TBA Day 7: Review of Keith Hennessy's Turbulence
A glorious mess that's shot through with enough rigor, humor, and heart to entertain and incite. World premiere plays Tues thru Fri at 8:30.
First we need a little background: pissed off about the banking collapse and bailout and inspired by the Occupy movement and books like Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine, San Francisco artist Keith Hennessy
wanted to create a dance that explored the instable, unsustainable
structures and inequalities of the economy (I’d recommend reading the
program notes before seeing the show). Ironically, he received more
money to create the work than any previous show, so he hired as many
artists as he could, many drawn from his San Francisco company, Circo
Zero, and several from Portland. Through a highly collaborative
improvisational process involving a series of workshops and shared
readings on theory and economics, the
ensemble arrived at a checklist of 10 things that must happen. But when
or how they happen, or what else happens, is entirely a question of the
night.
The show was already in progress when the
audience entered and crossed the stage to get to the seats, being
intercepted by offers of wine and ear plugs (take them), or invited to
lie on the floor for “fake healing,”
which consisted of anything from getting caressed by the performers
long hair to having the contents of their wallets laid out one by one on
their supine body. By calling it fake,
the show set a disarming tone from the get go, suspending any
expectations of what was about to happen and prejudices that we should
take anything too seriously.
It’s almost
impossible to explain the raw, frenetic craziness that followed, in no
small part because so much was going on at once that you couldn’t
possible absorb it all (and no doubt what happens tonight and tomorrow
will be different). There were acrobatic feats, dance parties,
two artists fighting over scraps of gold cloth, and an artist who wet
himself. But from this chaotic playground, a number of themes began to arise around support and instability, boom cycles and collapse. It came most vividly and beautifully alive when performers pulled audience members on stage and set them into two human pyramids,
their heads hooded in gold sequined clothes, each struggling to stay
aloft and finally collapsing into two piles. A stunningly simple image
with complexly troubling undertones (Abu Ghraib is just the beginning),
its "message" was immediately lampooned by another performer standing in
the audience. “This is the part where
they build an unstable structure—it’s really obvious,” he said. “The
gold [cloth] represents a luxury item, even though it’s really tacky and
cheap.”
More than chaos, though, Turbulence
is a collective body that’s constantly changing course, with a loose
hierarchy that’s often ignored, if not outrightly sabotaged. While the
random flow and conflict signifies and emulates the aimlessness and
competing interests of our free-market capitalist economy, pulsing
underneath is a palpable love between the performers, creating a sense
of humanity that perseveres through the chaos, and ultimately overcomes
it. And the audience is, sometimes literally, pulled into it, sharing in
all the risk, danger, and triumph (in this way, it succeeds where I felt Gutierrez came up short).
More than a dance, it’s a modern ritual of sorts—if a very queer one
(carrying on as it does in the collaborative queer art collective
footsteps of the Cockettes through the cast of Shortbus).
In his moment of commentary (one of the 10
things that must happen), Hennessy said, “on a good day, this is a dance
about magic—or a magic dance about the economy.” He then asked the
audience if they wanted to do the "Party Scene," which was optional and
not on the checklist. After a resounding “yes,” performers rolled out a
long strip of Marley vinyl, doused it with water and then champagne,
invited the audience to circle round, and then several performers and
audience members alike stripped naked and slid, strutted, and frolicked
down the slip ‘n slide. People lingered long after the show “ended,” electrified by this queer economy of magic.
Yes, it was
an undeniable mess whose sloppiness (and noise and nudity and queerness)
will not suit everyone; indeed, several folks walked out. But it was
shot through with enough love, entertainment, humor, and intellectual
rigor and intention that I hope it will incite most.
Turbulence (a dance about the economy) will continue Wednesday through Friday at 6:30pm at Imago Theater.
