"America's Cloud"
Dana Tai Soon Burgess & Company
Corcoran Gallery of Art
Washington, DC
December 5, 2010
by George Jackson
copyright 2010 by George Jackson
Suspended from the ceiling in a rotunda room of the Corcoran is a sculpture by Brooklyn artist Spencer Finch. At a distance it looks like a wad of crinkled blue cellophane. On closer examination it is made of heavier sheets of plastic, mostly transparent blue but also a few lilac and colorless ones. Although these sheets could have been crumpled together into their final form by a giant's hand, more likely they were folded or molded intentionally so that sharp corners project from the wad's surface. It was three times this past Sunday underneath Finch's blue "Cloud" that Dana Tai Soon Burgess' company danced a new work by him. The performances will be repeated December 12 at 11:30 AM, 1:00 PM and 2:30 PM. Not just the cloud but also the roundness and height of the room and six of Stephen Foster's songs - music and texts - influenced the choreography.
The predominant vectors of motion were from the edge of the circular room where the dancers stood and waited to the room's center where the action took place under the cloud and, once there, upward with looks and limbs as well as down - both lying down and looking down. Like the Foster songs, the dancing was lyrical, thoughtful and slightly sad.
A couple, Sarah Halzak and Kelly Southall, are the work's keystones. When she lowers herself to sit down and look at the ground as he lies down, it is not just resignation and rest that are invoked. In a veiled way this scene becomes reminiscent of the graveside. As more dancers gradually join the action - there are 8 in all who stretch, step, bend, rise and circle - or when they retire to the room's edge, the feeling of a funeral cortege and of remembrance is not far away. Yet mourning is never overt. No tears are shed, there is both acceptance and questioning in the upward glances, and the choreographic response to Foster's pianistic refrains is a gentle rocking, a cradling sway. Finally, Halzack and Southall arise and join together before exiting.
Burgess has said that in making "America's Cloud" he was thinking about "the consciousness of America in the Civil War - so melancholic and oddly similar to today".
The company's sense of ensemble is highly refined. The viewer becomes aware of harmony and interplay among the dancers but always it is the action of individuals, not of a corps. Similarly, one isn't reminded of how many men, how many women there are. Longer time Burgess dancers in the cast of "America's Cloud" are Ricardo Alvarez, Katia Chupashko, Connie Fink, Miyako Nitadori, Tati Valle Riestra, Halzak and Southall; newer company members are Takako Hattaway and Hala Shah. The simple costumes, by Judy Hansen, were in shades of gray with a few showing a bit of blue to reflect the Finch sculpture.