Miguel Gutierrez - The Perfect Dance Critic

The Perfect Dance Critic

The perfect dance critic does not exist.

The perfect dance critic works for the perfect arts editor, who does not exist. The perfect dance critic writes in the perfect arts publication, which also does not exist. The perfect dance critic doesn’t secretly wish that everything was the way it used to be. The perfect dance critic doesn’t secretly love ballet more than anything else and feel like she’s just slumming when she sees “downtown” work.

The perfect dance critic can talk about individual pieces in relationship to the pieces that the choreographer has made before, and can write about how the piece fits in terms of the evolution of the work. The perfect dance critic understands that “technique” is a vast term that applies to the ways in which dancers can access effectively and intelligently the numerous expressive possibilities that are available to them in their bodies. The perfect dance critic understands that “virtuosity” can apply to the most idiosyncratic of weight shifts.

The perfect dance critic has an awareness of what the postmodern movement in dance expressed, achieved, and how it lives in our consciousness today.

The perfect dance critic does not live in a time warp that shuttles him between now at City Center and 1950 when he irreversibly decided what dance was, is, and can only be.

The perfect dance critic can describe movement vocabulary, and speculate as to what the choices of movement vocabulary mean in relationship to or how they help to shape the larger vision that the dance artist offers.

The perfect dance critic knows that the choreographer’s choices are integrally related to the selection of dancers that she has working with her.
The perfect dance critic understands that the dancer is an artist and not merely a tool of the choreographer’s or director’s work.
The perfect dance critic can articulate the qualities of individual dancer’s energetic presence in the work.

The perfect dance critic understands that beyond movement vocabulary, dance work is a total aesthetic experience and can therefore elaborate on the contributions or selections of music, set design, costumes and lighting in more than one-sentence toss-offs. The perfect dance critic can write about these aspects of performance with ease and intelligence because the perfect dance critic is well-informed has a comprehensive interest in all aspects of performance.

The perfect dance critic can make references to artists and ideas from other forms of performing and visual arts when trying to contextualize work.

The perfect dance critic discusses the implications of the different cultural representations of gender, race, sexual orientation or class in the work. The perfect dance critic acknowledges his own cultural position when addressing these issues, and how that cultural position may shape his feelings or responses.

The perfect dance critic gets excited when she sees something that’s different, unusual, challenging, or thought provoking, rocks her world, and writes about it with accompanying vigor.

The perfect dance critic writes in a way that is contemporaneous with the time we are living in.

The perfect dance critic knows when it’s time to quit, change careers or retire.

Published in the Movement Research Journal #25 Dance Writing, Fall 2002

Enters and Exits - April 28, 2011

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO0oikyhVV4

WOW 2011 - Video footage

Footage from Way Out West 2011
Video by: Deanna Peters
Featuring: WOW dancers, Su Feh Lee, Yves Candeau, Benoit LaChambre, Justine A. Chambers, Rob Kitsos, and Jennifer Mascall

http://news.mascalldance.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/WOW2011.mov

COPY: a movmeent based installation

Copy - A movement based installation from Justine A. Chambers on Vimeo.

Created by: Justine A. Chambers and Josh Hite
In Collaboration with: James Proudfoot, Dennis Rosenfeld, Meghan Goodman, Vanessa Goodman, Jane Osborne, Laura Avery, Katy Harris-McLeod, Molly McDermott
Artistic Monitor: M. Simon Levin

Upcoming Teaching

Way Out West - Mascall Dance
1130 Jervis St.
August 23-25, 2011
10am - 11:30am
http://www.mascalldance.ca/way-out-west/

Working Class - TSV
The Dance Centre
October 17, 19, 21, 24, 26
9:30-11:00am
$12 drop in / $100 class card of 10
http://www.trainingsocietyofvancouver.ca/workingclass.html

In Response to Lynda Gaudreau's 0101

IN RESPONSE TO 0101
Justine A. Chambers
December 2009

0101 presents three versions of the same sequence; each is altered repeatedly by duration, light, sound, rhythm, space, and quality of movement, creating a new modality with each incarnation of the sequence.

Although Lynda Gaudreau’s vocabulary is directly drawn from every day movement, we are not simply presented with the mundane. The work succeeds at “making the ordinary visible (Gaudreau – Document 4), yet it does not embellish or overemphasize ordinary or pedestrian movement itself. While the movement language is what we find in our every day: pointing, standing, laying down, lifting arms, jumping and waving, Gaudreau takes on distillation and deconstruction of the conventional elements of situated theatre. All of the traditional theatre conventions are present and they are challenged.

