Exposed in Flight

"Live Dancing Archive"
Jennifer Monson
The Kitchen
New York, NY
February 15, 2013

By Martha Sherman
Copyright © 2013 by Martha Sherman

Ten years is a long time to immerse yourself in an idea, but Jennifer Monson has dedicated a decade to her exploration of nature, art, and community through the metaphor of birds since 2002 with “BIRD BRAIN Osprey Migration. In a retrospective look, “Live Dancing Archive” incorporates video from the “Bird Brain” work, a web archive of images and ideas, and a live performance by Monson. 

Monson is the founder and Artistic Director of ILand, Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art, Nature, and Dance, but her inspiration also is drawn from the more political discourse of her “queer, feminist explorations.” The influence of nature in “Live Dancing Archive” harkens to “BIRD BRAIN’s ideas of flight and freedom; it anchors the physicality of the dance solo as well as the images in the web archive and the video presentation.

Much – if not most – of the audience seemed to participate only as spectators to the performance, Monson’s first ever evening-length dance solo. Although her intention was the integration of all three segments, no one who saw only the performance had any cause for disappointment. It opened in pitch black and silence, and remained that way as the audience settled, quieted; both the breathing in the hall and the expectations seemed to slow. To soft electronic water sounds and the palest of lights, Monson entered, a shadowy outline; she crouched briefly at the center, then moved to the side of the stage. Also in silhouette were her on-stage collaborators: Jeff Kolar on sound, and Joe Levasseur actively moving and directing the lights on and around the stage throughout the performance.

The opening scenes were more about light and sound then movement, as Levasseur positioned a spotlight toward the brick rear wall of The Kitchen, a small sunrise in a black sky. The light was framed by a horizontal white panel that Monson pulled across the stage, sometimes exposing the painfully bright light toward the audience, sometimes muffling and hiding it. The panel and the dark hid the dancer for a while; when she was finally visible, she was fully exposed – a mature, muscled, female body, barely covered in translucent tights and an animal skin panel, shield-like, over her chest.

Many of Monson’s movements were familiar from “BIRD BRAIN.” Her wings, the strong swooping arms and shoulders and feathery fingertips, were activated as her neck cocked in tiny fragmented motions, a bird’s neck shifting and noticing its surroundings. Her balance, often on one leg with outstretched arms, was solid and natural, not the arabesque of a ballerina, but the redistribution of body weight that a bird manages on one leg. As the movement became less subtle and more physical, running circles around the stage or a full body flop forward onto the stage, Monson exhaled her labored breath in a whooshing sound that added to the soft electronic sounds that rattled like turning sprockets.

In the bright lights that Levasseur continually placed and re-placed around the stage, Monson’s body was highlighted or shadowed in all its singular angles, curves, muscles, hair. It is not a beautiful body, but she has nothing to hide. In a central scene, she donned a platinum feathery Marilyn wig and a diaphanous overdress, wriggled to the sound of a human voice and orchestra, and lip-synched flight-filled lyrics  (“the bird girls go to heaven, the bird girls can fly”) then faded offstage into the darkness.

Monson’s movements both echoed and emerged from her work of the last decade. The website archive (the second element of the trio of performance media in this show) was organized by Youngjae Josephine Bae and offered a photo and language history of that exploration. The third portion was a three and a half hour video loop by Robin Vachal, edited from 60+ hours of videotaped travels. It was shown in the gallery carved at the back of The Kitchen’s space, and a few viewers wandered in and out, sitting on bean bag chairs to dip into taped movement, interviews, panels, and touring that recorded the experience of “BIRD BRAIN” across countries (the U.S., Cuba, Venezuela,) and ecologies.

In the mixed video segment that I watched, groups of dancers (professional and workshop students) moved on beaches, often their arms mimicking birds in flight, sometimes more human in yearning stretches. Solo performers used their bodies in more particular ways: Javier Cardona dove into the sand, like Monson’s live dance movement, belly first. Then he dragged his foot in long sinuous patterns on the sand, as waves crashed behind him. Female dancers pranced, leaving small footprints, like a human sandpipers leaving their traces on the beach. They lifted themselves onto their arms and legs, backs down, like crabs, then raised an arm, so their bodies were held aloft by only three crooked limbs. This strong, non-human movement was another that Monson had echoed in the live performance. Every creature in this universe was powerful. All the while, waves crashed, the deep horizon of long ocean views framed the dancers, and – of course – migrating birds overhead were a chorus and echo of freedom and flight.

As diverse as her media and collaborations are, Monson’s organizing vision is wonderfully unified. Though not a unique idea, the movement, metaphor, and inspiration of birds creates endless possibilities, and “Live Dancing Archive” assembles and honors many of them, without analysis. Flying through the center is Monson herself, exposed, unapologetic, and as much a force of nature as any other that she explores.


Top:  Jennifer Monson in "Live Dancing Archives" by Paula Court
Middle: Jennifer Monson in "Live Dancing Archives" by Paula Court
Bottom: Javier Cardona in "Live Dancing Archives", web still by Robin Vachal