"21 Fully Realized Incomplete Thoughts"
Robert Moses' Kin
Z Space
San Francisco, CA
May 19, 2016
by Rita Felciano
copyright © Rita Felciano
Even after twenty years, Robert Moses succeeds in surprising us, not so much for his movement language -- high speed, densely layered, embracingly fierce -- as by the formal questions that he asks of himself. He has explored myth and history, urban culture and family life. In “Draft” he invited colleagues to work with his dancers in order to get a fresh perspective on them. Collaboration with a blues musician, a writer and a folk/activist singer evolved into “NEVABAWARDLDAPECE.” For last year’s “Silt” he created an elaborate installation, purposefully designed to prevent our ability to see all that was going on. For this season's premiere, “21 Fully Realized Incomplete Thoughts,” Moses has said that he went back to ideas that he had collected over the years but had never acted upon. He listed them in the program, including among others: I will always be Mista for someone else; Noble Idea-Wrong Time; The Judas (“peeping”) Hole; The Ecstasy of Nuance; The Clowns Are Armed. But like any good work, it's not so much the "what" than the "how" that draws us into Moses' world. For "21" I followed at first with some hesitation, but soon more than willingly.
Robert Moses' Kin in "21 Fully Realized Incomplete Thoughts". Photo © Victor Talledos
Moses collaged his own score from sound fragments, pre-existing music and spoken word, much of which, unfortunately, was unintelligible. The uncredited costumes had the men in skirts and the women in pants. David K.H. Elliott designed the nuanced lighting.
With Norma Fong, setting a trajectory by waddling from one end of the path to the other, the other six followed. Each tried out a different step pattern until mid stage when the ensemble dissolved into small units. A strident duet for the compact powerhouse Katherine Disendof and newcomer, a lanky Hien Huynh, started with her trying to manipulate one of his arms. He wasn't going to have any of it. It quickly became a struggle for dominance with lifts, shoves and kicks as they tangled with each other. Towards the end of "21" Disendof and Vincent Chavez contentiously partnered each other; he repeatedly tried to escape but always dropped back into her arms. Several times dancers ended on the floor, exhausted, winded or defeated. But then, as if the word had gone, the group got together in a circle and put a comforting hand around the one who needed it. It felt like a ritual, but also an instinctive response. At one point, the septet was quietly standing on the sideline when one of them began to tremble and the movement traveled down the line. Was this infection or a sympathetic response?
Chavez and Huynh unrolled and stomped on long sheets of bubble wrap, which other dancers later stepped onto almost accidentally. To me these poppings called up gunshots, somehow related to dancers dropping, curling up and dragging themselves along the floor or being carried out overhead. To what extent the individual episodes related to the twenty-one ideas, I couldn't tell, but the accumulation of struggles, confrontations with fists and kicks gradually, built a sense of gloom, something along the lines that from darkness we arise and to darkness we will return.
Since three of the seven dancers, Cora Cliburn and Renee Lee in addition to Huynh -- who impressed with his speed and martial arts attacks -- are new to the company, "21" felt a little unbalanced in terms of the ensemble work. At the same time Moses gave his two senior women full range in solos which expressed fierceness and lyricism in individualized but equal measure. Fong is tiny; Crystaldawn Bell tall. He might consider choreographing a duet on them.