By simplifying and underlining the structural conventions of theatre, the viewer is presented with the familiar, yet is not handed the anticipated experience associated with that familiarity. Sociologist Erving Goffman discusses these expectations for consistency, not only in relation to and between different performances, but also towards elements such as setting, appearance and manner within the same performance. About this logic he states, “Such coherence represents an ideal type that provides us with a means of stimulating our attention to and interest in exceptions.” (Goffman –The Presentation of Self In Every Day Life p.25)

MOVEMENT
Underlying, inexplicable activity is visible, as the movers appear to be deliberating, considering, and thinking. Intervals between substantial visible movements allow space for a series of diminutive moments as the movers respond to Gaudreau’s “space of action” (Gaudreau – Document 4). The acuity with which information is organized and then executed signifies a distinct tactic for the generation of movement. These tactics and the reasoning behind the parameters of the tasks and activities themselves remain pieces of information not privy to the viewer.

NARRATIVE
No narrative enforces an order or structure upon the work, while the simplicity, spaciousness, and care to form and line nods to a modernist aesthetic. Yet this setting is not used to propel a storyline or to indulge the viewer with a familiar environment. Like the circuitous route of Monsieur Hulot in Jacques Tati’s Playtime, her performers are presented as the people they are rather than characters. They move according to their environment, and not necessarily in relation to each other. It is the playful organization of this movement in relation to duration and quality of execution that points to Tati and his use of visual gags and absurdity in the relationships between humans and their constructed environment.

The work appears as the results of a study rather than a narrative or fiction. This study involves tasks, memorization, adapting, and constant learning. Stripped of sentimentality, the work maintains a quiet humour, and a playfulness that touches on the absurd. While the act of concentration or execution provides a meaning for the artists involved, the work exists within the realm of the research. What is extended to the act of the performance is the common experience of being engaged in activity.

COSTUMING AND SETTING
A sort of standard issue clothing, suggesting a uniform, the costumes do not speak to any particular time or place yet are at once familiar. As the only gender specific element of the work, where we find the men in pants and woman in a skirt, gender is acknowledged and promptly discarded. It does not speak to broader or anticipated societal gender roles. While costume changes occur with each new modality, this appears to be simply an adjustment rather than a significant change. As opposed to using costuming as a means of indicating character development or transformation within a narrative, Gaudreau humorously whittles away at this notion by re-introducing the interpreters as themselves each time they return to the stage.

The stage setting is minimal, fragmented into clearly delegated areas for different activities. The floor is divided by white and black. Upon the white space, in the centre, activities understood to belong on the stage occur, and the black space lends itself to being a liminal and transitory space, bookending the centre. Upon the black spaces, interpreters reconfigure and re-set – often an activity reserved for the backstage yet her onstage aesthetic and care to form and order remain. No one doubts that they are still performing. The spatial shifts in bodies are consistent with the modalities in which the interpreters are engaged, without indulging in additional fanfare or spectacle. This is consistent in the use of lighting throughout the work. Lighting shifts occur with each new modality, yet are primarily used to indicate beginning and end rather than to create dramatic effect.

SOUND
Gaudreau playfully engages the positioning and role of a live musician, a drummer, whose presence is mostly architectural and aesthetic in nature. Providing rhythm that creates interconnectivity between the interpreters, his participation is executed in a perfunctory manner. We are never presented with virtuosic drumming. With the onset of each new section, the sound of an electronic hum, reminiscent of a bug zapper, fills the theatre. This hum of action is promptly eliminated at the end of each modality. Also consistent with the use of costume and set, the hum acts as an indicator of beginnings and endings, of something new happening, yet refrains from commenting on or augmenting the content.

CONVENTIONAL VIEWERSHIP:
Through her gentle undermining of expectation, presenting the familiar, yet providing a foreign and almost unattainable context, Gaudreau highlights this lack of congruence within each modality presented. The viewer’s role in relation to the performers and to the space is brought into question.

“…a performance is ‘socialized’, molded, and modified to fit into the understanding and
expectations of the society in which it is presented.”
(Goffman – The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, p.35)


To download a pdf of this writing:

http://www.lyndagaudreau.com/info/pdf/in_response_to_0101_by_jchambers.pdf

Interview with Justine A. Chambers - Way Out West - Mascall Dance

http://news.mascalldance.ca/?p=241