Breaking Ground: a Dance Charette
Produced as part of the 6th Annual openhousenewyork Weekend at the Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, NY, on October 4 and 5, 2008.
In white jump suits, a group of men and women flock like seagulls flying over Jamaica Bay just outside the huge glass doors. In wide, curving, banking turns, they run spirals across grease and oil stained concrete just under the wings of a Douglas A4 Skyhawk. Across the way, a woman on crutches signals semaphore-like in front of a Lockheed P2 V Neptune. Nearby, two others, in khaki pants, smudged white shirts and grey hats, tumble backward down a helicopter gangplank wide enough for a car. A circle of planes and vehicles embrace a mysterious set of vignettes. And in a corner, two 1950s “stewards” perform a nearly symmetrical salute on a Douglas C47.
These huge planes, in various states of repair, both dominate and are the “mystery stage” for this year’s Dancing in The Streets’ “Breaking Ground: a Dance Charrette.” A program that asks five choreographers to create new, five-minute works, in five days, in a New York City “historic site in transition” revealed only on the first day of rehearsal, “Breaking Ground” is unique both in site and structure.
Hangar B sits at the back of Floyd Bennett Field. Pregnant with memories of former wars, this dilapidated hulk is filled with vintage aircraft lovingly restored by the volunteers of the Historic Aircraft Restoration Project (HARP). The huge space overwhelms mortals who step over its portal. To help spectator and choreographer cope, “Charrette” artistic director Joanna Haigood divided the hangar into zones.
Zone 1—The giant wings of the Lockheed loom in front of you like the set of the movie “Casablanca.” In fact, this plane flew the Berlin airlift, historian Nami Yamamoto intimates. In the shadows, dancers Kate Garroway, Takemi Kitamura and Johanna Meyers creep quickly under the planes bulk. At other times the women stand, quiet sentries powerfully still, between the planes’ propellers.
Zone 2—The Skyhawk, the plane John McCain flew in Vietnam, posed problems for Stephen Koplowitz, whose father is a vet. Recalling and upending a mechanics work (????), dancers climb (literally) into the tail, pose hanging from stairs and from a long, pointed nose extension. This stillness contrasts with the running spirals. Finally, eight dancers drape themselves loosely over the wheels and struts. Suspended in stillness, they recall the bodies of the dead.
Photo by Julie Lemberger
Zone 3—Death is a recurrent image. Tania Isaac, with Shaneeka Harrell, ends upside down on the ramp of her Sikorsky Pelican helicopter surrounded by chalked excerpts from T.S. Elliot. Earlier, holding hands, supported against the ramp’s slope, the two tumble and catch each other through the day’s most dancey phrases. In a wonderful moment, they enter the helicopter. As the audience peers inside, they sit in the pilot’s seat, bodies arching against the backs as if electrocuted.
Zone 4—Almost cozy, Gus Solomons, Jr. created five, playful, intimate, humorous vignettes—three performed for each audience group—inside his circle of jeep, plane and ambulance. Standing behind the bright blue hulk of the small PT-26, the space resounds as the dancers pound its metal sides. Slowly, one or two at a time, the dancers disappear behind it. Like the carnival game whack-a-mole, heads randomly pop up— Solomons angrily-quizzical, Michael Blake smiles broadly, deadpan Valda Setterfield wears a purple aviator suit. The jeep becomes their clown car—sitting, fighting to get in and not be pulled out—the buzzer goes off again.
Zone 5—Jonah Bokaer’s C 47 sits at an angle to an outside wall. The most serene of all the works, Alizon Cave and Jimena Paz perform synchronized sequences of footwork and arm gestures while standing on the planes wings and an oil barrel. Eventually, they disappear entering the plane. Reappearing over the plane’s center, they stand. Quietly, they plant a flag.
In a departure from the past, each five-minute piece was performed five times simultaneously with the others, for five different sections of the audience. The whole is enhanced by glimpses of movement just outside your zone, by sounds impinging on each other. The overlapping aural and visual scores recall the noise and visual layering of a working hangar. Bokaer’s echolocation devices ping as they “locate the approximate physical center of Hangar B, collect three dimensional data of the…Douglas C-47…and reveal the physical elements of sound through non-visual means.” Solomon’s cellphone buzzes loudly every minute and 40 seconds, while near the end, a Koplowitz dancer, sitting in a downed pilot’s seat, loudly trills “DDDD,” like a kid playing war. By this third performance, Haigood tells me, the dancers have become attuned to the sound and motion outside their immediate performance. She can see, hear and feel synchronicity set in, making a whole of the five.
Haigood hopes to “invite a different type of exploration,” an “opening up” of the choreographer’s process. I do not think that exactly happens. Watching those whose work I’ve seen, it appear to me that in this unique setting, in the short time these choreographers have, they instead go home to what they know and know they do well. But that does not take away from the wonder of the “Charrette.” The challenge and intrigue of “Breaking Ground’s” setting and the multiple ways it’s interpreted, always leads to striking work. I found this year’s work particularly powerful; each choreographer’s integration with the setting was fascinating, telling as much about us as about them.
CUT
For the first time this year “Breaking Ground” appeared as part of OHNY, a vast festival of NYC architecture and spaces. A partnership with Florida State University’s “FSU in NYC” provided students the opportunity to watch this varied group of choreographers at work and to participate in the performance both as tour guides and artist assistants blogging about the event. Tying its two signature events together, this year DITS Team NXT selected young performing artists from Red Hook, Brooklyn, to intern during the production and work with Ms. Haigood, creating a tableaux vivant of mechanics at work.
Floyd Bennett Field, today part of Gateway National Recreation Center, is unknown to most New Yorkers. Opened in 1931 as New York’s first municipal airport, the Field was a Naval and Coast Guard air station from 1941 until it was decommissioned. Home to many historic aviators, including Amelia Earhart and Wiley Post, its huge crisscrossed roadways embrace a surprising peace.