Portland Monthly Mag
(source: http://portlandmonthlymag.com/arts-and-entertainment/culturephile-portland-arts/articles/tba-day-7-review-of-keith-hennessy-turbulence-september-2012)
--------------------------------------------------------
Dance enthusiast
(source: http://www.dance-enthusiast.com/features/view/385)
Impressions Of: Keith Hennessy/Circo Zero
In Turbulence (a dance about the economy)
Choreography by Keith Hennessy
Created and Performed by: Laura Arrington, Ruairí Donovan, Hana Erdman, Jesse Hewit, Keith Hennessy, Jassem Hindi, Empress Jupiter, Emily Leap, Julie Phelps, Jorge Rodolfo De Hoyos, and Gabriel Todd with special guest artists AK Burns, Ishmael Houston-Jones, and Dana Michel
End of Days Dancin'
Christine Jowers for The Dance Enthusiast
The scene: the end of the world. New York Live Arts is bombed out. A
white marley lies off-kilter on the black floor. The brick walls are
exposed; pipes are bare. Wire strewn akimbo. Light fixtures on the
floor. A guy, Jassem Hindi, crumpled among a mass of snaky wires huddles
over his computer and tinkers away– he is a ringmaster of sound for the
camp. A trapeze contraption swings from the exposed grid on the
ceiling. A cardboard box has exploded - half of it lies on the stage
floor in front of us, the other half has been vomited onto the back
wall. People (audience and cast?) are huddled behind the center stage
"encampment" - one tribe, perhaps? On our right ,another group sits and
peers into the action. Then there are the rest of us, the visitors,
facing the main camp from plush seats wondering,“What in the hell have
we just joined?” The set up brings to mind the movie, Mad Max, and we are all that is left in the broken down world.
Someone who introduces himself as George (Jorge Rodolfo De Hoyos)
comes up to me and quietly asks if I would like to be healed. It is
called faith healing and – no, I shouldn’t be nervous- I don’t have to
do anything. He is nervous and that’s why he came up to me. Can I
help? For a half second I wonder about the appropriateness of writing
about a production while taking part in it, but George/Jorge needs me…
 |
| Keith Hennessy/Circo Zero ;Photo © Ian Douglas |
Whether you opt to move in or sit on the outskirts, Turbulence
and the cast of the Circo Zero tug at you- sometimes by actually
pulling you into the group. Other times they visit your seat to share a
story, or ask if you need earplugs (it’s loud.) Then there are the
magnetic improvisations. The evening is mostly improvised and the
commitment “to show it all no matter what” is full on. There is never a
time that I am not absolutely absorbed by at least one of the multitude
of events happening.
The cast wanders from encounter to encounter stripping away the
boundaries between audience and performer. We are drawn in and out of
scenarios that we are not usually exposed to in most classical style
theatrical productions:people sucking at one another, bodies slamming
together with real sexuality bordering on violence, (or is it real
violence bordering on sexuality?) Two men pee through their clothes on
stage. Should I be shocked? They seem so lonely.
There are moments when I am not sure if someone on “stage” is part
of the cast or an audience member. From time to time several downtown
dancer/choreographers stand out by joining the fray with relish. Makes
me wonder how turbulent the room would feel with a more reticent crowd.
 |
| Keith Hennessy/Circo Zero ;Photo © Ian Douglas |
Ishmael Houston-Jones starts up the stairs into the audience with
Rodolfo De Hoyos. They try and fail to balance on one another. It is
precarious. They hit a position, collapse, and grapple the railing,
their faces almost ramming into the cement stairs. When down, Jones
rabidly gnaws on his partner’s ass and catches my eye. I am caught
uncomfortably close, witnessing animal passion or a feeding that I
shouldn’t really be seeing. They lay it bare here in Circus Zero.
Throughout the spectacular anti-spectacle we notice several
anchors: a super hot guy in underwear and shirt acts as time-keeper
maintaining the beat of whatever music is playing with go- go dancing
bops; a swing trapeze mostly occupied by two spiraling, aerial women in
various states of dress and undress ; and the larger-than-life
Buddha-bellied black man, The Empress Jupiter - our glittering, drag
spirit-guide to this collapsing world.
On the evening I attend, Jupiter wraps a few members of the
audience in a striking gold cloth that is used symbolically throughout
the piece as a pillow, a death shroud, a blanket, and a covering that
totally conceals cast member’s faces. “It’s our gimmick,” the Empress
announces to some of us with two flicks of her wrist and tiny wave to
the gleaming drapery, “like in Gypsy.” (I did mention there is humor here too, no?)
 |
| Keith Hennessy/Circo Zero ;Photo © Ian Douglas |
Any chain of sense we notice is acknowledged, bodily or verbally,
as flawed. The performers are flawed. We are flawed. Systems are flawed.
