’t know much about dance theatre (but I know what I like), but this performance got me thinking about the ways such performances work.

Even the beginning was full of creativity and fresh ideas. In/on the abstract scene that the precise, geometric lighting only enhanced, a table was placed, and hand gestures performed on its top were mirrored by dancers on the stage itself. And the grandiose finale featured a silk curtain that suddenly exploded in light as a danseuse hit it with her arms, forcing the rippling fabric into the ways of blinding reflectors--all set to the thumping Boléro.

But I had some time to think during the middle part. There was, for example, a dancer that smiled. All the time. The piece wasn’t dark, but there were sections on being controlled, on frustrated efforts, about the inability to approach others and other stuff life is made of. Why the smile then? I started watching the faces of the other dancers. Some donned a benign expression, some let the effort that went into the dance show, but still, they were just as immovable and mask-like as the constant Cheshire smile.

I’m not sure I can follow the logic there. If one expresses oneself through one’s body, and spends decades learning to move, recognising and controlling each quiver of their muscles and sinews, why are the facial muscles excluded? Couldn’t they be used to communicate quite effectively with the audience?

My partner used to spend months at a university where a lady would tell him that one didn’t understand dance; one felt it. Well, OK, that’s fine, but would the dancer then please tell me what they feel exactly when they collapse on the ground, or jump on the hip of their partner? Because I’ve seen that before.

In fact, I’ve seen most movements I saw on stage that night before. Only performed in different costumes and in different scenery. Some say that in a play, one has to have a reason, some motivation, behind each line each character says. No motivation, no line. That’s a nice and easy way to make sure that the drama doesn’t relapse into a public lecture. (Which it can, but that’s a different story.) Now I recognise that the “don’t understand--feel” dictate probably means that the choreography cannot be and shouldn’t be construed as a narrative. That, instead, I should feel something. And indeed I do, because many of the images I see are beautiful; they are striking, novel, symmetric, asymmetric, and there’s little I enjoy more than a well-made abstract painting.

But at other times I’m at loss as to what I’m supposed to feel. Or rather, what I’m supposed to do. The lady is smiling, but is dragged by a threatening male like a rag doll and then collapses on the ground. I see bodies rolling on stage exactly as I saw them doing so in another city some years before, but it suddenly ends, and I’m not sure what has just happened. It’s like an endless warm-up exercise that I hope will make sense sometime, somewhere, but it never does.

Except that sometimes, it does just that. For example, when a character introduced as a wife pushes the hand of another character introduced as a husband away. Or when two dancers do something that looks like tango with their hips millimetres apart. And there’s the rub. For when I see such gestures, I move into a mode in which I interpret gestures as something meaningful, and then I carry on expecting other gestures to make sense as well. Soon, however, this expectation is frustrated, and I move into another mode of reception in which I regard the bodies on stage as components of some nonfigurative abstract visual piece. And it’s again fine for some time, until a man takes another man’s hand and kisses it.

The problem is that nothing tells me in which mode I should be watching what is happening in front of me. It’s either Play Without Words or Piet Mondrian. But not both. And no constant switching between them, either. Because then all I feel is frustration and will very soon start to admire the intricate patterns on the chandelier above the stalls.

I admire the ability of the dancers to do all those moves which I’ll never even dream of doing. And I admire the goal of a company to produce a show about society, oppression, segregation, or, as it was advertised in this case, the pageantry we all (apparently) do. But I miss what would connect these two layers. Some sense as to what the momentary relationships between the ones on stage are. Perchance who they are, where we are, and when. How they are: what they feel (now), or, even, what they want (in the future). The interesting thing about word-based art forms, like poetry, prose, or drama, is that words almost always mean something, and they either work with their contexts, or become meaningless because they are impossible to interpret the banana there. (See what I just did?) With visual arts, it’s quite different. For example, I know that the horse in the bottom left corner offers a clue to the narrative in a painting titled The Last Day in the Old Home, but I think the blue rectangle is quite devoid of any such meaning in Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow. Things can not mean in visual arts, and it’s perfectly fine for them not to do so. But I think if one wants them to mean, especially if one wants the meanings to culminate in describing (a dangerous word) or, rather, providing a model of anything, then the things that mean should be allowed to do that.

Surrounding them with other things that don’t, and destroying any sense that has been building up in the audience works against that. Not providing any context works against that. Doing things again that others have done before works against that. It’s all fine--then it’s either Composition 134 in Flesh, Clothes (Some) and Stagehands, or gymnastics. Perhaps even pageantry. But then please, keep the story of the couple who argue about music, or the man who fails to be part of a community out of my abstract painting.

Cohesion, the heart of it all.