Tanya Bello with the Movement Choir in Janice Garrett and Charles Moulton’s Illustrated Book of Invisible Stories. Photo by RJ Muna.
From previous experience, you would not expect choreographers Janice Garrett and Charles Moulton (life partners away from the limelight) to be creatively compatible. Moulton’s widely performed and infinitely adaptable precision ball passing routine epitomizes the wit and sheer elation he finds in vigorous unisons and quirky counterpoints, which can often suggest platoons of action figures gone wonderfully haywire. On the other hand, Garrett’s aesthetic seems to regard straight lines as anathema to the urgings of warm flesh. Feeling has the edge over form.
Yet, in the frolicsome and often compelling Illustrated Book of Invisible Stories, geometry meets and marries anatomy, and the effect often leaves you a bit giddy. Premiered Thursday evening (April 16) at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Forum, the work, on view through Sunday, runs an incident-packed 65 minutes and a state of constant anticipation keeps you from succumbing to a few less savory aspects of the enterprise. Garrett and Moulton’s 2008 spectacle, StringWreck, mingled the dancers with the members of the Del Sol String Quartet, to favorable critical response. In The Illustrated Book, the eight participating musicians are consigned to a far corner of the room, while the audience sits on bleachers on three sides of the space. The new element in the Garrett-Moulton collaboration is a “Movement Choir,” an 18- person—17 women and Charles Gushue—team, clad in black and perched in tiers on its own platform. Their interactions with the six barefoot dancers, dressed in neutral blues, lend the piece its intensity and its fantasy.
The Movement Choir in Janice Garrett and Charles Moulton’s Illustrated Book of Invisible Stories. Photo by RJ Muna.
The choir’s dramatic unison arm gestures and wavy body motion at the start suggest something close to classic tragedy, witnesses who cannot influence the trajectory of the narrative, but content themselves with commenting on it. The acrid sound of the bass clarinet at the start hint at austerity mingled with dread. The dancers swirl on alone and in pairs, and the interaction begins as feisty Tanya Bello climbs over the choir, pedaling her way in air (recalling “The Unanswered Question” episode from George Balanchine’s Ivesiana), before her figure is upturned, a ploy to which we return near the end of the piece. Over the next hour, the choir will descend from its aerie to form a tunnel through which the dancers crawl; it will approximate a cluster of human logs over which the dancers promenade. And it will resemble a Hydra-headed monster, ominously beckoning, an apparition from which the dancers will recoil. The choir will also grunt, gasp, squeal, vocalize, breathe deeply and scatter rose petals.
Perhaps, Garrett and Moulton are attempting to generate a dichotomy between natural forces and human aspiration, and perhaps they are hinting at the obstacles that eternally thwart, curb or redirect our urges. Garrett’s movement style, with its passionate deployment of neck and upper body, the almost voluptuous use of the arms and the constant eddying of the movement is wonderfully refreshing in this era of self-conscious minimalism. The silky muscularity and tonal and dynamic refinement of the dancers—who also include Jennifer Bishop-Orsulak, Kaitlyn Ebert, Dudley Flores, Private Freeman (now retired from ODC/Dance) and the understandably ubiquitous Nol Simonse—never lets up. Garrett’s choreography yields surprises in every episode, and depending on context, a gesture can evoke radically different moods. An arched back can suggest surrender at one moment and hint at yearning in the next.
Nol Simonse and Kaitlyn Ebert in Janice Garrett and Charles Moulton’s Illustrated Book of Invisible Stories. Photo by RJ Muna.
Garrett wisely leavens the texture of her movement scheme. A lyric solo can open the gate to a playful group “scherzo,” set to pizzicato strings, and then resolve with a floor-hugging duet; Simonse and Ebert are gifted with the most searching of these exchanges. Freeman retains the boyish brawniness that won him a host of admirers at his former artistic home. Kudos to Garrett and Moulton who drilled their 24 performers with military rigor, yet infused the proceedings with a feeling of spontaneity. The Illustrated Book spins suggestions of scenarios yet to be written.
Jonathan Russell has furnished a mostly original and empathetic score, which wavers between classic and pop and even includes smidgens of Stravinsky and David Lang. Less winning were the ballads of Odessa Chen, delivered by the composer on guitar in a bland soprano and amplified to the point where the lyrics emerge a muddle. I salute the dancers who found their way into these ditties. Jacob Petrie’s lighting does what décor cannot, although I think I detected a few miscues at the opening performance.
Still, the piece, after a deceptively sedate start, rushes over you with the irresistibility of a spring storm.
The Illustrated Book of Invisible Stories repeats Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 7 p.m. at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Forum, 701 Mission St., San Francisco. For tickets, call 415.978.2787 or visit www.ybca.org.
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