The people creating the sensitive structure of the pyramid are doing so
while blinded by golden masks; that woman kissing the other woman may
look sexy but the receiver is not experiencing pleasure. it hurts,
really hurts and she feels like an object. Even good institutions, ones
that are supposed to make us happy and golden aren’t as perfect as they
seem. Keith Hennessy’s company of independent contractor performers
didn't have worker’s comp to satisfy of New York Live Arts, and the
presenter freaked. Nadir mentions that the only way he can get more
grant money is by referring to himself as Palestinian instead of
European or French from Libya. Ridiculous, right? Black and white
cards are passed out (I don’t get one.) They say something to the
effect of “You lied and you got a way with it.” Our failed government,
blinded by the gold of Midas, bailed out the banks. There it is in black
and white.
Turbulent are the times we live in. What stands up in a storm? When
things get messy, who will clean up? Who can we rely on for support?
 |
| Keith Hennessy/Circo Zero ;Photo © Ian Douglas |
-----------------------------------
The Sun Break (Seattle)
(source: http://thesunbreak.com/2012/09/27/reading-turbulence-keith-hennessys-dance-about-the-economy/)
(source: http://thesunbreak.com/2012/09/27/reading-turbulence-keith-hennessys-dance-about-the-economy/)
Reading “Turbulence,” Keith Hennessy’s Dance About the Economy
by Michael van Baker on September 27, 2012
Nothing in Turbulence, the largely improvised movement piece from Keith Hennessy and friends, confronts you with anything like that moment in Crotch (all the Joseph Beuys references…) when he has to sew bystanders (their clothing) to his skin with red thread.
But something else happened during the performance at Velocity Dance Center that was perturbing in its own right.
The “only nonimprovised piece in the show” is the building of a human pyramid, with the performers and volunteer audience members stripped down to underwear or nudity. They have hoods made of a shiny gold cloth on. Given that “Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine” are the first five words in Hennessy’s program note, it would be difficult not to see a reference to Abu Ghraib here.
What kind of reference is wide open, but it was a shock to hear how gleefully the audience responded, cheering and encouraging the participants as knees and elbows wobbled, palms slid. Despite the hoods, despite the evident point being exhausted collapse, the audience (generally speaking) seemed to want to treat it as simply a cheer pyramid, a test of endurance. (Perhaps one or two guards did, too, it occurred to me. Remember when a few pundits compared it to hazing?)
There’s no “right” way to respond to a human pyramid, of course–but this was proof that Hennessy had succeeded, it seemed to me, in getting the audience involved as an improvisational partner. (In Portland, there was a Champagne slip ‘n’ slide that brought hipsters into a playground of excess. So, involved, or complicit.)
He told Culturebot: “People have to enter it poetically or that won’t happen. If they’re just waiting for the content to arrive it won’t happen.” (You get confirmation of that from this upset review, which includes the line, “I am very patient with these things!!”) He’s done what he can.
You wander in to something already happening, a “fake healing” involving dancers laying on hands, setting objects on top of audience members, manipulating their limbs. People are gently invited to join (I turned my person down because I wouldn’t be able to see what was going on), and it’s explained why it’s fake (“There’s nothing wrong with you”) and how it helps people open up a little to what’s going on, even if they’re just watching other people being open.
There’s no need to justify what Hennessy is up to, since getting out of that box is part of the project. (In fact the set is mainly splayed-open cardboard boxes.) Turbulence is supposed to (like the economy isn’t but does) fail. The other ur-text here is Judith Halberstam‘s Queer Art of Failure, which talks about refusing normative values and practices.
Hennessy queers dance, then, your expectations of it (or of performance art) and pursues what looks like a terrible idea, because how can dance be about the economy…and be good? (Coincidentally, you can go see another dance about the economy at Pacific Northwest Ballet, Cinderella. It’s about as normative and representational as things get, to the extent that nothing about the economics that creates penniless serving girls registers.)
Despite occasional outbursts, Hennessy and his troupe–Julie Phelps, Emily Leap, Laura Arrington, Jesse Hewit, Jorge Rodolfo De Hoyos, Hana Erdman, Gabriel Todd, Ruairí O’Donovan, Empress Jupiter, Jassem Hindi, with special Seattle guests Markeith Wiley and Joan Hanna–largely refuse the prospect of arguing with the economy. What happens is somatic, the experience of the body. There’s a scratched-up, staticky soundtrack, dj’d live, that is more about the feeling of the words than the content.
