Now you know what it’s like to be flocked by bassoons.
It happened Sunday evening on Governors Island at the start of the movement “Duel Sea” by Andros Ginsbrown.I was standing in it with some other spectators “moving chain” A large moving sculpture by Charles Gaines, shaped like a ship with open ends. When bassoonist Maribel Alonso began her performance, she brandished an instrument that buzzed like an elephant’s trunk, sweeping us to the entrance and clearing the room.
The subject matter of “Moving Chains” is as heavy as slavery. A massive steel chain spans the top of the wood-sided sculpture, which is positioned to overlook the Harbor of the Statue of Liberty. On Sunday, the motor that powers the grinding motion of the chain was shut down for maintenance, but Jins Brown and his fellow dancers got it working on their own. It was like a fight and a fight, but it was full of smiles. “Duel c” tackled heavy themes but had a playful feel. It’s interesting to be flocked by bassoons.
This light approach to heavy subject matter proved consistent in two other dance performances I saw last week. river to river, a free summer arts festival by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. As well as ‘Duel C’, so are his two shows ‘Zero Station’ by Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith and ‘Ceremonia’ by Eleanor Smith. Antonio Ramos and the Gangbangers, both performed at the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural and Educational Center on the Lower East Side, aimed at healing and liberation. But in both cases this manifested in part as a liberation from clothing.
Nudity is part of Lieber and Smith’s practice, a means of increasing intimacy, and a resistance to female objectification. Lieber started “Zero Station” in a Disney Princess dress, and Smith wore a T-shirt and sparkly hot pants, but neither of them stayed undressed for long. Soon, they were doing a middle school-style slow dance with only their lower bodies visible under an upside-down trash can.
It’s a Beckett-like image that’s both funny and dark at the same time, but “Zero Station” was thin and underdeveloped by the usual standards of this good duo. In the Weak Talk section, Smith talked about his experience as a restaurant hostess dealing with bad behavior by chefs and owners, some of whom were fired. Some things go in the trash, she said.
At the center of “Zero Station” were two naked women rolling and wrestling loosely on the floor – at one point, that anti-Disney princess anthem, “Let To “It Go”. The music, which also included Enya, incorporated irony to lighten up the dance, but there’s always something serious going on between Lieber and Smith.
The performers of “Ceremonia” also began to wear clothes, but only clothes that did not cover their breasts and genitals. They set off from the Clemente River parking lot, galloping like horses and whining. A procession of naked people writhing, exercising, and playing with horses. That’s the tune of “Ceremonia.”
The wonderful and charming Ramos kept the fun going as we moved through the theater, nibbling platform heels made from yellow cans of Café Bastello. It’s a serious undertaking for the Puerto Rican-born artist to evoke a hurricane, as Ramos did in “Ceremonia,” but here the demeanor is cheeky defiance, with the crackling of flip-flops and the banging of pots clashing with the wind. evoked water. Then it turns to face the storm, hopping, moving and wiggling.
This was a loose and tense event, but a nice one with good humor. Somewhere in the middle, the crawling naked dancers stopped and looked back and asked, “Who’s in my butthole?” At the end, the dancers spread a black tarpaulin on the floor, covered it with a white sheet, covered their bodies with blue paint, and rolled on the canvas while simultaneously catching fish from the water and acting as action painters.
But duel c is the most moving and cathartic of the three. It didn’t stay within “Moving Chains” and fled to nearby Outlook Hill. The trajectory gave the piece a satisfying shape: a climb, but there are some to follow one performer or another to bypass switchbacks or bouldering shortcuts to climb. I also gave the way to
In addition to climbing, the dancer’s main actions remained in the realm of eternal entanglement: roughhousing, hugging. One or two of them appeared to be wrestling with themselves or unseen beings, like Jacob and the angels. But most of the time they playfully wrestled with each other like brothers.
Outlook Hill also gave the piece its final destination. It is a grass-and-stone amphitheater at the top with views rich and voluptuous with the symbols of the harbor and the Statue of Liberty. Throughout, the dancers were accompanied not only by Alonso and Bassoon, but by Fay Victor’s amazingly wide range of voices.
At the top, as the childlike dancers put an end to their arguing and hula hooping and sit on the grass, Victor sang that he wanted to fade into the welcoming sunset. This setup wasn’t quite what I wanted – it was a little early – but it was very helpful.
