PRELUDE festival, having recently completed its 23rd year of programming, lies somewhere between the utopic and dystopic. A free series of performances, it expanded this year into spaces such as a hotel and people’s homes (for Ethan Eva Karas’ the [home] project, the most dramaturgically sound immersive piece I’ve experienced, so simply affective and inventive), but stages most of its showings in the Martin E. Segal Theatre. Housed in the CUNY Graduate Center, it is a worn recital hall with bad acoustics in the middle of midtown. It’s a sort of bunker, a refuge in an otherwise horrible neighborhood. Watching experimental performance in there is equivalent to people watching while sheltered-in-place. At the particular performance I attended (preceded by great works in progress by Isa Spector and Iris McCloughan with engrossing performances by Lena Engelstein and Arewà Basit), simple acts such as running and jumping cause the scratched wood to bounce, jump out of its skin. I almost thought it would.
A young woman jogs in place, slowly picking up speed. The faster she runs, the more the floor jumps, first in small hops but soon in resounding ripples that seem to support the woman, carrying her along. But before she can be bolstered, be made to fly, she strikes a stance, one that signals “TA-DA!” She is done, but now, with little to no break, she starts again, quickening her tempo until curtain call.
Liz Westbrook’s CENTERPIECE is, most simply, a dance of and about attention. The dancers we see, Alexis Vinzons, Anya Bernstein, Ben Hard, Isabelle Dayton, Jack Meriwether, and Sophia Halimah Parker, are in a competition with no rankings, a marathon with no winner. You would think it was life or death. There is a durational nature to the piece, an inherent sense of resilience required of the performers, specifically an endurance against and tolerance of the mundane. Parker and Vinzons perform extreme feats while others stare off, breathing deeply, gaze soft and steady. Bernstein and Dayton leap and extend, legs flying but focus intact, in search of something. Parker spins infinitely, spins out into webs of nerves, pure energy released. Tangentially yet in alienation, Vinzons captures and keeps lightning bolts, working sharply and thoughtfully to become a ball of might, something that cannot keep to the laws of gravity. Moments such as these where proprioception is an afterthought let Westbrook’s choreography shine best, the performers creating paths for one another, sites of encounters and failures.
Ben Hard strikes moves that are reminiscent of Fosse and male TikTok dancers. How are we supposed to meet these layers of digital familiarity? What does it say about male culture and performance? I was moved by Hard’s striving arc, the constant effort on his part and that of all involved. Meriwether’s arms fly, hips groove, gaze held. All of the dancer’s gazes individually tell us something about their experience, their interiority. There are goals held in mind that are inaccessible to us as an audience. It is fascinating to watch such trials, and to discover the ways in which they converge and divide.
One performer does not vie, though. Cellist Ceridwen McCooey accompanies the dancers in sharp chords and considerate melodies. Her performance blurs the line between response and request, entirely mysterious yet overt, unobtrusive but self-assured. She plays with tempo and urgency in ways that are surprising, that never cease to be watchable. Against her stomp pairs of legs, and only her elbows can fight, can jut out in an opposition that is also a collaboration.
The costuming, by Sophie Frizell, plays with color in a way that speaks to the chronic competitiveness of the piece. At the piece’s conclusion, the performers strike an image that leaves dark hues on the outskirts of the space, and the lighter, brighter pieces towards the center. This image is held for a few minutes, as McCooey’s droning subsides and the lights dim slowly—or maybe that was my own gaze changing. The image had an antiquity to it, the organization of the dancers and their wares, a table set with, believe it or not, no centerpiece.
Perhaps this was the point of CENTERPIECE: to explore goal seeking with no goal in mind, moving with urgency towards absolutely nothing. I thought about ways we try even when no one gafs, imagine Big Spender in a community center. The dancers extend just to contract, fight just to fawn. They point towards a sky that they can’t possibly reach, shrouded by age-old dry wall and paint. They go through the motions, just like the rest of us.
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