People pair up, or antagonize each other, or tangle furiously. If two dancers practice linking themselves, their weight counterpoised, a third will jump in. Throughout, the dancers swap clothing, stripping down and dressing back up. A trapeze set becomes the setting for blind, hooded, acrobatic feats–though the climb to the top is always greeted with the question of where to go from there.
Dancers move among the audience members, sometimes shouting out to those on the floor, sometimes having semi-private conversations. A gold sheet is produced, and passed over audience members like they’re playing under the covers. No one is likely to have the same experience: There are too many rings in this circus to attend to all of them. You can pay attention to the dancer screeching and masturbating, or you can look elsewhere.
For somatic poetry on economic collapse, though, it’s hard to beat when Hennessy, sitting on cardboard and talking about bitterness and anger, also reveals that the dancer sitting next to him has peed his underpants, and they’re all sitting in it. So much is contained in this: the stench of homelessness, animal fearfulness, the way this more ignoble (than blood) bodily fluid unites us, contaminates us. If you bother to think back to when thousands of people were losing their jobs weekly, you’ll smell the piss-stink again.
A quote attributed to feminist scholar Peggy Phelan pulls some of these strands together:
Love, despite its toxicity and violence, can bring us closer to the possibility of expressing human tenderness. If one is ambitious enough to want to create a shared history, then one must be willing to risk an impossible dance, one that pivots on a desire to outmuscle exhaustion, a desire alive to our wavering capacities to bestow and receive responses, and an apparently insatiable desire to question these capacities and what motivates and blocks them, repeatedly.
The ending is individual; once the improv list has been completed, you’re invited to stay, come down off the bleachers. Some people formed another human pyramid. Many more joined in a dance party that Hennessy decided to turn into super-slow-motion. A few stood around and talked. A conga line formed.
Turbulence may be meant to fail, but I don’t regret the time I was there, watching it refuse to amount to much, at least by some standards. It was a transient blip, in the greater scheme of things, but it created its own peculiar space while it existed. And if you think of healing in terms of wholeness, its ability to give you back the humanity in a human pyramid, the effervescence of an economic slide (both banished, we all had to pay somehow) is remarkable.
-----------------------------
SF Bay Guardian
(source: http://www.sfbg.com/2012/09/25/gimme-shelter )
Nothing in Turbulence, the largely improvised movement piece from Keith Hennessy and friends, confronts you with anything like that moment in Crotch (all the Joseph Beuys references…) when he has to sew bystanders (their clothing) to his skin with red thread.
But something else happened during the performance at Velocity Dance Center that was perturbing in its own right.
The “only nonimprovised piece in the show” is the building of a human pyramid, with the performers and volunteer audience members stripped down to underwear or nudity. They have hoods made of a shiny gold cloth on. Given that “Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine” are the first five words in Hennessy’s program note, it would be difficult not to see a reference to Abu Ghraib here.
What kind of reference is wide open, but it was a shock to hear how gleefully the audience responded, cheering and encouraging the participants as knees and elbows wobbled, palms slid. Despite the hoods, despite the evident point being exhausted collapse, the audience (generally speaking) seemed to want to treat it as simply a cheer pyramid, a test of endurance. (Perhaps one or two guards did, too, it occurred to me. Remember when a few pundits compared it to hazing?)
There’s no “right” way to respond to a human pyramid, of course–but this was proof that Hennessy had succeeded, it seemed to me, in getting the audience involved as an improvisational partner. (In Portland, there was a Champagne slip ‘n’ slide that brought hipsters into a playground of excess. So, involved, or complicit.)
He told Culturebot: “People have to enter it poetically or that won’t happen. If they’re just waiting for the content to arrive it won’t happen.” (You get confirmation of that from this upset review, which includes the line, “I am very patient with these things!!”) He’s done what he can.
You wander in to something already happening, a “fake healing” involving dancers laying on hands, setting objects on top of audience members, manipulating their limbs. People are gently invited to join (I turned my person down because I wouldn’t be able to see what was going on), and it’s explained why it’s fake (“There’s nothing wrong with you”) and how it helps people open up a little to what’s going on, even if they’re just watching other people being open.
