Camille A. Brown and Andrea Miller at The Joyce

“Wonderland”
Gallim Dance

“New Second Line,” “Good and Grown,” “Girlz Verse 1,” “Been There, Done That,” “City of Rain”
Camille A. Brown & Dancers

The Joyce Theater
New York
August 11, 2010

by Kathleen O’Connell
copyright © 2010 by Kathleen O’Connell

Camille A. Brown and Andrea Miller may have shared a bill as part of Gotham Arts’ week-long, four choreographer showcase at the Joyce, but their work had little in common—except for the things that made it worth watching. Both women demonstrated that they can fill a stage with viscerally exciting movement without resorting to bogus pyrotechnics. Both deftly integrated touches of the vernacular or gestures from other styles into their own vocabulary to make their theatrical points. Both made dances that were smart, focused, and bracingly confident: they’re young choreographers still mastering their craft, but there’s nothing tentative about their work.

Miller—an alumna of both Juilliard and Batsheva’s junior troupe—founded Gallim Dance in 2006. “Wonderland,” her latest work for the company, opened the program. The title might as easily refer to the legendary Massachusetts dog track as to the kingdom of the absurd Alice finds at the bottom of the rabbit hole. For 45 minutes, 12 dancers in deliciously demented, semi-sheer gray costumes rocket all too gleefully around the stage in a game of follow–the–leader that grows more sinister with every iteration.

Miller took her inspiration from Chinese–born artist Cai Guo-Qiang’s installation Head On, in which a pack of 99 wolves flings itself at glass wall, only to tumble into writhing heap at its base. The image, she tells us, prompted her to investigate the dangers of pack behavior in humans, among which she numbers “desensitized brutality” and a “disregard for humanity.” Ignore what she says: “Wonderland’s” arresting images are more nuanced and exacting than her stated subject matter—a truism already done to death—might lead you to expect.

 

“Wonderland” is plenty unsettling. Its inhabitants are cartoons: inanely jaunty, untroubled by the laws of physics, and apparently immortal. They mug like bubbleheaded showgirls to 30s Italian swing and do a spastic, madhouse take on “Les Sylphides” to Chopin. But the Looney Tunes antics invariably give way to more sinister episodes. In one, a man blithely lip-synchs to Joanna Newsom’s “The Book of Right On” while two others manhandle him through an acrobatics routine: are they his sidekicks or his tormentors? In another, a group of dancers bent over at the waist with hands clasped behind their lowered heads bop along to the beat like a conga line of detainees.

 Most chilling are the episodes that hint at genocide. Two dancers briskly drag the limp bodies of their erstwhile companions across the stage and pile them into competing heaps. When they reach the last body—which still twitches with a few signs of life—they begin to fight over it as if they were stacking corpses on commission. (The dead soon leap to their feet to egg on the adversaries.) After an interlude of contra-dancing the dancers form a line and walk to their slaughter with bovine complacency. One by one they softly crumple the dancer in front of them down onto an ever-growing pile of bodies, then step up to take his or her place in turn.

The formal beauty of Miller’s patterns throws her images into seductive relief: they’re as beguiling as they are creepy. She’ll send the entire troupe skimming around the stage in a big, exultant circle, then swirl them off into two or more groups moving in contrasting but visually complementary ways. And no one ever dances alone: groups coalesce around soloists to either follow their lead or coerce them into conformity.

Jose Solis’ terrific gender-bending costumes—suggestively tricked out with hints of boning and leather—could be profitably marketed as the Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome line of yoga apparel. With shocks of hair protruding from slashes in their tight-fitting caps, the dancers look like the jolly spawn of Woody Woodpecker, Johnny Rotten, and a kewpie doll.

Solis’ designs further what is either Miller’s boldest move or biggest miscalculation: distancing us emotionally from the action on stage. We feel neither sympathy for the victims—they and their plight are just too darn weird—nor animus for their cartoon antagonists. It’s as if Miller wanted to get our hearts out of the way so that she could engage our intellects.

