Post-Modern Pioneers



Sit down! David Gordon’s Chair.

White Oak Dance Project’s PASTForward, opening May 9 at the Merriam, simultaneously looks backward and ahead as its catchy title suggests. The "PAST" part is a retrospective of the work of seven very important choreographers, including some of the very folks who invented the idea of post-modern dance: David Gordon, Yvonne Rainer, Trisha Brown, Lucinda Childs, Steve Paxton, Simone Forti and Deborah Hay. The "Forward" refers to their importance to the here and now, entailing a commission of new work by Hay and participation by students from the University of the Arts, both in performance and in workshops.

These choreographers worked at the Judson Church studio space in Greenwich Village back in the 1960s and ’70s. They explored ideas like simultaneity, improvisation, talking while moving, not using music, ordinary gesture as dance movement. They dealt with the ephemeral. None of this lends itself to a tidy retrospective. "The whole idea is rather un-Judson," says project writer/director Gordon.

White Oak, which last performed in Philly back in 1994, is a flexible tool for Baryshnikov to commission new dance, and to perform himself with a small troupe of dancers selected project by project. Each project is discrete; there is no permanent repertory and no permanent troupe of dancers. Small, lightweight, ready to travel — that’s White Oak. (For PASTForward there will be seven dancers including Baryshnikov, who is listed alphabetically with his small troupe, coming after Raquel Aedo.) The idea of showcasing the Judson movement in an evening of dance came from Baryshnikov himself.

"I said no to Misha twice," said Gordon, sitting in his New York studio. "First of all I didn’t think he needed me because he would basically curate, and basically did curate it, himself. He called every single person, and got the ball rolling. I had to be convinced…." he says, his voice trailing off. "It was important to me that what we did was not religiously done, not as if it, the subject, was precious and final."

Gordon worked with Baryshnikov to shape the evening for artists who had not necessarily used proscenium spaces, worked in repertory companies or even used music. Through a series of works-in-progress performances, PASTForward reached its present malleable shape. A Charles Atlas film is interspersed with the dances, giving focus to the Judson era and to the actual works on the program, many of them no more audience-friendly today than they were 40 years ago.

The multimedia result is a very Judson affair, with some departures. For instance, there’s an intermission — not very Judson. They’ve involved community people — non-dancers — in each city where they perform, reinforcing both the forward idea of inclusion and also demystifying the idea of concert dance — very very Judson.

"I set up for Misha," Gordon says, "a flexible organization that was basically almost like the 1960s furniture that you were able to pile up in different ways, like those tables tucked under each other." So while PASTForward’s repertory sheet lists 14 revivals and two new works, the actual performance that we see here will be assembled out of Gordon’s flexible furniture into something that fits the Merriam stage.

Gordon is hard-pressed to define exactly what the spirit of the Judson movement was. "I think actually the Judson movement wasn’t a movement," he says. "What we had in common was time and space. I don’t think we had a common aesthetic. I don’t think we do now."

Whatever their aesthetic, the Judson choreographers inarguably broke new ground. Trisha Brown, speaking by phone from New York, points out that a work of hers that was not well-received originally is being featured on the cover of a new book on American art from London’s Tate Gallery. The photo is of her Roof Piece, where she placed dancers on rooftops over 12 blocks of Manhattan and had them relay movements to each other from roof to roof. "I remember so well the review of that work which said it was ‘not avant-garde’ work, and I just sat down and cried. I wasn’t trying to make avant-garde work, I was trying to make a significant art work." Now that very piece is considered by the Tate as emblematic of a whole era of art, and not just a dance.

"So," she adds softly, "it’s hard sometimes to remember how radical all this was."

It’s particularly hard in Brown’s case — she’s successfully run a dance troupe for 35 years, been selected for the prestigious MacArthur "genius" fellowship and made Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France where her work is revered. (She’s speaking in Philadelphia May 3 at the Painted Bride as part of the American Dance Pioneers series.)

Gordon remembers all too well how radical it was. He took a long sabbatical from dance after he was booed during his 1966 solo work Walks and Digressions, in which he dropped his pants and spat, among other things. "The audience walked out across the space right in front of me," he recalls, "all saying ‘Boo! Boo! Boo!’" He still looks shocked. "And I continued performing while they did that, and I got terrible reviews." (He’s right. I looked them up and they were pitiless, using words like puerile, egocentric, adolescent.) "I went home and said, ‘It is too painful to have that many people not like you all at once.’ Steve [Paxton] said there are tapes showing that we were frequently booed at Judson, and the audience didn’t like many of the things we performed. I don’t remember that. I remember everyone else being loved, and me being booed." He did not begin doing choreography again until 1971.

All of the post-modern experiments, whether with location and equipment like Brown, or with ordinary, perhaps even unattractive movements like Gordon, have slipped into what for all intents and purposes is universal usage. "The things that Judson brought to the world," Brown observes, "are everywhere now. Take just the idea of alternative space. Along the rivers that have been abandoned, the old warehouses have become very acceptable context for restaurants, bars, shops — and art."

"I think about that time often," Brown observes quietly, "the whole group. We wanted to do important work, not entertainment. All our memories of that time are different. We were a pool of very talented dancers and dance thinkers. None of us could afford to pay for a dance company so we used each other, and what could have been better?

"But," she adds, "it was diffuse. I only know it from my perspective, and I was 23 years old and I was not keeping notes. I didn’t know I was going to remember this 40 years later. Or be asked about it."

—Janet Anderson

Baryshnikov Productions in association with the University of the Arts and Dance Affiliates presents White Oak Dance Project performing PASTForward, Wed., May 9 at 7:30 p.m. and Thu.-Sat., May 10-12 at 8 p.m., $26-$58, Merriam Theater, 250 S. Broad St., 215-336-1234 or www.whiteoakdanceproject.com.

Trisha Brown, Thu., May 3, 7 p.m., Painted Bride Art Center, 230 Vine St., $6-$12. She will be speaking and showing video of her work as part of the American Dance Pioneers Series organized by Susan Hess Modern Dance. 215-925-9914.