There’s no need to justify what Hennessy is up to, since getting out of that box is part of the project. (In fact the set is mainly splayed-open cardboard boxes.) Turbulence is supposed to (like the economy isn’t but does) fail. The other ur-text here is Judith Halberstam‘s Queer Art of Failure, which talks about refusing normative values and practices.
Hennessy queers dance, then, your expectations of it (or of performance art) and pursues what looks like a terrible idea, because how can dance be about the economy…and be good? (Coincidentally, you can go see another dance about the economy at Pacific Northwest Ballet, Cinderella. It’s about as normative and representational as things get, to the extent that nothing about the economics that creates penniless serving girls registers.)
Despite occasional outbursts, Hennessy and his troupe–Julie Phelps, Emily Leap, Laura Arrington, Jesse Hewit, Jorge Rodolfo De Hoyos, Hana Erdman, Gabriel Todd, Ruairí O’Donovan, Empress Jupiter, Jassem Hindi, with special Seattle guests Markeith Wiley and Joan Hanna–largely refuse the prospect of arguing with the economy. What happens is somatic, the experience of the body. There’s a scratched-up, staticky soundtrack, dj’d live, that is more about the feeling of the words than the content.
People pair up, or antagonize each other, or tangle furiously. If two dancers practice linking themselves, their weight counterpoised, a third will jump in. Throughout, the dancers swap clothing, stripping down and dressing back up. A trapeze set becomes the setting for blind, hooded, acrobatic feats–though the climb to the top is always greeted with the question of where to go from there.
Dancers move among the audience members, sometimes shouting out to those on the floor, sometimes having semi-private conversations. A gold sheet is produced, and passed over audience members like they’re playing under the covers. No one is likely to have the same experience: There are too many rings in this circus to attend to all of them. You can pay attention to the dancer screeching and masturbating, or you can look elsewhere.
For somatic poetry on economic collapse, though, it’s hard to beat when Hennessy, sitting on cardboard and talking about bitterness and anger, also reveals that the dancer sitting next to him has peed his underpants, and they’re all sitting in it. So much is contained in this: the stench of homelessness, animal fearfulness, the way this more ignoble (than blood) bodily fluid unites us, contaminates us. If you bother to think back to when thousands of people were losing their jobs weekly, you’ll smell the piss-stink again.
A quote attributed to feminist scholar Peggy Phelan pulls some of these strands together:
Love, despite its toxicity and violence, can bring us closer to the possibility of expressing human tenderness. If one is ambitious enough to want to create a shared history, then one must be willing to risk an impossible dance, one that pivots on a desire to outmuscle exhaustion, a desire alive to our wavering capacities to bestow and receive responses, and an apparently insatiable desire to question these capacities and what motivates and blocks them, repeatedly.
The ending is individual; once the improv list has been completed, you’re invited to stay, come down off the bleachers. Some people formed another human pyramid. Many more joined in a dance party that Hennessy decided to turn into super-slow-motion. A few stood around and talked. A conga line formed.
Turbulence may be meant to fail, but I don’t regret the time I was there, watching it refuse to amount to much, at least by some standards. It was a transient blip, in the greater scheme of things, but it created its own peculiar space while it existed. And if you think of healing in terms of wholeness, its ability to give you back the humanity in a human pyramid, the effervescence of an economic slide (both banished, we all had to pay somehow) is remarkable.
-----------------------------
SF Bay Guardian
(source: http://www.sfbg.com/2012/09/25/gimme-shelter )
But something else happened during the performance at Velocity Dance Center that was perturbing in its own right.
The “only nonimprovised piece in the show” is the building of a human pyramid, with the performers and volunteer audience members stripped down to underwear or nudity. They have hoods made of a shiny gold cloth on. Given that “Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine” are the first five words in Hennessy’s program note, it would be difficult not to see a reference to Abu Ghraib here.
What kind of reference is wide open, but it was a shock to hear how gleefully the audience responded, cheering and encouraging the participants as knees and elbows wobbled, palms slid. Despite the hoods, despite the evident point being exhausted collapse, the audience (generally speaking) seemed to want to treat it as simply a cheer pyramid, a test of endurance. (Perhaps one or two guards did, too, it occurred to me. Remember when a few pundits compared it to hazing?)