“Wonderland’s” biggest shortcoming is its episodic structure. We get something new with every change in the music, but the score—as carefully chosen as its components seem to be—sounds like an iPod set on shuffle. The movement is in keeping with the music, but there’s no overarching build in tension, and no release. The work still reads as a satisfying whole and its ambitions will reward repeated viewings.

Camille A. Brown, a former member of Ronald K. Brown/Evidence, has had work commissioned by a number of companies, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Urban Bush Women prominent among them. She filled her half of the bill with four short works and an extract—and sent the audience out of the theater whooping with justifiable delight.

Brown’s style is a heady brew of modern, vernacular, and African dance dispensed with a judicious hand: it communicates purposeful urgency as much as unbound exhilaration. In “Good and Grown”—a solo danced by Brown herself to two versions of Ervin Drake’s “It Was a Very Good Year”—she threw in just enough shimmy to convey a young woman’s delighted awareness of her own allure without cheapening the image. She ended the piece kneeling serenely on the stage, her strong hands swirling through intricately ceremonial patterns as if calling forth ancestral spirits; it was the most beautiful moment of the evening.

She’s good at evoking something without tediously replicating it. In “New Second Line” (of which we saw only an excerpt) she maneuvered 11 dancers on and off the stage in a continual flow to conjure up a New Orleans funeral parade. She set small clusters moving in interlocking patterns, pulled out a soloist or two to highlight something individual, then seamlessly slipped the whole group back into a boisterous unison. You’d have thought she had dancers by the dozen. A few gestures—a hand waving a handkerchief, a bit of vernacular dance—were enough let us know where we were and who we were watching.

“Been There, Done That” showed off Brown’s skill at creating character. She and the wonderfully loose Juel D. Lane squabbled their way through a 30s battle-of-the-sexes dance routine set to Nancy Wilson’s “My Sweet Thing.” Her feisty hoofer channeled the real torment of women everywhere: it’s not someone stealing your man that puts a knife in your heart; it’s some man stealing the spotlight when you’re doing everything backwards and in heels. But she gave as good as she got: “Ooohhh” Lane crooned as she flew through a fierce combination, “Somebody took class today!”

 “Girlz Verse 1,” a short dance for seven women set to M.I.A.’s “Boyz” and “City of Rain,” a less-short work for mixed ensemble set to a newly commissioned score by Jonathan Melville Pratt, raised interesting questions about the direction of Brown’s work.

Although “Girlz” is “abstract”—it doesn’t have the narrative arc that “Been There” does nor the grounding scenario of “New Second Line”—it does have a hook: it’s an unabashed anthem to female power. Like every great anthem it’s not one second longer than it ought to be. And there’s the rub: it’s a miniature, and its success hinges on the potency of its hook. As invigorating as it is, you’d like to see Brown turn her talent loose on a more expansive exploration of the subject. 

“City of Rain,” the program’s closer, was a qualitatively different test of Brown’s skills. The work was genuinely abstract—no narrative, no colorful scenario, no friendly hook—and was set to a through-composed work, not a playlist of vernacular song. It largely succeeded. Brown spun out a stream of rigorous, eye-catching patterns against Pratt’s lyrical but relentless score and gave her dancers the scope to create a real community. Despite the work’s abundance of invention, there wasn’t enough variety of texture; few takeaway images emerged from the profusion of movement and the work began to feel static towards the end. But let’s hope Brown takes this path again: she’s shown she’s alert to its potential.


copyright © 2010 by Kathleen O’Connell

Photos by Christopher Duggan
1: Members of Camille A. Brown & Dancers in “City of Rain”
2: Members of Gallim Dance in “Wonderland”
3: Members of Gallim Dance in “Wonderland”
4: Members of Camille A. Brown & Dancers in “New Second Line”
5: Jule D. Lane & Camille A. Brown in “Been There, Done That”
6: Members of Camille A. Brown & Dancers in “Girlz Verse 1”