Bare Necessities
By Donald Hutera

A big, juicy chunk of this year’s Dance Umbrella revolves around the work of that great American innovator, Trisha Brown. In the 1960s, she and Yvonne Rainer, Steve Paxton, David Gordon, Deborah Hay, Lucinda Childs and a small army of New York City colleagues were busy turning dance conventions upside-down and inside out. All were members of the Judson Dance Theater, an experimental collective celebrated - and sometimes reviled - for what the New York Times recently encapsulated as ‘Judson’s rebellion against overt virtuosity, its incorporation of "nondance" movement, its restructuring of formal kinetic elements and its re-definition of theatricality.’

Dance Umbrella 2010 aims to take a closer look at this legacy, particularly as it relates to the idea of minimalism. According to Wikipedia, minimalism ‘describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is stripped down to its most fundamental features.’ In a discussion entitled Spectacular Simplicity, a handful of choreographers featured in this year’s festival will consider just how much, and by what varying methods, their individual choreographic practices do - or do not - owe a debt to what the London-based dance programmer and manager Eckhard Thiemann refers to as the "reductionist tendencies of the Judsonites."

It was Thiemann, in conversation with Dance Umbrella’s Artistic Director Betsy Gregory, who spotted the relevant links between artists already programmed in the 2010 festival. They included the French-Algerian Nacera Belaza, a captivating Dance Umbrella newcomer, and the monumentally gifted Australian soloist Ros Warby, to fine festival regulars Jonathan Burrows and Charles Linehan. Joined by independent artist Gill Clarke, fellow choreographer Rosemary Butcher, dance researcher Ramsay Burt and others, it is those four aforementioned choreographers who will talk about their work during Spectacular Simplicity.

Not all of them are comfortable with what Linehan jokingly called ‘the M-word,’ but it’s intriguing to try and determine in what ways their artistry is influenced by the minimal.

"It seems to me that the impulse to use simple means to create strong images is pretty widespread across cultures and times," says Burrows. "The thing that interests me is what that impulse might be. The squeeze box player John Kirkpatrick describes the use of simple loops of repetition in English folk music as being a way to 'get there through a gradual dulling of the senses by means of prolonged, repeated physical activity and its appropriate accompaniment,' which is about the best description I've found yet: that the senses are not being denied but rather quieted, so that something else might be experienced."

Matteo Fargion is a musician and Burrows' frequent collaborator, including on Cheap Lecture and The Cow Piece. "Matteo and I like classic minimalism as much as anyone else," Burrows explains, "but we don't necessarily think of what we do as minimalist. The means we use are simple. We use repetition to amplify or erode meaning, and to build rhythm, but the materials and performance mode often feel more maximal."

"I’m very drawn to a minimalist aesthetic and sensibility," admits Warby, "but I don't set out to make minimalist work." It is just, she says, that "simplicity, or experiencing the bare essentials, gives me relief. How this is framed is crucial. Design, choreography or performance can easily step into indulgent territory that somehow detracts from the potential of a single moment in time and space." For Warby every single detail counts, and therefore each must be judiciously chosen. Dance Umbrella-goers can see and feel for themselves the intimately layered scope of her latest solo Monumental.

"I use the word minimalism carefully in terms of my work," says Linehan, wary of the emotional coldness that might be associated with it. "I do, however, work with processes of reduction, taking out what I see to be extraneous or unnecessary." He remembers seeing as a kid a cartoon in a newspaper. "It showed a sculptor displaying a statue of a duck. An onlooker says, 'It's amazing, how did you do it?' The sculptor replies, 'It's easy: I just chip away the bits that don't look like a duck.'" Linehan's double bill Inventions for Radio 1964 and The Clearing will demonstrate how masterfully he can chip away at his dances in order to uncover the psychological truth and inherent humanity of the dancers themselves.  

As for Nacera Belaza, Thiemann says her work "is about emptying the body" and using repeated rhythms to induce a trance-like, meditative and even mystical state. Danced by Nacera herself and her sister Dalila, Le Cri starts small and builds, ending with a film that lasts about ten minutes or so. Meanwhile the music shifts from Sufi chanting to Maria Callas.

What’s especially interesting is how the notion of a distilled, 'less is more' approach to dance-making seems to spread right across Dance Umbrella 2010. Brown and the amazingly refined work of the late Merce Cunningham anchor it, but the idea also embraces the work of other artists. It’s there in the pared-down emotionalism of Sans-titre, a duet by Raimund Hoghe and the Congolese dancer-choreographer Faustin Linyekula. And you can even detect it in cut-outs & trees, a promenade performance by Cristina Caprioli that plants explosively energetic live dance within a forest-like digital environment.

"Minimalism is what brings me from simplicity to complexity," Caprioli says. "This kind of dance is exposed but indirect, nearby but out of reach, and never aggressive or violent." Clearly with her work, and that of the other artists mentioned above, Dance Umbrella audiences are in for some rich and revealing experiences.

© Donald Hutera, 2011