Artichoke Dance Company’s U R Here
“Choose WHAT you want to see & hear, WHEN” reads the blurb on the flyer. Artichoke Dance Company’s U R Here is an intriguing concept and much of it is clever. The piece begins and ends in distinct spots—Brooklyn’s JJ Byrne Park, a worn, large lawn, a playground, and the historic Old Stone House. In between, the cast performs duets in nearby indoor and outdoor sites. The twist to this site-specific work is that the duets unwind every 10 minutes or so for 40 minutes, performed concurrently, not sequentially. Each viewer structures how to see the performance by picking from a menu of sites. In addition, pre-programmed MP3 players let the viewer choose the accompaniment they want to hear with each duet.
The Opening: Formal, unison, on the broad lawn in front of the Old Stone House the dancers, in pairs, scatter across the lawn or line up in diagonals. The vocabulary of the section establishes the language of the piece—exchanges of weight, leaning, pushing, pulling, lifting with backs and sides of the body, wrapping each other around hips and spinning. It’s the language of contact improvisation formalized, codified and danced by skilled performers.
Duet 1: The farthest site from the park. In a community garden Eunhee Vivian Lee and Meghan Frederick begin gently playing with each other’s hands, softly touching, turning the palm. But they begin to push each other. They chase and stalk each other along the garden paths. Occasionally they stop, leaning tenderly on each other only to devolve again into an “altercation.” Finally they sit back at the picnic table and touch hands.
Duet 2: In a pocket park a couple sits on a bench. George Hirsch manipulates his limp partner, Joy Voelker, pushing her loose limbs, catching her when she nearly falls until she suddenly breaks free, running to a small patio. There, roles reverse. He becomes the rag doll in the dysfunctional duo until they stumble back to the bench where, now loving, he cradles her in his lap.
Duet #4 In Ozzies Coffee Shop
Almost all the duets have a surprising anger to them. Artistic director Lynn Neuman says she’s attracted to tension. Modeling the duets on things she heard and saw in this Park Slope neighborhood, she abstracted both the tension of anger and the softness of companionship. The repetition of movement ideas, though it’s a language I love, became monotonous.
Duet 3: Inside a famed local coffee shop Cary McWilliam and Karuna Richard Vinhateiro sit, their white coffee cups encased in crocheted warmers by Olek. They’re writing in a notebook. Slowly they start to fight over the book, chasing each other, pushing each other, lifting each other as they roll over the table and chairs knocking things out of their way. Finally, McWilliams grabs the paper and stuffs it in her mouth, spitting it in her cup. Grabbing the notebook, she walks out the door. Vinhateiro looks in the cup, lifts it to her mouth, makes a wry face, and walks out after her.
Duet 4: On the dining patio of a bar/restaurant Chelsey Dunkel starts to read a paper over Lea Fulton’s shoulder. This leads to a manic chase through the restaurant, ending in a page-tearing sidewalk brawl. It’s fun, and funny while keeping the intensity that might be found in a real encounter.
Duet 5 is different. Inside an elegant dress shop window Zoe Klein “flies” on Toby Billowitz’s feet. She climbs his thigh and balances against him, a mini-Cirque du Soleil. Unlike the tension of the others, this duet is sweet, playful, loving.
The finale finds the 10 dancers on a long low wall in the park. In unison or sequence they balance on the wall, turn, walk it like a tightrope. In some ways this was my favorite part: abstract, simple, but the ten bodies moving at once, leaning and balancing, amplified both the movement themes and its playfulness.
All the sites have a signature color exhibited in crocheted patches on the costumes by Oleck, a Polish artist of wearable sculptures, and in identifying crocheted articles: covers for railings, rocks and benches, and a beautiful crocheted dress outside the dress shop, Serene Rose.
And the MP3 player? Filled with music by 12 Brooklyn composers whose music ranged from rock to jazz to folk. Listening during the walk between duets was a treat. But choosing a piece from what started as an unknown smorgasbord of tunes distracted me from the performance that would have been just as appealing with only ambient sound.
The idea of a make-your-own dance is clever and intriguing, but at this stage still flawed. The experience was like wandering through a series of lives. It was impossible to understand how the duets might have been experienced differently if you chose a different order, so any choice was random. But Neuman is on to something. What would happen if the piece took place over a day? If you really could stop for coffee, buy a dress as she suggests in her introduction and still see the duets over many hours, see them several times, maybe even enter them in some fashion?