FLOODESIGN

Peak Performances is thinking this year about endangered performance languages. As we press further into the 21st century, the fragile ecosystems that supported the great 20th century dance languages show inevitable signs of decay. I am thinking of the systems that supported repertories by such artists as George Balanchine, Martha Graham, Katherine Dunham, Merce Cunningham and Paul Taylor: a daily technique class into rehearsals and new creation, and finally the public performance, which then informed the class … and the cycle continued. What happened on the stage was merely a snapshot of a circular flow of ideas and discoveries. Over time, this system threatens to disintegrate because it is built upon the choreographer's live, embodied transmission of knowledge, and upon the knowledge of those who perform the work and teach the technique. As key artists pass away or retire, the original source becomes two, three, four times removed, and the information changes. Human mortality streaks through the ontology of dance. An extreme nostalgia clings to the art form as a result. I launched my career in the 1990s and have danced in a number of major 20th and early 21st century repertories — with New York City Ballet, Mikhail Baryshnikov's White Oak Dance Project and ensembles led by Twyla Tharp and Yvonne Rainer. Because many of the dances I have performed were created decades earlier and passed on over time, I have frequently had the sense that we dancers chase ghosts: ever striving to look like the dancers who had originated the roles and to restore the choreography to some preexisting state. It is usually the older generations of dancers staging the work who privilege the past over the present — missing, perhaps, their own presence. The choreographer always looks ahead: working with whoever is in the room, preferring to create rather than reconstruct. The one repertory in which I have not encountered this yearning for a bygone era is Rainer's 1960s dances, which I recently performed as part of the Museum of Modern Art's exhibition "Judson Dance Theater: The Work Is Never Done." Praising the reconstruction, a number of critics felt that our interpretation had restored technique to the historical narrative about postmodern dance. For although the dancers involved in Judson Dance Theater in the early '60s experimented with pedestrian movements and hauled mattresses around, they had started their days by studying ballet, Cunningham or Graham technique, or even West African dance. Fifty-five years later, with Rainer overseeing the 2018 reconstruction, we were free to perform her work with our range of technical backgrounds, from Balanchine ballet to Cambodian classical dance — feeling no need to look like anyone other than ourselves. Notably, no film or video of Rainer's early 1960s dances exists. Recording dance became more commonplace by the late '60s and early '70s, and for a dancer, the rare videos from that era are like the Rosetta stone: a glimpse into an ecosystem caught in time, which can guide latter-day interpretations of a choreographic work. The recordings also produce the nostalgia, however: with Rainer's work, we had no basis of comparison and thus felt unburdened by the past. It's the gift of being able to see clearly how previous dancers danced that invites the comparison, and the yearning. I became intrigued with the language of camera operators who shot dance in the last quarter of the 20th century because they created these recordings. They know the same repertories that I do, yet their knowledge exists as a flip side or negative to my own. While I dance in the thick of choreographic fragility, their craft sits between us and the past, a shoring up against the ephemerality of the art form. What they developed is a secondary language — an embodied, cinematic technique that exists alongside great choreography to capture its essence. Much of their work can be found in the public television series "Dance in America," which first ran in 1976 and gave a cohort of directors, producers and camera operators an especially fertile platform on which to construct a grammar for recording dance. A range of styles and leading choreographers inspired their craft, starting with a mixed program by the Joffrey Ballet and including such work as "Holo Mai Pele," featuring ancient hula and chant. Film and video cannot prevent a dance language's demise; artfully filmed, however, we get something like a prehistoric bee caught in amber. Frozen in time, these documentations are nonetheless teeming with life. Virtuosic camera work dissolves the frame into the viewer's experience of watching the dance. The camera operator's craft is so contingent on the dance that it takes a special technique to catch it: I have to watch the dancers with a soft focus and blur my vision slightly, in order to become aware of what's happening on the periphery. Once you begin to notice the deft, subtle motions of the camera operator responding to the dancer, it feels as though an entire third space opens up, a subtext that supports the music and the choreography. The movement of the frame is a language all its own. The camera operators who worked on "Dance in America" in the early years perfected their craft on astonishing virtuosos. In the 1978 taping of Balanchine's "Chaconne," which you can now see on YouTube, the cameras confidently complement the movements of Suzanne Farrell and Peter Martins in their quick duet. The leads exchange solos — first him, then her, their steps carrying them side to side and around the stage. In one extended shot, the camera follows Martins as he executes a sequence of small jumps. Right, left, right, left — dancer and camera operator carry the music 7 | PEAKPERFS.ORG I BECAME INTRIGUED WITH THE LANGUAGE OF CAMERA OPERATORS WHO SHOT DANCE IN THE LAST QUARTER OF THE 20TH CENTURY BECAUSE THEY CREATED THESE RECORDINGS. THEY KNOW THE SAME REPERTORIES THAT I DO, YET THEIR KNOWLEDGE EXISTS AS A FLIP SIDE OR NEGATIVE TO MY OWN.

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