There’s no “right” way to respond to a human pyramid, of course–but this was proof that Hennessy had succeeded, it seemed to me, in getting the audience involved as an improvisational partner. (In Portland, there was a Champagne slip ‘n’ slide that brought hipsters into a playground of excess. So, involved, or complicit.)
He told Culturebot: “People have to enter it poetically or that won’t happen. If they’re just waiting for the content to arrive it won’t happen.” (You get confirmation of that from this upset review, which includes the line, “I am very patient with these things!!”) He’s done what he can.
You wander in to something already happening, a “fake healing” involving dancers laying on hands, setting objects on top of audience members, manipulating their limbs. People are gently invited to join (I turned my person down because I wouldn’t be able to see what was going on), and it’s explained why it’s fake (“There’s nothing wrong with you”) and how it helps people open up a little to what’s going on, even if they’re just watching other people being open.
There’s no need to justify what Hennessy is up to, since getting out of that box is part of the project. (In fact the set is mainly splayed-open cardboard boxes.) Turbulence is supposed to (like the economy isn’t but does) fail. The other ur-text here is Judith Halberstam‘s Queer Art of Failure, which talks about refusing normative values and practices.
Hennessy queers dance, then, your expectations of it (or of performance art) and pursues what looks like a terrible idea, because how can dance be about the economy…and be good? (Coincidentally, you can go see another dance about the economy at Pacific Northwest Ballet, Cinderella. It’s about as normative and representational as things get, to the extent that nothing about the economics that creates penniless serving girls registers.)
Despite occasional outbursts, Hennessy and his troupe–Julie Phelps, Emily Leap, Laura Arrington, Jesse Hewit, Jorge Rodolfo De Hoyos, Hana Erdman, Gabriel Todd, Ruairí O’Donovan, Empress Jupiter, Jassem Hindi, with special Seattle guests Markeith Wiley and Joan Hanna–largely refuse the prospect of arguing with the economy. What happens is somatic, the experience of the body. There’s a scratched-up, staticky soundtrack, dj’d live, that is more about the feeling of the words than the content.
People pair up, or antagonize each other, or tangle furiously. If two dancers practice linking themselves, their weight counterpoised, a third will jump in. Throughout, the dancers swap clothing, stripping down and dressing back up. A trapeze set becomes the setting for blind, hooded, acrobatic feats–though the climb to the top is always greeted with the question of where to go from there.
Dancers move among the audience members, sometimes shouting out to those on the floor, sometimes having semi-private conversations. A gold sheet is produced, and passed over audience members like they’re playing under the covers. No one is likely to have the same experience: There are too many rings in this circus to attend to all of them. You can pay attention to the dancer screeching and masturbating, or you can look elsewhere.
For somatic poetry on economic collapse, though, it’s hard to beat when Hennessy, sitting on cardboard and talking about bitterness and anger, also reveals that the dancer sitting next to him has peed his underpants, and they’re all sitting in it. So much is contained in this: the stench of homelessness, animal fearfulness, the way this more ignoble (than blood) bodily fluid unites us, contaminates us. If you bother to think back to when thousands of people were losing their jobs weekly, you’ll smell the piss-stink again.
A quote attributed to feminist scholar Peggy Phelan pulls some of these strands together:
Love, despite its toxicity and violence, can bring us closer to the possibility of expressing human tenderness. If one is ambitious enough to want to create a shared history, then one must be willing to risk an impossible dance, one that pivots on a desire to outmuscle exhaustion, a desire alive to our wavering capacities to bestow and receive responses, and an apparently insatiable desire to question these capacities and what motivates and blocks them, repeatedly.The ending is individual; once the improv list has been completed, you’re invited to stay, come down off the bleachers. Some people formed another human pyramid. Many more joined in a dance party that Hennessy decided to turn into super-slow-motion. A few stood around and talked. A conga line formed.
Turbulence may be meant to fail, but I don’t regret the time I was there, watching it refuse to amount to much, at least by some standards. It was a transient blip, in the greater scheme of things, but it created its own peculiar space while it existed. And if you think of healing in terms of wholeness, its ability to give you back the humanity in a human pyramid, the effervescence of an economic slide (both banished, we all had to pay somehow) is remarkable.
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