SlowDancingLive1: Pacing The Clouds

A three hour site-specific durational performance

Performance Space 21 (PS21) - Chatham, NY - September 2020

Conceived, Choreographed and Directed by David Michalek

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Utilizing PS21’s architecture, grounds, and trails as media canvas, dancers from BodySonnet, Peridance, and Gallim perform decelerated sequences on sand-covered raised platforms stationed throughout the landscape.

Live music by the Neave Trio accompanied the movement with works by Hayden and Morton Feldman.

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Background:

In September of 2020, I was offered a residency at PS21 in Chatham, New York, which included housing for up to 12 artists, rehearsal space and two weekends of performance. I decided to use the residency to develop a new work that could break free into the landscape, and offer art for a distanced audience during those difficult times marked by the urgencies of the COVID-19 pandemic.

I began by identifying, along with the six dancers in residence, short sequences that were extremely pedestrian and undecorated: laying down, kneeling, standing up, etc. I then asked them to extend those pedestrian movements into a decelerated ten-minute phrase. The challenge to each dancer was to identify within the arc of that task, hundreds of smaller tasks. We practiced those tasks daily. Multiple phrases were developed over time and eventually strung together into a score. Even though there was a fixed score or solo that everyone learned, I nonetheless encouraged each dancer to make that sequence their own by making it very specific to them. Rather than approaching this from a movement sequence perspective, I approached it from a position of movement inquiry. What is still and what is slow? When is movement not slow enough, and when is it too slow?

Engaging the movement as one would a yoga practice naturally brought slowness and quietness into the work and ultimately helped to remove the accents or embellishments that are sometimes employed by dancers to emphasize a dramaturgical meaning. What was being asked of their bodies (or rather, of their instruments), verged on being the opposite of what they had trained to do — to move at almost imperceptible speed. What became clear as we continued to work was that the aesthetic impact of the work was not necessarily reliant upon the shapes that the dancers were making with their bodies, so much as the quality of focus that they were bringing to the task. What was most relevant in the pursuit was the training of an unusual kind of attention. For the dancers, finding this (in whatever way was personal and meaningful for them) was part of their expression and by extension, their creation.

Some of the most compelling moments was when the dancers appeared to be in some kind of silent dialogue with one another. While we were not initially focused on developing narrative as part of the work, it did occasionally bubble up even if only by accident — for example, when dancers shared a single contained space, or engaged in sustained eye contact with each other while enacting their respective tasks.

Another thing started to be become clear: that part of the potency of this kind of work emanates from the tension created between the watcher and the dancers who are allowing themselves to be observed in a close and sustained way. There were times when it felt almost too private or too intimate — as though I was seeing and hearing things that were not mine to observe.

After working for a period of time in relative silence, or rather, with only the sounds nature coming in though the large barn doors of the studio, we invited the trio of musicians, that were also living in the artist residence (a pianist, violinist, and cellist), to improvise.

Taking the work that we developed in studio into the landscape of PS21 required that we move beyond the counter-relief of movement and music to consider other factors such as the platforms the dancers would perform on, the natural sounds and shapes of the landscape, as well as a whole host of issues related to the audience.

Performers were given an 8x8 square foot platforms upon which to perform. The wooden platforms were covered with black marley and over top of this, powdery white sand. As the dancers moved, the sand was pushed aside exposing the marley beneath. The marks, while acting as a literal trace of the dancers movement, were also evocative of so many natural shapes from clouds to various forms of fauna. After the dancers left the platforms, the trace of their movement was left in place until the next performance at which point it was raked and smoothed. The spatial relationship and orientation of the platforms was different in each of the three “stations” or performing sites. The performance duration for each site was roughly 30 minutes, not including the roughly ten minute walk between them.

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Station 1

The audience arrived at Station 1 though the open air pavilion, which is the central building on the PS21 campus. Three single raised platforms were separated by a distance of roughly 75 feet. Chairs were set up at varying distances to the platforms to let the audience know that they could choose their orientation to the work, as well to indicate the suggested distance in relation to other. Chalk lines were drawn on the grass to indicate the appropriate distance that audience members needed in relation to the performers.

