Margaret Jenkins Dance Company: A Slipping Glimpse
May 18, 2006
By
ALLAN ULRICH
allan@voiceofdance.com
VoiceofDance.com 2006
Julian De Leon, Deborah Miller, Ryan T. Smith, Melanie Elms, and Levi Toney of Margaret Jenkins Dance Company in A Slipping Glimpse. Photo by Bonnie Kamin.
Once beyond the first 10 minutes, a skippable, alfresco bow to hippy-dippy populism, there is much to relish in Margaret JenkinsA Slipping Glimpse and only a few details to regret. This international collaboration between an Indian dance company and the Bay Area's legendary modernist and her troupe opened an unusually generous two-week premiere run Wednesday (May 17) at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and environs.
Generous is, indeed, the word for this final dance presentation of the YBC season. (The piece is a YBC co-commission.) The amplitude resides in the sheer lushness and flow of movement, and the extraordinary verve of the 15 tireless, barefoot dancers, all of whom made the forum seem like some kind of crosscultural crucible for 75 minutes.
To brand the arrangement of the work with some manner of glib adjective would be futile. But, certainly the layout of A Slipping Glimpse (the awkward title lifted from the writing of painter Willem de Kooning) suggests Ocean by Jenkinsmentor, Merce Cunningham. The piece is staged in the round, with red platforms and scaffolding placed strategically around the space for the dancers; it is possible to travel the perimeter without ever setting a foot on the floor. The musicians, led by composer Paul Dresher, are perched on the upstairs gallery that rings the forum. A different seat will certainly yield a different perspective.
According to what I can deduce from a confusing program note, the genesis of A Slipping Glimpse can be found in a journey Jenkins made to Kolkata, India, last year, when she worked with the Tansuree Shankar Dance Company. The working process went like this. Following Jenkinsvisit, the dancers made movement material. They sent DVDs to Jenkins and, one gathers, the exchange of ideas across the continents generated what one saw Wednesday. Four Indian dancers-Debjit Burman, Jaydip Guha, Rashmi Karmakar and Sulagna Sarkar-all trained in multiple dance disciplines, have joined the team here.
Their experience is felt throughout the Jenkins piece. The Indians often stand apart, either literally, on the platforms, or as body types. Their gestural language, with its curved prominent fingers, and deep bends are often taken up by the Americans, whose lexicon embraces strong torso work and elements of contact improvisation. The greatest mistake in A Slipping Glimpse would be the assigning of symbolic meanings to what one sees. Jenkins is working toward developing a universal language of movement here. Some of what you see suggests religious ritual. Some of it hints at burial practices; supine dancers are often lowered slowly to the floor. But to cloud one's mind with note-taking is to deprive oneself of an oddly sensual experience.
The rearrangement and reassignment of space always seems fresh and original, and a bit disorienting, too. No one in the room can see it all; in order to accomplish that, you, the spectator, would need to keep moving and that would change the work (oh, what hath Heisenberg wrought!). Dancers are raised high and lowered from the platforms. Ensembles jostle with solos, duets and trios for attention. Despite simultaneous episodes, the gaze is fixed. But the most miraculous attribute of A Slipping Glimpse lies in the phrasing. It is full-bodied, seamless and boasts uncommon follow-through; nobody flinches from what is demanding or unpredictable at any point in a lift or release. There's rare satisfaction here.
Then, too, the pacing and dynamic range, the sheer facture of the piece, rises to heights Jenkins hasn't attained in years, if ever. She frequently uses the frozen tableau; dancers simply stop in their tracks; at such times, you can almost hear their hearts beating. Symmetries arise, but they soon melt into two straight lines, which, appearing at the beginning and near the end, seem like a framing device. One senses a cresting of energy and a subsiding of tension. Still, a good 10 minutes might be excised without losing anything valuable.
Since she disbanded her permanent company years ago, Jenkins has always recruited a stellar assemblage of dancers for her projects and A Slipping Glimpse is no exception. Heidi Schweiker's opening solo seems like an invocation. Levi Toney was strong everywhere, especially in a tonally ambiguous, spiraling duet with newcomer Matthew Holland. Joseph Copley and Deborah Miller stood out in multiple encounters.
The poetry of Michael Palmer, both ubiquitous in Jenkinsdances and often obfuscatory, is here represented minimally, and one is grateful for the modest intrusions. The outbursts of verse, read on recordings, serve as rubrics for each of the four sections; since the subject of the poetry is dancers and their dreams, these verbal intrusions are less annoying than usual.
Alexander V. Nicholsdesign and the dappled lighting scheme for the floor are up to this artist's high standards. Laura Hazlett's costumes, in shimmering golds, whites and grays are drab and unflattering and reveal every perspiration stain (which, I hope, was not the idea). Paul Dresher's lengthy score, both live and electronically generated, is not among his best. The music mingles classical Indian motifs with art-rock conventions elegantly, and Joan Jeanrenaud's lyrical cello interludes can be savored. But, in Gregory Kuhn's sound design, too much of the score is amplified to the near pain threshold (earplug alert!) and too much of the sound attempts to pump you up, to infuse bursts of energy into the proceedings, like second-rate movie music. Jenkinscontribution has no need of such obvious theatrics. The other musicians were percussionists Joel Davel and Gene Reffkin.
The evening gets off to a glum start with an ill-conceived, site-specific prologue staged outdoors on the ugly concrete platform in the gardens behind the forum abutting Third Street. The dancers enter and deliver unisons, marked by deep knee bends and hands folded in supplicatory gestures. But they do not transform their environment, nor does it alter them, which is what site-specific productions should do. Jenkins, a native San Franciscan, should know better than to stage anything in the cold, windy fog that often descends here in the early evening; this is not India. Worse than that, the YBCA ushers, Cossacks all, have been ordered to refuse you entry until the dancing ends; they're warm and toasty inside the hall; why should they care about your health?
This pretentious and totally unnecessary foray into audience abuse does not add up to Jenkinsor YBCA's finest quarter hour. Patrons are cautioned to bundle up or wait in the lobby until the best of A Slipping Glimpse begins.
A Slipping Glimpse will be repeated through Saturday. Feb. 20 and Wednesday through Saturday, May 24-27, at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Forum. 701 Mission St., San Francisco. The outdoor segment begins at 7 p.m. The main event begins at 7:20 p.m. (415) 978-ARTS; www.YBCA.org.
