"Everyone Intimate Alone Visibly"
Levydance
Dance Place
Washington, DC
January 23, 2010
by George Jackson
copyright 2010 by George Jackson
Was it a sign of these times - the economic recession which is proving to be a depression for the arts - that San Francisco's Benjamin Levy brought just two dancers on tour, himself and Aline Wachsmuth? A surfeit of multimedia (lighting changes, video projections, music tracks) and harassing the public (audience participation) didn't really compensate for the trained bodies of visits past. Yet ingenuity could be discerned in some sections of the company's new "EIAV". In section 2 (the "Intimate" part of the title), there was a novel ambiance for Levy - sexual passion.
"Everyone", the work's first section, starred the audience and the Dance Place ushers. Everyone stood around (no seating provided) waiting for something to happen. The ushers, walking self consciously across the empty center of the screen-enclosed space, tried to catalyze some action but it didn't take. The atmosphere was that of a 1960s Happening and a rather impotent one at that. People chatted, peered at the projections (tagged cell cultures dividing?) or thought their thoughts.
At last, the pair of dancers appeared for "Intimate". They weren't intimate right away but struck poses separately, off kilter ones that angled their bodies poignantly and yet objectively as though they were modeling for an art class. Gradually the poses grew into movement phrases and the dancers were drawn together. Not quite touching when first in proximity, Levy and Wachsmuth did then make contact, becoming as ardent as their clothing allowed. All good things must end, and "Intimate" did.
Another "Everyone" section followed. I decided not to obey the commands being issued by a mechanical male voice and retreated behind one of the four projection screens. Sitting in lonely comfort on a wooden staircase, it was possible to see not everything happening on the other side of the screen but quite a bit. Under the screen's lower edge there were the audience's feet and the bottoms of folding chairs when they were finally provided. Projection images and silhouettes of some viewers appeared clearly on my side of the screen. Levy I could see fitfully as a silhouette, as a reflection on the shiny floor and, when he was highlighted, dimly through the screen. In the "Alone" section of "EIAV" he seemed angry dancing a solo and took away the chairs but didn't hurl them as memorably as Bill T. Jones once did at the critics in the audience.
Having turned the latter parts "EIAV" into something akin to Paul Taylor's "Private Domain" for myself by vacating the performance space, I can't comment on the totality of the concept or the quality of the real dancing in those sections. I became background for the end of the "Visibly" section when the screen I'd been sitting behind was pulled up for Levy and Wachsmuth's bows to audience applause. I can say with certainty that on this night Dance Place had an exceptionally tolerant public.
