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Pictured: Nol Simonse and Christy Funsch Photo: Robbie Sweeney |
Funsch Dance Experience
presents
Le grand spectacle de l’effort et de l’artifice
ODC Theater, San
Francisco
Nov 5th, 2016
Funsch Dance
Experience’s newest world premiere is truly striking – its composition strikes,
its content strikes and its concept strikes. Le grand spectacle de l’effort et de l’artifice hits on all
cylinders. Choreographed by Artistic Director Christy Funsch, the five-part
dance suite invites its audience to consider form, structure, physical
architecture and connective choreographic tissue. While not suggesting a linear
narrative, Le grand spectacle de l’effort
et de l’artifice also takes a deep dive into conversations around grandeur,
display, distillation and simplicity. In addition, with its unique
‘work-within-the-work’ format, the sixty-minute ensemble piece brings together
past and present contemporary dance with a special inlay as its third chapter –
a rare performance of Daniel Nagrin’s 1965 solo Path. And Le grand spectacle
de l’effort et de l’artifice manages to accomplish all of this with a
cohesive spirit, clever innovation and captivating performances.
Upon entering the
theater, one noticed purple and green fabric draped around the deconstructed
stage. Two cast members (Yvette Niccolls and Desiree Rogers) sat behind a
golden table like judges adjudicating a competition. The setting conjured an
arena, an exhibition – a perfect frame for the questions that Funsch was
positing. In the center of the space, Funsch and Nol Simonse danced an ever
changing duet; at one moment full of sculptural poses, then instantly morphing
to highly technical dance phrases and next to recognizable motions and
gestures. As the examiner characters and the audience watched, the condition of
being ‘on display’ seeped through the room. Contact partnering abounded, with
Simonse being the one who was lifted, balanced, supported, carried and as the
prelude closed, dragged. And throughout the pas de deux, watching Funsch and
Simonse dance together, the viewer couldn’t help be aware that they were in the
presence of something extraordinary – these longtime dance collaborators are kindred
spirits to say the least.
Part I, ARTIFICE brought the quartet of Arletta Anderson,
Chinchin Hsu, Courtney Moreno and Karla Quintero into the space to begin the
longest of the dance’s five segments. As Niccolls and Rogers continued their
scrutinizing gaze, choreographically, a time of extremes unfolded. There were
athletic, energetic calisthenics – large, wild runs; scissors jumps, buoyant
pony steps. There were mindful, concentrated motions – kinesthetic torso
undulations; placed hands, circling, splaying fingers. There were anatomical
articulation studies – limbs cycling from straight to attitude, from pointe to
flex. And there were oscillating statements of balance, counterbalance and
off-balance-ness. But the genius of this section was in the physical
vocabulary/dynamics connection. It wasn’t a big=loud and small=quiet
relationship – instead, there was a refined, egalitarian swath of physicality. One
where every movement equally captured attention and provoked curiosity.
After the musicians and
the cast had exited the space, Funsch began Nagrin’s Path. Holding a long wooden beam (I’m assuming it was similar in length
to what Nagrin originally used, which was twelve feet) parallel to the ground, Funsch,
in silence, began to travel along the diagonal from upstage right to downstage
left. With defined and determined specificity, she repeated Path’s single footwork phrase (step,
step, chaissé into demi-plié in second position, pas de boureé, side step) along
this trajectory. All the while the beam remained completely still. Path had no pretense, no extras. It was
this choreographic material, in this space, being performed in this moment. And
though the solo is very clearly task-driven and goal-oriented, I couldn’t help also
feeling a contributing narrative undertone, a sense of pensive soberness filling
the stage.
The final two segments
of Le grand spectacle de l’effort et de
l’artifice found the quartet returning to the stage, first with Funsch, and
then on their own. And the judge characters also reappeared, except this time,
the two women faced each other rather than casting their view on the dance
happening in front of them. This difference in posture was key, greatly
informing the conclusion of the dance. In this final section, titled Part II, EFFORT, Anderson, Hsu, Moreno
and Quintero rediscovered their physicality in the space. But it felt very
different from their first quartet – raw, sumptuous, visceral and increasingly
tactile. Like there had been a shift from the external view to the internal
impulse, and perhaps a freeing from some expectations, constraints or rules.
And I cannot close this
discussion without mentioning the brainy and astute device that Funsch injected
into Le grand spectacle de l’effort et de
l’artifice. At various moments throughout the work, the cast broke the
fourth wall. Sometimes the lights came up, sometimes they engaged directly with
audience members, sometimes both. What better way to pose questions of display
than by examining and dismantling the conventional audience/performer
relationship, even if just for a brief instant.
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