Jess Curtis / Gravity • Dances for Non/Fictional Bodies

Dances for Non/Fictional Bodies

(Preview excerpt)

Jess Curtis / Gravity
February 28, 2010
Presented at CounterPULSE (San Francisco) as part of Gravity’s Intercontinental Collaborations 4.

Created & performed by Maria Francesca Scaroni, Jörg Müller, Claire Cunningham, David Toole, Jess Curtis and dramaturg/provocateur Guillermo Gomez Peña. Conceived and directed by Jess Curtis.

The stage is filled with the remnants of past performances, stuff that seems to have lost either its meaning or function. Objects from theater prop rooms: mannequin parts, black cubes, an old fridge, a child’s desk, a vintage gurney, a bike, a mirror, and even the kitchen sink, ba da ba. This is the trash of representation, stuff that looks like or evokes or locates… The appearance of the sink suggests a hint of vaudeville, that US American entertainment fusion of dance, comedy, circus, sideshow, and cultural performance.

Dances for Non/Fictional Bodies

includes all of these elements, but under the influence of contemporary dance and performance these elements are either reduced to abstract essence or maximized into camp excess. The mashup of these tendencies - towards essence or excess - defines the field of play for this team of improvisers.

By referring to the bodies as Non/Fictional, Curtis emphasizes the impossibility of denying the fiction within nonfiction, the imaginary within the real. The slash that interrupts the more commonly used ‘nonfiction’ intervenes on a simple reading of nonfictional as non-imaginary, not-pretend. The bodies in this carefully constructed mess recycle and repurpose objects as easily as personae, changing costumes and attitudes, wigs and positions. In Dances for… the body is real is a theatrical construction is a performance is an unstable and generative site of production of identities, knowledge and art. Dancers sing, juggle, ride bikes, imitate circus animals, manipulate objects, and dance. Sometimes they do almost nothing, daring us to stare or to question what is real. In their playful experimentation bodies and bodily talents are revealed as well as hidden. Two of the five performers have bodies that might be described as disabled, differently abled, non-normative, crippled or different. Everyone has a crutch, that is, a way of extending themselves with objects, tools, or other people to achieve things they wouldn’t be able to do otherwise. These humans seem broken yet undefeated. Together they build a queer world beyond the obvious, the norm, the rule.

The choreography or dramaturgy of this splendid provocation in the guise of a theatrical performance is not obvious. It’s more like a gestalt of performative actions, images and interventions. For most of the work there are multiple simultaneous events. A crisis of representation, of identity, is provoked by this crisis of choreography. The dancers demonstrate both virtuosity and banality. The five performers work alone, in duets and trios. Neither my notes nor memory of this densely layered performance recall any moment when all five were in the same game or image. The following descriptions attempt to resist a falsely linear chronology of the chaos-like multiplicity, simultaneity, and confusions that structure (and de-structure) the work.

Claire enters, most of her body and head covered in some kind of over-sized, insulated welding suit. In her gloved hands she holds crutches like enormous tweezers carrying a plush bunny, as if it is toxic and must be kept away from everyone. Funny. Strange. Then I notice the only parts of her body that are visible: ankles and feet. Her feet are oddly flat and her ankles seem to dislocate or relocate with each step. Her walk is fragile and I realize that I’ve never before seen her walk without the aid of crutches.

In her body-distorting fat suit Maria swerves madly on roller skates, narrowly missing people, objects, and wiping out. At a blackboard she writes, “He hides in exposure. Love is a structure. I respect Spinoza. Me too. OMG.” Standing (in roller skates) on a table, Scaroni alternately sings and lipsynchs a song that includes the lyrics, “Only in my dreams.” Her camp entertainment is unexpectedly intimate. Maria’s skates prevent any stable position, keeping her always poised at the edge of danger or momentum. Later she returns to the blackboard, now naked, to write, “What scars you? How do you pretend to be strong? Did you sabotage my roller skate?”

