Willie Dorner - Naima Prevots

Compelling Clarity and Wit

Company Willie Dorner
Beyond the Waltz: Austrodance Festival 2006
Harold and Sylvia Greenberg Theatre
Washington, D.C.
November 6, 2006

by Naima Prevots
copyright 2006 by Naima Prevots

Compelling clarity and wit characterized Willie Dorner’s choreography. In the first piece, threeseconds (2001), the dancers were two men and one women, performing exacting and sparse body isolations, and accompanied by stunning video projections for most of the thirty-five minutes. The second piece, no credits (2003) a short male/female duet with a similar reductionist approach, utilized sophisticated and complex simplicity through gestures, isolations, shakes, wiggles, and looping thrusts into space. It was refreshing to watch unexpected moving limbs, surprising spatial attacks, and strong silences, all components of an original and thoughtful evening.

Dorner is based in Vienna, and has performed and choreographed all over the world, winning many honors along the way. He began choreographing in the 1980s, and this is the first time we have seen him in Washington, thanks to the sponsorship of the Embassy of Austria and the Astrodance festival. Dorner studied at the Vienna Conservatory; in New York with Erick Hawkins and at the School for Mind-Body Centering. He is now at work on a large piece based on movie science fiction, and in the Austrian dance documentary Dance on the Spot, we see his installation piece Hanging Garden. Dorner’s dancers in this performance were mature and strong individual artists: Satu Kristiina Herrala, Anthony Missen, Matthew Smith (threeseconds); Adriana Cubides, and Smith again in no credits. None of these are Austrian born; they come from four different countries: Finland, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Columbia.

Dorner’s video, music, lighting, and costume designers are an integral part of the originality and success of the two works. The video is credited to Lotte Schreiber and Norbert Pfaffenbichler, along with Willi Dorner, and consists of numerous squares and rectangles housing a great variety of fluid and changing images. The music is by Heinz Ditsch, and consists of delicate gurgles, beeps, and more, all working harmoniously with the shifts and jabs of the dancers’ bodies. The costumes are like street clothes, but tailored for clean movement execution, and the lighting is white and stark, and fully appropriate to the quality of the choreography.

In a post- performance discussion led by dance critic/historian George Jackson, Donner reflected on the two pieces he had just shown. He talked about the relationship of movement to linguistics, and his attempts to look for the smallest unit of possibility in the body, as a way of then connecting and building. For him this breakdown is a form of analysis, and comparable to the field of linguistics where the smallest components are important. It is also a way of understanding dance as a language, and then creating transformations through new connections and intentions.

The program note for threeseconds explained that Dorner attempted to “transfer the analytical framework of structural linguistics into dance. Based on the deconstruction of spoken language, the language of movement is taken apart and placed into new structures…” The post-performance discussion touched on the notion that European dance is often more conceptual than what we are seeing and doing in America. Certainly the conceptual element was important to Dorner in his choreographic exploration. He brought it up in the discussion, and the program notes on the language of movement are extensive. The conceptual base for this thirty-five minute choreographic statement probably helps make it cohesive, but it is the fine exploration of movement invention that makes it the kind of piece you want to see again.

There is almost no group interaction, and most of what we see involves a solo figure, be it male or female. Elbows appear in the middle of a perpendicular arm shape; a finger explores the air; a torso moves slightly to the side; a leg gestures in space; a head rotates; eyes shift upwards; hands test the formations of body and face; a pelvis gives in to gravity; everything stops and we have time for reflection. The ordinary becomes extraordinary because of the way things follow one another, the timing of each action and the timing in between. The wit emerges as unexpected actions follow one another, or timing is off the norm.

The program note for no credits, the short second and last piece on the program, emphasized the concepts underlying this dance. “A duet for a male and a female dancer: symbolic derivative of a cynical video game world, which reduces the role of the body to that of a puppet controlled by a game console. The piece questions ironically the virtual quality of dance itself and satirizes our decoding abilities.” What is so wonderful about this dance, is the way the two bodies shake, wiggle, fall, rise, bend, turn, gesture, and give us a sense of overcoming all the obstacles placed in their pathways. The dancers tremble and fall, but rise and move. The dancers smile and then frown, but then soar nimbly through space. The dancers explore their bodies as if there is something strange to be found, but then surprise us with shifts of weight, turns, and wonderful patterns through space.

Dorner was asked in the post-performance discussion about touring in the United States. He noted it was very expensive, and hard to find sponsors. It would be fascinating to see the later works of Dorner, as well as his current project. This first glimpse of his choreography shows him to be an inventive and original artist, and one who provides great clarity in his work. It would be wrong to generalize that all Austrian or European choreography follows his methods and ideas, as the range of activity is huge and varied. Dorner’s work is beautifully conceived and executed, and he is a fine artist.

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Compelling Clarity and Wit