“Foofwa d’Imobilité/Neopost Ahrrrt”Dance New AmsterdamNew York, NYJanuary 22, 2010By Martha ShermanCopyright © 2010 by Martha Sherman His adopted name sounds like an exhalation of breath propelled by a laugh or a punch in the gut. Foofwa d’Imobilité, Swiss-born as Frédéric Gafner, has deep roots in ballet and in the movement and legacy of Merce Cunningham, who he honors along with John Cage in the US premiere of “Musings.” The first segment of a three-part evening, this piece was a fanciful wander through strong, disciplined ballet and Cunningham-inspired movement, splashed with Foofwa’s own particular jerks, undulations, and quirks. It was an endurance test for the audience as well as the artist.
Each of several scenes had its own character, notable at first by his verbal accompaniment of the movement – in noises, hums, clicking or poetry. Foofwa played a chess game of movement cross a white stage, with light grid lines. His leaps and turns drew horizontal, vertical or diagonal lines along the grid. Characterizing the piece as a “solitary duet,” his partner was the light (designed by Jonathan O’Hear) which tracked Foofwa’s direction and motion. He seemed to be keeping himself happy company, as well, a private smile playing on his lips. When he occasionally alerted the audience that he had messed up a complicated word sequence, it was clear that he didn’t really feel alone.
Foofwa created his eye-catching costume, a brightly painted body with collages of flotsam. Big blue arrows trailed down his muscular legs, and his torso, legs, and arms were a riot of color. Watching his body move and sing, he evoked mythical creatures, a satyr with pounding hooves or a prancing faun. He transformed into a multi-colored creature with a beautiful entrechat paired with a backward crab walk. Later, his body sank into a deep squat; his vocalizing of “bums” deepened from a quick tune to a slow tolling and his legs framed an enormous body bell. As the dance progressed, the melting body paint smeared the white stage, papers pulled from his body; as his voice and lungs were impacted by the exertions of the movement, the vocalizations were laced with heaving.
After a crisp set of balletic extensions, Foofwa sang a quick folk song “Skip, turn, and tilt,” then collapsed heaving to the ground into a blackout. In the long final scene, the dancer played with a series of toys – balloons, mushroom shaped pieces, musical media (CDs, audio tapes.) He played, recited texts, spoke to us, checked a watch frequently. The complexity and interweaving of ideas were impressive, but tiring.
The world premiere of “Involuntaries 1-6” was presented after a 30-minute interlude with video, while Foofwa showered and changed (one of the many updates he offered the audience, as he shooed us out after the “Musings” curtain call.) The videos were short scenes of live body shots interlaced with computer-graphically generated images of impossibly twisted limbs, elbows and knees, figures floating out of gravity. The accompaniment was by Foofwa’s talented musical collaborator, Alan Sondheim. It was a useful entr’acte, because it eased the transition into a very different second live performance, one that moved from tiring to painful.
On a bare stage, with windows to the outside world visible and the rehearsal mirror reflecting from stage right, Sondheim sat, strumming one of the many exotic stringed instruments that surrounded him, including an electric Egyptian oud, cura cumbus and yayli tanbur, along with a recognizable classical guitar. Foofwa, standing at the edge of the lit stage, wandered casually in his street clothes, although several costumes were strewn around the floor. Azure Carter joined them, first at the microphone, providing strange spoken-sung lyrics.
The same twisted limbs of the video came alive in this piece, images that were clearly created not from imagination but from Foofwa’s body and its capacities. Now we saw this body’s harsh edges and disturbing imbalances. Over the course of the six scenes, Sondheim played edgy exciting compositions, as Foofwa danced increasingly disturbing movement. From jerking in large frantic kicks and slapping his body, he moved to a rigid chair which he used as the fulcrum of wild diagonal motion. The leaps and gyrations were powerful and exhausting to watch (and listen to, as his breath became more labored.)
By the fifth and sixth movements, his body slammed wildly to the floor and across the stage, a modern full-body version of religious self-scourge. Sondheim moved from instrument to instrument in a relentless parade. Carter, floating through the piece as in a dream, preened in a red dress in the rehearsal mirror, distanced from the punishing central movement and energy. Finally, Foofwa looked at Sondheim and exhaled “that’s it.” In the middle of a musical line, the dance stopped, the lights went black. The piece, and its raggedly edged ending left the audience panting, too.
In addition to re-naming himself, Foofwa is not shy about naming and describing anything else in his production. The on-stage music creations for “Musings,” are entitled Cage a cappella; his body painted costume is called Close to Rauschenberg’s skin. His program notes include descriptions of these “titlings” along with several poems. The movement itself, from powerful clean physicality to torturous body slamming, doesn’t retreat an inch: a challenge rather than an offer. The naming, the dense program notes, his urge to converse with the audience from within the piece and around its edges are among the many ways Foofwa yearns to reach us. In the aggregate, it is all too much – but, sometimes, through all the cacophony, he succeeds.
Photos: Foofwa d’Imobilité in "Musings" by Florence Baratay