After an (amateur) strip to underwear, Jörg appears in a red riding hood cape. Suddenly he jumps into a wide stance with bent knees. The cape opens to reveal a fuzzy pink bunny slipper covering his genitals. Legless David Toole’s muscular upper body seems to collapse into itself, diminishing his non-chair height to below Müller’s crotch. David reaches with his rubber-gloved hand to pet the bunny codpiece. As he continues to stroke the bunny, Jörg slaps his hand away. Bad boy! We laugh and squirm. The interaction is so queer, so peculiar, so gay, complicated and delighted by reading these guys as hetero dudes engaged somehow innocently in a contradiction of queer fetishes, rubber and plushy. Touch. Don’t touch.

I nearly jumped to my feet to applaud the sublime circus-like act in which David plays both trainer and animal. He is wearing top hat and vest, and something animal print. The music is spaghetti western. Walking on his huge hands and powerful arms, David arrives on each block as if we should applaud. Ta da! See the trained cripple, I mean dancer, I mean freak, approach the wary audience. See how he balances and never falls. Maria and Jörg enter on hands and knees. Big cats. David commands them, pets them, and begins to climb onto their bodies. Slowly they rise, until they are standing (Scaroni still in roller skates!) on the blocks. Toole has continued to climb, to balance, until he is perched above their heads, his hands on their shoulders. Extraordinary. Bizarre. Edgy. Is the image more dangerous or unstable than the physical feat? The descent is controlled, awkward, and precise. In a hug, Maria carries David, and she skates them off stage.

In

Dances for…

Jess stages his most frequent practices: reading books for grad school and endurance bike riding. During a period of 15 or 20 minutes Curtis, geeked out in full lycra bike wear, rides a fancy road bike that powers a string of lights. He rides and rides. The action is vigorous. The impact almost ridiculous. He goes nowhere. The lights are meager. But his energy builds with the work, the sound of his labors increase via breath and spinning back wheel. With this increasingly intense action Curtis anchors the project.

Curtis, Gómez-Peña, and the collaborative performers have crowded this work with obsessions, desires, fears, taboos, fetishes, and archetypes. They’re playing with objects, playing with themselves and each other, playing with us, playing with ideas and representations, playing with identity, playing with bodies, playing with the con/fusion of real and imaginary. This serious and disciplined play informs a wisely crafted choreography of improvisations, situations, and sensations. The work is intended as provocation but does not shy away from entertainment. In the friction between contradictions Curtis and gang have generated significant warmth, raising the social temperature, daring us to playfully disrupt our own bodily fictions.

Kirk Read performance at Too Much! (Jan 2010)

Chicken Shit (meditation is supposed to make you less crazy)
Performance by Kirk Read

Kirk Read walked on stage carrying two milk crates. He was wearing a short white shirt-dress or choir robe that read ceremonial. The robe was closed at the throat but open to the torso, revealing gold lame bikini pants. A voice over of Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield’s trance inducing monotone introduced us to some kind of meditation practice. A wall-sized video projection of someone, someone white, touched and then later licked a small brown-skinned doll. The effect of the close-up fondling was creepy but almost camp, especially in contrast with what we hear.

Kirk stood on the two crates and attached a carabiner to a cord extending from the ceiling, lengthening its reach to approximately 3 feet above the floor. A (frozen) chicken on a silver platter was passed through the audience. Kirk received the chicken, which had been prepared with some kind of wire harness, and suspended it from the cord.

The voice over and projection continued. Kirk’s mood was calm as he moved slowly and methodically to set the stage. Some of us knew what was going to happen, but we knew that not everyone knew. The audience mood was unsettled, caught between images (real and imagined) that were both ominous and absurd.

