Pavel Zuštiak and
Palissimo Company
Custodians of Beauty
Zellerbach Playhouse,
Berkeley
December 7th,
2018
In any Cal Performances’
dance season, there is much to luxuriate in. New chapters in decades old
artistic collaborations; a wide swath of choreographic genres and styles; and a
curiosity for newness. One of the ways the longtime arts presenter embodies
this final quality is in their programming design. Most years, Cal Performances
includes one or two (sometimes more) companies who have never performed in the
Bay Area, exposing regional audiences to a fresh creative voice and
perspective. This past weekend brought one of these debuts - Pavel Zuštiak and
Palissimo Company in 2015’s Custodians
of Beauty. An eighty-five minute conceptual collage directed and
choreographed by Zuštiak and performed by the incomparable trio of Viktor De La
Fuente, Emma Judkins and Justin Morrison, Custodians
was both cool and thoughtful.
Zuštiak included some
commentary in the program, which concluded with a two-part question, “where do
we find beauty today and does it need our defense?” While I’m not sure
that I saw the latter line of inquiry, I was struck by how the former sentiment
rang clearly throughout the work. Whether an extended movement vignette or a
short creative snapshot, scene after scene oozed simplicity and purity. Physicality
was unhurried and smooth; arm gestures, uncomplicated and natural; directional
shifts, clear and precise. Small motions were celebrated and mined, like the
movement of the head or the gaze of the eye. A giant smoke cloud was cast into
the audience and simply allowed to dissipate; a vocal offering (which
incidentally was performed with incredible musical prowess) hung hauntingly in
the air. Every artistic idea in Custodians
was distilled to its very essence; no pretense, no extraneous stuff. I
found this particularly impressive seeing as how the piece employed so many
different disciplines – sound, text, visual art, effects, choreography, video, song.
But in Custodians, movement was
movement; song was song, text was text. Not a hint of spectacle or ostentatious-ness
cluttered Zuštiak’s varied artistic explorations.
While a paragon of
clarity and distillation, Custodians
did have some challenges. For those of us who suffer from any kind of motion
sickness, the first moments of the work, with its bouncy, shaky videography,
certainly triggered it. For the most part, I found the score to be compelling, though
it occasionally ventured into uncomfortable territory – high-pitched
soundscapes and atmospheric tremolo that left the ears ringing. While that kind
of discomfort can certainly be purposeful, in this case, it distracted from
what was happening on stage.
And at close to an hour
and a half, Custodians was far too
long, especially because some of the chapters felt like they could have been
edited. For example, one lengthy section found De La Fuente, Judkins and
Morrison moving methodically through a series of cluster sculptures. The
transitions were slow and small, close to Butoh in their tempi. I was into it;
the shapes and living figures they were creating were really something to
behold. But as it continued and continued and continued, the idea lost its early potency. For me, the pull and magnetism of the first few postures had disappeared. The same was true for a later sequence of patterned aerobic running,
bouncing and hopping. Again, interesting and dynamic, but just too long.
Finally, there was a moment when the lights went up and the three performers
ventured into the house. Each invited an audience member up on stage for a
brief standing pause, after which they returned to their seats. I’m all for exposing
the porous boundary between the performer and the viewer, but this didn’t feel
like it served the piece at all. In fact, it brought unnecessary clutter to an
otherwise uncluttered theatrical container.
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