People | George
Davis
Screw Fiske
SCREW FISKE, among the dances presented as part of In the
Season (University of Arizona School of Dance, November 17, 2006),
was something to behold. Choreographed by Douglass Nielsen,
this premiere was full of good ideas. Program notes written by
Mr. Nielsen alerted the audience, in advance, to themes of emphasis
as well as the source(s) of his ideas and inspiration. The notes
took the audience from the railroad cars seen daily at close range
(near Nielsen’s place) and passing multiple times a day; to the “SCREW
FISKE” graffiti spotted by Nielson on the side of one of the
railroad cars in one of the passing trains, to Nielson’s extrapolations
from graffiti to sneakiness to illegality to posturing, to lies. Mr.
Nielsen disclosed within the program notes that SCREW FISKE “is
meant to be a stream of events that pass like a train at different
speeds. Each episode has its own life – like each car on
a train. Modern trains no longer have a caboose; there really
is no end.”
Curtains rose and revealed a giant, continuous,
colorful video-clipping (should we say video-klip-klapping?!) of
moving train cars occupying the full visible back wall of the stage
and grinding passed silently. The
central two-thirds of the video backdrop were deliberately blocked
by a big sheet, like wash on the line, without which the attention
of the audience would never have been completely focused on the dancers,
for the images of the train cars were too transfixing and powerful.
The video clips presented interpretive challenges,
with the huge, extraordinarily two-dimensional, zoom-lens-captured
cars (like smears on the wall) moving from right to left, and then
from left to right. It
was not clear whether the same cars on the same train were moving back
and forth on the same track in the yard, or whether there were two
sets of tracks and two different trains. Though I wanted to confirm
that the clip was just a short one, recycled again and again and again,
and though I wanted to determine the cycle of repetition, I knew that
I must not try to figure that out, for I would miss the dance.
A small colorful child’s toy spun innocently but peculiarly
on stage, centered on and near the suspended sheet, with the spinning
and the slow and somewhat unpredictable timing of the lifting and descent
of loose-beaded arms occurring spontaneously without an apparent energy
source. Spinning was on a vertical axis, unlike the wheels of
the train cars. We were seeing perpetual motion, that is until
the toy was swept away by a single dancer dressed in white, preparing
us for the move from innocence to reality. I cannot actually
recall whether the video clip of train cars had already begun, or began
with the removal of the gadget.
There were twenty dancers in total, and each
was dressed in a costume reminiscent of what is worn in martial arts,
yet outfits not nearly as aggressive nor regimented as this description
might suggest, …in
fact comfortable, attractive, and ever-so-slightly off white.
The choreography at the start placed pairs of
dancers in motions in ways that seemed like the gears, steel connectors,
and angular motions of the driving parts of the train. The
dancers would move to view from behind the suspended sheet, coming
out from the inner workings of the trains themselves, and for an
extended time I believe we were seeing the mechanical dynamics of
what lay behind and beneath.
Yet, as time progressed in this particular introductory dimension
of the dance, the slightly off-white costumes were seen progressively
to become stained by dull colors in narrow rectangular swatches, innocence
departing during the working of the gears, during the motion of system,
during the perpetual unstoppable motion.
The dance extended itself in ways that cannot
be fully reported, at least by me, on the basis of one sitting. But the major epochs
were extraordinary, and most of the truly remarkable parts of the presentations
were ones that incorporated chairs as props, …chairs which seemed
stationary yet – because of the continuously moving cars ‘videoing’ in
the background – were continuously on the move throughout.
We saw the ‘classroom’ arrangement of dancers sitting
attentively in chairs, corporately absenting themselves as individuals
and instead, simultaneously, with one voice, responding and repeating
literally and exactingly everything that the leader-instructor said
(‘repeat after me’). It became apparent that improvisation
and deviation from the norm will be largely impossible on this particular
ride.
We witnessed the dancers at Starbucks and
observed what we see all around us every day: paying whatever is necessary to
achieve individuality, describing with 25 select adjectives and phrases
who we are, breaking free – or so it would seem -- from the sameness
and the sense of capture that comes from looking quite alike in the
endlessly moving cars. We step up to pay more than actual value
for the chance to assert publically our individual expressions. Even
though much more practical, Starbucks would never have customers
order by filling out and handing over a checklist. SCREW
FISKE tells us that the need for caffeine is exceeded by need
for demonstrable public expression through recitation.
The dance moves more deeply.
We observe a descending microphone, which when
it becomes stationary in mid-air still sits above even the tallest
dancer. Then, one-by-one,
each dancer recites upwards into the microphone his/her small innocent
sins of omission or commission, with the exact language (and thus the
exact sin) literally drawn from a hat. This eyes-lifted
but otherwise light and winsome set of recitations seemed like the
remote expression of daily or not-so-daily prayers.
Next, all members of the audience became implicated
in the enunciation and renunciation of sneaky and hidden violations
from proper behavior, for the hat was now passed in the audience. Laughs
and giggles and good humor were themselves innocent blanketings of
what really was
happening and what really was at stake.
A move into deeper confessions was more private
than before, with privacy attained by quickly assembling a long row
of chairs, closely arranged side by side, at and parallel to the
very front of the stage, and each with a seat cover that pulled down
to the floor like a miniature dust ruffle. Each dancer, though close to the next, was now on
the floor under his/her bed in the privacy of his/her bedroom, preparing
to release deeper confessions, ones more personal, not to be drawn
from a hat, not to be randomized. Looking out from beneath
the dust ruffles the dancers would have appeared at very close range
as giant faces peering through the curtains of very small stages. The
curtains went up, the tale was told, the curtains closed.
Next, a makeshift aisle was rapidly constructed
and oriented towards the audience, at right angles to the video tracks,
a proverbial gauntlet of chairs. With imaginative use of this narrow ‘stage’ and
its risers on both sides (i.e., the seats of the chairs), paired relationships
among dancers were again re-established. The lifting of partners
ensued in ways that – particularly – the men seemed to
float tall and elongate in space without underpinnings as they were
lifted and rotated and let down again, …with no source of support
in sight, ….the off-white (though slightly soiled) outfits blending
so closely that the ‘partnering force’ could not be spotted
throughout this perpetual motion.
And at the end when the end was clear, the tiniest
Xmas-holiday train moved at the back of the stage but in front of
the suspended sheet from right to left, like an ‘ant’ in comparison to the
virtual train cars on the back wall. Laughter shot from the audience
as the audience was taken by complete surprise. Laughter may
not have been the suitable response, -- a gasp might have been -- ,but
it was the only manageable response as our psyches had been shifted
so far off balance. A toy train, a risk-free train, a Xmas train,
colorful, and forgiving.
Following In the Season, Friday cast,
my wife and I drove home (oh, I better tell you the truth, we went
out for ice cream), and as we listened to NPR on FM89.1 we learned
that several thousand more Guardsmen are to be shipped to Iraq. Hmmm, I could only
picture a face beneath a chair peeking out to the audience through
yet another dust ruffle, and hearing a hesitant voice that whispered: “The
reason I joined the Guard was to get out of the house on weekends and
during part of the summer.” And thus I whisper to you: “This
awful thought just jumped into my mind when I heard the announcer on
NPR at about 10PM on Friday evening after SCREW FISKE. I
just had to tell you.”
George Davis
Reflections after the performance
November 19, 2006
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