Kirk moved the crates, with platter on top, away from the chicken. He turned his back to us and flipped the robe over his head, revealing his back. He pulled his pants down, and backed up, straddling the crate, which was positioned diagonally between his legs. He leaned forward, reached back, pulled his butt cheeks wide. The audience started to squirm, giggle, moan, recoil, chat. The first sign of shit elicited both gasp and light applause. The applause returned louder when the first turd was pinched off and dropped to the plate. Then he pooped a bunch more. Some walked out. Some applauded. The rest of us tingled, stared, squirmed, squeezed our neighbor’s hand or thigh, commented, took pictures with cell phones, laughed.

Just getting to watch an asshole open and release, for most of the audience, was a once in a lifetime event. Read crafted the event in a fresh hybrid of shamanistic body art vaudeville that somehow made the taboo acceptable, watchable, even interesting. Read’s onstage pooping was simultaneously funny, magical, and formally precise. How did he do it? I can’t believe he’s doing it! I can’t believe I’m watching this! Wow, look how much is coming out.

Then it stopped. He pulled up his pants (without wiping), fixed his robe, and turned around. He brought the crates, with platter of shit, back to the chicken. As if performing a demonstration in home ec class, Read dressed and stuffed the chicken. He dressed it with a skirt of streamers and stuffed it with spoonfuls of his own poop. He took his time, making sure not to waste any.

Then he moved the crates out of the way, looked up at us and smiled. The smile was coy, suggesting possible danger, but we didn’t have time to imagine what he might do next. When he pushed the chicken towards the audience, it swung over the first row and folks jumped out of their seats to get out of the way. Swinging it more erratically, to challenge even more of the audience, we laughed and squealed and more folks scurried out of the way. Some took their chances and remained seated, ducking their heads as the poop-stuffed chicken came their way. The shock was tempered with the ridiculous.

Before the chicken swing had come to rest, Kirk stopped it with two hands. He unhooked it and placed it in one of the crates. There was intermittent applause as Read reached up to detach the carabiner and gathered his props. He returned to the unhurried state of executing simple tasks, closing the ritual as he had opened it.

Read walked out. The applause was strong. He left no visual trace but the smell now seemed overpowering. The door to the small theater was opened, several people left and the rest were engaged in animated chatter, while fanning their hands in front of their noses.

I questioned the video and wondered what would be gained or lost without it. I adored the creepy vibe and the licking shots were really strong - I mean evocative, suggestive, inappropriate - but what did the video bring to the larger gestalt of the work? It introduced a juxtaposition or tension with the live performance that wasn’t sustained. Insufficiently developed video projection is too frequent an occurrence in dance and live performance.

In brief discussion with Read I know that this work was inspired by both a meditation retreat and a book about the horrors of factory farmed chicken. These diverse sources both crack the denial of how we’ll eat shit – real and metaphoric - as long as we don’t know what we’re eating. Read’s Chicken Shit (meditation is supposed to make you less crazy) is a provocative yet nuanced meditation. It will be notorious as a poop performance, but the complex resonance of the work ripples in ever-widening concentric rings to disturb the social surfaces of our denial.


Chicken Shit was one of over 30 performances at
Too Much! a marathon of queered performance
Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory, Jan 10 2010
Produced by Zero Performance as part of Keith Hennessy’s A Queer 20th Anniversary

Dance Barter for Artist Breath - Yva Jung

Some days the life of an improviser is doubly charmed. Watch this video by Yva Jung who I happened to meet in 2008 in New York's Union Square where she was selling the breath of artists. Prices ranged from 22 cents to $121, with several 'breath samples' offered for barter (a good natured hug, a song, 32 oz Ketchup). I bartered for a 'really good dance.' Later that night I told the story while performing at a raw space in the Ambush festival (in the Brooklyn neighborhood, Bushwick) and tried to recreate the dance I had improvised in Union Square. By fluke, Yva heard about the performance, got a copy of the video from Treva Wurmfeld and created this work comparing the two events. In the audience that night were Yvonne Meier, Ishmael Houston-Jones (you can hear him laughing), Carla Peterson, a few ex-pats from San Francisco, and a bunch of artists/people from the neighborhood.


If the link doesn't work, try pasting this url into your browser.

http://vimeo.com/19192714