This past Saturday, Conn welcomed the dance/theater performance Avalanche from Headlong Dance Theatre. Directed by David Brick, the performance featured five assistant and associate professors of dance and theater from Bates and Colby Colleges in Maine.
I attended the performance as a dance amateur, having reaped most of my knowledge from credible sources like Step Up and Dancing with the Stars. Not long into the performance, however, I realized that this was something original and special. The troupe came to Conn as part of a two-year tour. During this time, the professors have performed in cities like New York City and Portland, Maine, returned to their teaching schedules after the show and then resumed rehearsal months later.
They performed as part of the Connecticut College Dance Department’s pledge to bring in outside performers; many dance students were in the audience. The group offered more than just comparative dance knowledge for students. The performance asked the essential question of what it means to be a performer, particularly an aging performer.
This message was first seen in the set. The pieces themselves were simple: plaid mattresses, card tables, lamps of various sizes, oriental rugs and chairs. Although the pieces themselves were unremarkable, the way in which they were manipulated was clever and thought-provoking. Rugs were unrolled, then rolled, then transported; tables were knocked over and danced inside; lamps were carried and switched on and off. These movements finally culminated with a grandiose finale in which the performers assembled a massive fort out of all the materials, climbed inside and gradually turned off all the lights. This childlike way of playing with the set — moving, climbing, jumping, crawling — provided a surprisingly youthful air to the performance. After the show, Julian Gordon ’14 remarked that for him, the movements inspired feelings of childhood that he hasn’t experienced since that time in his life.
Perhaps one of the most memorable elements of the performance was the theatrical montage in which the performers touched on what it takes to become an artist. As two of the eldest members of the cast sat at a table and mimed the actions of a simple breakfast, two younger performers hovered nearby with microphones, performing a deadpan narration of personal anecdotes and trials that they went through. The younger man orally recounted the experience of trying out for a cereal commercial: being able to miss school, having a “flipper” fitted for his teeth to hide their imperfections (and forcing himself to think of the dolphin called Flipper), trying the cereal beforehand so as to better impersonate happiness at its appearance. Similarly, the woman’s most memorable anecdote was simple: “Wear your hair in a high ponytail so people will know that you are into ‘D-A-N-C-E.’”
But what does it mean to be “into dance”? For these performers, being a dancer is also about theatricality and the ability to dance to silence. Unlike typical dance performances, music was not the dominant force in driving the performers’ rhythm or speed. It was not uncommon for the performers to dance in silence, or to dance heedless of the music being played around them. Performers would vacillate between the two mediums, demonstrating that their performance was larger than anything that could be determined by a beat. Instead, the driving force of sound was the noises that the performers made by stomping, snapping or breathing. When music was used — such as in a memorable segment featuring AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long,” in which a male performer vigorously imitated the band’s drummer Phil Rudd — it was to invoke a childish, careless atmosphere.
Throughout the performance these interplays of maturity versus youth ran, or danced, wild. The play of silence as serious and sound as silly presented a curious dilemma of what it is to mature as an artist; should a seasoned performer be able to dance without sound, and use music only as an occasional crutch? Similarly, what is the role of a set for an accomplished dancer? The set’s greatest act was to create the epitome of childhood: a play fort made of chairs and blankets in which the lights could be extinguished and the players could hide from the reality surrounding them. Does this mean that a set, like sound, is an amateur’s prop? Or is the trick in learning how to manipulate it carefully and effectively?
The performers also offered sage advice to the students in the audience after the performance was over. Among the most useful was that a “good run cannot happen alone.” Also notable was the suggestion that a performer can only have a good run by “responding to, not [simply] executing” the choreography. Perhaps the most helpful advice to students was the encouragement to develop a performance with a group of peers over many years. The collegiate atmosphere, they advised, is unique in that you are surrounded by like-minded artists in a concentrated space. The opportunity to have “people you can check in with about your greatest projects and when that project changes,” they recommended, is invaluable.
