Cie. Willi Dorner
Embassy of Austria
Washington, DC
September 15, 2009
by George Jackson
copyright 2009 by GJ
Children left alone at home invent the darnedest games. When left too long, their play can wreck a place and portend danger for body and brain. Is that what Austrian choreographer Willi Dorner was saying in "above under inbetween", a new piece of his for 7 grown up dancers? The performance drew a record crowd to the Embassy. Over 400 people signed up to see the work and for a while it seemed as if there would have to be two performances. With most everyone asked to sit on the floor, though, it was possible to squeeze all who turned up into the building's atrium and still leave room for the performers and their props. Actually, the view from the floor helped to put people into a playroom frame of mind.
Operating in Dorner's opus is an aesthetic. His "children" - 4 female and 3 male - aren't all that casual. With their high color t-shirts and pants that are pliant but a bit drab, they've been dressed carefully to resemble real kids. Yet they also behave carefully. What they do is in good taste and shows polite manners. Although intent, they let no semblance of an emotion escape them and give no clues as to whether their games have meaning. These attitudes seem set - at least initially.
The games consist of building mounds, with the players lying down on top of each other to stack body on body. They also form upright clusters of bodies that interlock. Gradually they graduate from only using bodies to also playing with chairs, and then tables too as they architect their short-lived constructs. These formations have both static and dynamic aspects. One can wonder why a precarious mound doesn't topple. Or, one may admire an assemblage for its sculptural shape and the precise angles at which human and furniture legs project from its core. How, one asks oneself, will that tricky construct come apart without looking awkward? Dorner always finds a solution. The modest pleasures to be had from this performance come from being prompted to think such thoughts and ask such questions.
Dorner can also trigger displeasure, although it too is the mild sort. The feeling crops up that the work's cleverness is too considered and that the variations on the theme of building, disassembling and rebuilding are too calculated. The game goes on for half an hour at much the same pace. Only then does the action becomes faster and more driven. It is at this point that one suspects the children could commit injury. Not just tables and chairs but big moveable chunks of architecture are added to their list of toys. There is nothing and no one to prevent them from harming themselves and each other. As last gambit they build hardware and bodies into a big, intricate cause-and-effect contraption, a perpetual motion machine from which there is no escape. Did it take too long to get to this climax? Should Dorner have shed his Merce Cunningham carefulness and cool sooner?
Was there dance? Unlike the polished Cunningham company but similar to many current Central Europeans, Dorner's performers tried to project a relaxed look, a street stance, and not appear to be taut, alert professional dancers or even acrobats. One of the seven -- the shorter blond woman in the raspberry t-shirt -- didn't succeed. She moved with such eye-catching precision that I really wished she had been given the chance to dance.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Note: The surges of Bernhard Lang's sound score had the same general pacings and intensities as Dorner's movement. There was no printed program or electronic announcement with the individual dancers' names.
