Shared programs can be tricky. As a dance festival curator, part of the battle is attempting to describe a work of art effectively to the public while predicting their reaction. Putting two different artists together on the same bill may double the work, but if handled deftly, it can forge synchronicity. Even in situations where works were created separately, a conversation can arise.
In week 3 of the La MaMa Moves! Festival, now in its 20th season, curator Nicky Paraiso crafted a shared program that, on its surface, may have appeared so disparate as to cause friction. Instead, these two pieces–the first by Megumi Eda, followed by a collaboration between Alexis Chartrand and Nic Gareiss– investigated similar themes of memory and tradition. Each exploring, in contrasting yet dynamic ways, the influence of the past has on the present. The result was a fantastic evening that, by the end, felt quite cathartic.
As I entered La MaMa´s moodily lit Club space, I noticed that seats were arranged lengthwise, creating a playing area that was both long and wide yet still intimate. A spotlight illuminated a navy blue dress onstage, folded into a small pile next to a single red high-heeled shoe. On each seat, audiences found a photocopy of an article about the yamato nadeshikos, originally published in the Shinano Mainichi Newspaper in October 1943. A black and white picture of 11 Japanese women, all dressed in their navy blue uniforms each beaming with a smile, accompanies an interview with nurse Motoi Wada who describes how happy she is to work hard for the soldiers in Manchuria. Instead of witnessing the “(dark shadow of) war”, she feels a “sense of justice”. The bilingual copy of the paper also included wartime advertisements for condensed milk as well as warnings to Beware of Spies. While this newspaper translates yamato nadeshiko as “military nurses”, the Japanese term also indicates the personification of the ideal Japanese woman.
Through the chance discovery of an old photograph, Megumi Eda learned that her grandmother was one of these military nurses. In her quest for answers, she found a documentary by another yamato nadeshiko stating that this work caused long-term trauma. Did Eda´s grandmother suffer, too? And if so, which pieces of this pain were passed on to her, across the generations?
These thoughts and questions continued to swim around my mind as her solo performance work Please Cry began. A video illuminates the brick wall at the back of the Club, where Eda is talking on the phone–first in Japanese, then in English–while she holds a can of condensed milk over a glass of water, its white droplet oozing from the edge of the tin. The video call serves as a meta framing for the performance which follows: Eda´s side of the conversation gestures towards both her ancestry as a Japanese artist who has lived and worked in both Europe and the United States, while simultaneously linking the past to the present. She reminds us of how the language of trauma can continue across years and generations. Rather than a recording, the audience soon learns that this film is a live feed as we follow Eda from backstage and onto the stage of the Club Space with us. The device in her hand provides personal communication, public documentation, and a capturing of time: just like the original yamato nadeshiko, which set her off on her journey.
The live feed from her phone also becomes a mirror. Once in profile, Eda lies on her stomach, her limbs seeming to float above the floor, a seemingly simple feat which requires exceptional strength and control. At the same time, the camera of her propped-up phone in front has zoomed into a close-up of her face, where tears slowly streak down her face. The informality of her scene backstage, how unexpected it was, the opening section of Please Cry tugged me into the role of witness. Eda´s quiet grief possesses an almost elegiac sensuality, her long limbs articulating hidden thoughts and feelings.
After putting on the dress and the single red shoe, Eda transforms the vocabulary again. Has she collapsed time to now become her grandmother? As she moves through dynamic sequences wearing only the one high-heel, we are gently reminded of the whole picture being off, of this woman being somehow “out of step.” Her movement and gestures are now far more rhythmic and jerky, turning to orient herself in multiple directions, vertically, horizontally, yet always remaining in profound physical control.
