Fluidity is the Name of the Game

Trajal Harrell
"The Ghost of Montpellier Meets the Samurai"
Zellerbach Playhouse,
Berkeley, CA
March 18, 2016

by Rita Felciano
copyright © Rita Felciano

If you care about live performance and the hopes you bring to it; are intrigued by the muddled area between make believe and reality; and/or relish slithering between stage, clock and memory time, Trajal Harrell’s “The Ghost of Montpellier Meets the Samurai,” may be for you. However, if you are not willing to check expectations at the door, you may be in for a rough ride that nonetheless offers some real pleasures such as an infectious sense of irreverence, some stunningly beautiful performances and a hiccupping perspective on what dropping the fourth wall can offer. “Ghost” was fascinating, frustrating and fun but ultimately failed the test of what a performance should offer—that you wanted to see it again. However, it was intriguing enough that it made you wonder where else Harrell could take this free swinging, partly playful but also dead serious approach to dance theater making.

Thibault Lac and Stephen Thompson Photo Orpheas Emirzas

Bagouet is a much-revered co-founder of the Montpellier Dance Festival and is generally credited for having created a specifically French form of modern dance; for his turn, Tatsumi Hijikata is best known as a co-founder of Butoh. Harrell tells the audience right from the beginning that the piece doesn't really exist and what we’ll see is called “Canned Amour.” I gives us a jolt and lets us know that anything — rules, definitions, memories -- are up for re-examination. Pinning something down is what Harrell tries to avoid at any cost; be it conventions of make-believe, meaning derived from our and (his) perceptions of language or anything else, or, above all, a communal or individual sense of identity.

Harrell relishes exploding clichés: the pre-performance pitch by artistic director, here it is by Harell as himself but also as Vogue Editor Anna Wintour. We get a raffle in which audience members may choose a “gift” from a junk pile that has been slowly accumulating up stage right.  You could interpret this gift any way you wanted, or mentally choose your own. Initially Thibault Lac, an extraordinary lithe and expressive performer, stalked around in Japanese wooden clogs and a medical mask. You think Hijikata but also air pollution. Throughout the evening Harrell throws clues at you that keep your head spinning but keep you emotionally at distance. He even ends the piece with an exploding cliché -- performers milking the applause and refusing to get off stage.

Next time you Lac as Harrell in the proverbial publicity interview which goes in at least two different directions. Everything in “Ghost” is set up to undermine any sense of logical progress: the meeting between the two artists happened or didn’t happen? If it did at which location? Ellen Stewart, the doyenne of LaMaMa does show up, but perhaps she didn’t. The play within the play, when it finally arrives, starts as a fashion show, with the performers/actors/dancers/models parading down a broken up runway. In terms of sheer dancerly quality, this was one of “Ghost’s” highlights. Strutting on the ball of their feet, hips and shoulders opposed, these performers made you think that Harrell just might have created a new dance vocabulary quite separate from the way it was used in voguing. The “fashions” worn were of the kitchen-sink variety except when some of the dancers returned in black, judiciously draped to reveal as much as to hide the body. The contrasting imagery was powerful.

Towards the end the two ghosts finally meet. But are they the two dancers in black with traces of Butho make-up who swirl and snake around each other tenderly but also exploring the space in which they exist, or are they the two figures, covered head to toe who float in what looks like multi-colored sari fabric? Harrell sit center stage, apparently sobbing. He is dressed in mourning shroud. Wouldn’t you know that it is purple.