Sara Shelton Mann’s Inspirare. Photo by Benjy Young.
Sara Shelton Mann talks too much. The extent to which one can tolerate the San Francisco-based choreographer/performance artist in her discursive mode will possibly determine the extent to which you will appreciate Mann’s Inspirare trilogy, which opened a three-evening premiere run Thursday (May 1) at San Francisco’s Project Artaud. The tenor of Mann’s palaver, read from a script in the manner of the late Spalding Gray, is laconic, political and repetitive without ever rising to the level of ritual, and these opening 30 minutes almost sink the project. However, the final two panels of this triptych, which ultimately restore the movement to dancing, are among this artist’s more thrilling creations in years.
I suppose it all started with Oedipus Rex, but the trilogy seems de rigeur for artists these days. Still, grandiosity is not necessarily a virtue and what is weird, like Mann’s opening redgoldsky section, is not necessarily interesting. Given that Inspirare (to inhale, in Italian) is the second entry in ODC’s off-site festival, For the Record: Dancers Debate the Body Politic, you can be sure that Mann’s talk abounds in a thirst for social justice and much fretting over what she perceives as the coming apocalypse, but the weak choreography she has devised for the opening section (David Sziasa posing like an ape, Yannis Adoniou in tight whities skimming the floor, Kathleen Hermesdorf doing something under a bridge table) looks pasted on. At the end, a hand-held fan blows the Mann’s papers away, and sends up a dust storm, and it is that image that is supposed to connect redgoldsky with the second section.
In fact, the remainder of Inspirare has been performed in earlier seasons. The second section, also titled Inspirare, was given in 2007 at Artaud, while the best part of the trio, Telios/Telios, was unveiled at ODC in December 2006. If ever there were a justification for a critic to keep away officially from works-in-progress, this is it.
Nevertheless, the second section offers much compensation. The heart sinks as Maria Francesca Scaroni shuffles on and litters the space with old clothes (a performance art cliché, if there ever was one). But then Hermesdorf enters, disperses a cloud of flour and repeatedly smacks two bags of flour on the floor. The atmosphere is charged with menace, and, over the next 20 minutes, the women exchange clothing in a fierce pairing that sends up a dust storm. The clothing business is scarcely innovative in performance art circles, but the intensity of the coupling makes it all seem fresh. Calvin L.L. Jones sound design mingles Mann’s mumblings with natural noises. The poorly registered projections consist of historical footage of Stalin and other political figures.
Mann is at her best in Telios/Telios. Here Adoniou and the indefatigable Hermesdorf launch an extended duet on the balance of power. She dangles a red book; he attempts to wrest it from her. They reach a stasis and it all shifts. The vocabulary ranges from ballet (a snippet of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony turns up in the sound collage) to contact improvisation, and there isn’t a dull moment. But there a couple of enigmatic details. During the intermission, two new dancers, Hana Erdman and Alexander Zendzian, are introduced in a splendid improvisation. Throughout Telios/Telios, the pair hover on the periphery, moving furniture, crowding under the desk, and finally participating more actively. Yet, Mann has not clarified their place in the scheme; are they intended to serve as a contrast to the principal pair, or a comment on them?
Details, details. In the end, they do matter.
Inspirare will be repeated through Saturday at 8 p.m. at Project Artaud, 450 Florida St., San Francisco. ODC box office: 415.863.9834.
