"Rude World"
Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith
COIL Festival
Chocolate Factory
Long Island City,
January 7, 2015
by Martha Sherman
copyright © 2015 by Martha Sherman
The COIL Festival is PS 122’s contribution to the swirl of contemporary dance and performance art that happens every January in New York City. In this tenth annual festival, thirteen diverse works were presented at locations throughout the city. The first offering was Molly Leiber and Eleanor Smith’s “Rude World,” co-produced and shown at the Chocolate Factory. If the world is a rude one, their partnership may be the antidote.
The breathtaking intimacy of Lieber and Smith’s duet was not unexpected; it was the third of a trio of deeply sensuous works. When the expectation, though, is so clear, how do artists up-end, startle, and move viewers, as Lieber and Smith continue to do?
Eleanor Smith and Molly Lieber in “Rude World.” Photo © Maria Baranova.
Nudity is not new in their work, nor is the slow intertwining of their bodies in a way that embraces but transcends sexuality. In “Rude World,” they barely bothered with clothes at all, though it wasn't their physical nakedness that was shocking, but the metaphor it offered for what it is to be fully displayed -- nothing hidden, nothing assumed.
The Chocolate Factory was uncharacteristically swathed in black, both floors and the walls, which were clad in black curtains. The dancers entered, naked in the spotlight, their creamy skin bright white slashes against the black background. For several long minutes, Lieber sat in an audience seat with her legs crossed. Above and straddling her, Smith stood tall, exposed, and noble, as Lieber stroked her legs and torso, slowly and deliberately.
As Lieber watched from her audience seat, Smith moved to a solo in the center where she circled in jumps and leaps, her fingers outstretched and her feet slapping the floor, the sound of bare skin against wood. The movement was crisp, not approximate or soft-edged. As she held her head with her right hand and rotated her neck, her left arm reached out. She seemed to be more than one character -- many selves with nothing to hide behind.
Lieber, who is thinner and more angular, moved to the black curtain against the wall, and her knees bent as she slowly folded down. Smith joined her and reached arms up, then squatted low, their bodies a shifting ivory sculpture against the black curtains.
In a characteristically intimate duet, they moved around and over each others’ bodies. One’s arms grazed the other’s crouching body; fingers swept lightly over a back, a leg pressed against a breast, a shin aligned with the other’s forearm. When they formed a low hill of limbs on the floor, the shapes were round and interlinked. They rolled luxuriously over each other, and moved around the floor like a multi-tentacled beast.
Lieber briefly donned a high thong before Smith lifted her into the air, legs splayed forward and angled so that every skin fold revealed her. On the floor in a pose reminiscent of Kara Walker’s monumental “Sugar Baby,” Smith lifted her chest with her forearms like a regal Sphinx. Wrapping around Smith’s body, Lieber pushed her buttocks high in the air, and Smith’s legs stroked them, like Lieber’s earlier gentle hand strokes of Smith’s body at the program’s opening.
Casually, the dancers pulled on pants and t-shirt in the final moments; spent, wet, and as connected as ever, they faced each other on their knees, and rested together. As the lights faded, all that was left were the sounds of their breathing, and the branded afterimage of breathtaking bodies in motion, and what it looks like when two souls meet in a dark world.
Top: Molly Lieber in “Rude World.” Photo © Maria Baranova.
Bottom: Eleanor Smith and Molly Lieber in “Rude World.” Photo © Maria Baranova.
copyright © 2014 by Martha Sherman