Next, a silent home movie begins to play from the back wall. “This is me with my grandmother, from the ´80s,” Eda informs us, looking at herself at around age five. The two lazily stroll through what appears to be a garden in Japan, a time capsule of the past and a respite from the complexities of the dance we have witnessed thus far. This peaceful interlude is short-lived, however, as Eda then moves to dance against the wall. Her moves are quick, aggressive, and filled with struggle; a kind of beautiful fatalism begins to emerge, as her flesh proves helpless to alter the immovable object. The end of Please Cry features Eda looking over her shoulder, into the darkness beyond the heads of the audience, before turning away and having her steps “march forward” in place. And then she repeats this tiny phrase, over and over, as if she were Sisyphus, pushing the boulder up the hill for all of time.
At one point during the performance, Eda says that has done her best to follow her grandmother’s advice: “be strong, don´t cry, and just smile.” Thankfully for all of us in the audience, Please Cry adapts this council to include more of this talented performer´s spirit. The result is a deeply moving solo which both honors the past while taking steps into new directions in the present. I imagine Megumi Eda´s grandmother would have been proud.
After a brief pause–where La MaMa´s running crew rapidly put down a masonite floor in the middle of the stage and moved some chairs to create a horseshoe arrangement on three-sides of the theater–next in the shared evening was percussive step-dancing by Nic Gareiss (US) with live fiddle playing by Alexis Chartrand (Canada). Gareiss, dressed smartly in a vest and well-worn leather shoes, introduced a complex syncopated beat with his feet on the new floor, a rhythm nearly hypnotic and utterly delightful. Meanwhile, Chartrand emerged from the shadows, drawing the bow across his strings, the two creating a small build in energy during this overture.
At one point early on, Gareiss told the audience about how he was taught never to have his shoes slide across the floor by his Irish folk dance teacher; that doing so was “incorrect”. The proper way, his teacher told him, was to make the sounds with one’s feet short, sharp, and clear. However, Gareiss admits that being told not to only made him want to slide his feet more. And this slide opened up a world of new sounds for him, expanding his understanding of what he could do within these traditions of folk dances and firing up his imagination. His rebellion both adds to and honores the tradition simultaneously. Rather than blindly obey the traditions of the past, Gareiss & Chartrand seek to be in dialogue–”not a quarrel,” they say sardonically at one point, “but more of a lover´s tiff.”
This dancer-musician duo clearly love and respect the forms and meanings of the past, but simultaneously seek to find their own identity within this lineage: to contribute rather than merely interpret. Folks songs and dances are rooted in rural and agrarian culture: in the case of Gareiss & Chartrand, these come from traditions spanning multiple generations from Ireland and French-Canada to Appalachia. The vocabulary of the body, the presentation of the performance, is so different from what audiences typically see at “a dance performance” in an urban setting such as New York.
Watching Gareiss dance, I was stunned at all of the many possible movements and sounds he was able to create with his feet. A scuff across the floor with the inside of one, or the clacking of both heels together as he shifts his weight onto his toes. As he slides, smacks, and strikes the drum of the floor with his feet, his torso remains perfectly erect, his hands gently swaying beside him with a Buddha-like smile of concentration gracing his face.
At one point, Gareiss told the audience about how he was taught never to have his shoes slide across the floor by his Irish folk dance teacher; that doing so was “incorrect”. The proper way to make the sounds with one’s feet is short, sharp, and clear. However, Gareiss admits that being told not to only made him want to slide his feet more. And this slide opened up a world of new sounds for him, expanding his understanding of what he could do within these traditions of folk dances and firing up his imagination. His rebellion both adds to and honores the tradition simultaneously.
Chartrand and Gareiss encouraged the audience to whoop and make other sounds of pleasure during their performance. “It’s important to allow ourselves to express these sounds of pleasure,” they told us. “And it really helps us onstage, too!” Eda´s solo provided emotional catharsis through the witnessing of exquisite sorrow, while this duet offered release through the pure joy of sound. Together, this shared program at La MaMa demonstrated just some of the range of possibilities in contemporary dance and the power of disparate performance styles coming together.
Leave a Reply