The movement for this station was based upon the initial task-based score that all of the dancers learned in common. That score, which had seven distinct sections, was performed by each dancer in staggered fashion. The music for Station 1 were improvisations on themes by Morton Feldman. The dancers were given sections of the score to perform in such a way that it resulted in them concluding their sequences at different times. As each dancer in turn finished the sequence, they departed the platform, walked up the hill, entered a trail head, and disappeared from view. Musicians gradually took the same route. The exit of the last remaining dancers and musician was the key for the audience to leave the Station and proceed to the next one.

Station 2

The trail walk to Station 2 was approximately five minutes. As the audience arrived to the site, they encountered a single sand-covered platform at the center of a grassy plot on the edge of an overlook. A single prone figure with the lower leg raised and in the process of lowering to the sand. The long, slow arc of this simple movement was governed by the arrival and settling of the audience into position (a semi-circle of chairs was placed around the platform and separated according to Covid protocol).

While the action that unfolds on this platform moves at much the same rate as station 1 (at about 100 times slower than real life), it nonetheless contains some distinct differences: It features three performers on the single stage and it toys with narrative, although abstractly, in ways that Station 1 does not. The sequence begins with a single woman in repose on the sand. Eventually, a second woman joins the first and though they do not speak, nonetheless appear engrossed in conversation. As the two women gaze at each other, a third one walks to the platform quite normally (from about 30 feet away) and steps onto it (at this point entering into extreme slowness). When they turn to greet her, it is obvious that one of the women knows her very well, while the other knows her less or perhaps not at all. The two women who seem to know each other stand to greet each other while the third figure stays seated. In contrast to the extreme slowness of the performers, often a slight breeze would begins to blow and causes the silk of their costumes to ripple. It was also sometimes the case that the sun would go behind a cloud, causing a subtle change in the lighting. When the third woman comes and greets the woman she knows while ignoring the other; as they embrace, she bends toward her friend and whispers something to her, even further isolating the third woman. With clear awkwardness, introductions are made and all three exchange. Eventually the second woman exits the platform, leaving the first and the third alone together. Following this, the third exits the platform, leaving the first woman alone as she began. Finally, the first woman exits and leaves the platform empty, all but for the marks of their encounter etched into the sand. The story is still intentionally ambiguous – the women’s actions are not explained, leaving the viewer to speculate on the precise meaning of this enigmatic greeting. The music for this scene is improvisational, and calls upon the instrumentalists to listen to the sounds of nature and enter into dialogue with it. At the conclusion of the scene, the audience was instructed to proceed along marked trail to Station 3.

Station 3

The audience approaches Station 3 by way of a lengthy path that emerges from thick trees and brush and opens up into a large scenic field at the edge of which is a traditional barn. As they get closer to the barn, a structure comprised of three connected platforms, each at a different height, comes into view and live music (Hayden) can be heard emanating from the barn’s entrance. The dancers, who are each smoothing the sand on the platforms in a very naturalistic way, eventually find their way to a starting position and from there, enter into extreme deceleration. This Station, as distinct from the other two, features the dancers in such a way that they seem to be working together on some kind of common task, such as working together on a building site of some sort. It doesn’t have the dryness of Station 1, but neither does it feature the “narrative drive” of Station 2. The music for this station moves somewhat seamlessly from Hayden into Morton Feldman’s Piano and String Quintet. Written two years before his death in 1987, the work is a shimmering, pristine musical event. Feldman allows lingering sounds from either the piano or the strings to haze over many of the piece's near- silences. By the time Feldman composed this piece, he was deeply committed to extended works--chamber pieces that could telescope motifs and worry their tonality so that it warbled between hauntingly atonal and familiarly tonality. This is a powerful piece that sets an extravagantly crystalline musical mood for this slow moving group tableau, which was frequently accented by the hum of insects, the cry of Redtailed hawks, and honking flocks of geese flying over and south for the winter.