Spradlin - Leigh Witchel

Mosaic of Survival

"Survive Cycle"
Roseanne Spradlin Dance
Dance Theater Workshop
New York, NY
November 10, 2006

by Leigh Witchel
copyright 2006 by Leigh Witchel

“How did I live through that?” It’s amazing what humans can endure. We pull into ourselves and concentrate on immediate tasks, minimal goals, just getting through the next minute, hour, or day. Meanwhile, the electricity is on only four hours a day, meat is being rationed or another block is being closed off and the buildings bricked up. Sometimes we don’t know how hostile a situation is until we escape it; only when we’re finally free does it really hit us what we had to live through. Roseanne Spradlin’s “Survive Cycle” primarily concerned itself with a more personal kind of survival, but was most eloquent at its most universal.

The lights, designed by Joe Levasseur, stayed mostly at a harsh white glare. Chris Peck’s music, uncomfortably loud, was feedback produced by both electronics and guitars along with an almost constant ominous rumbling. A quartet of talented dancers, Cédric Andrieux, Walter Dundervill, Paige Martin and Tasha Taylor, were mired in this hostile environment, dancing tight, spasming solos and flailing duets. Andrieux was moonlighting from his work with Merce Cunningham; Taylor and Martin are offbeat divas of downtown dance; Martin’s wide-eyed stare and Taylor’s beautiful liquid weirdness both can hold a stage in a vise grip.

The performance was in two parts; the first was more familiar downtown dance. Sometimes the shimmying and spasming mutated into found movement; Dundervill did a movement phrase that reminded one of a soundless rapper. There was also some formal vocabulary, including a romping temps de flèche repeated on the diagonal. The movements seemed like tasks set before the dancers as if they were lab rats, the dance their maze and the audience scientists observing their behavior to see how they would cope. Taylor and Dundervill groped each other ineffectually. At the most dryly theatrical moment in the first half, all four performers brought out stuffed black ravens to dance a quadrille. Each held his or her raven differently; Dundervill looked fabulous with one perched on his head. The quadrille finished, the dancers dropped the ravens lifeless to the floor and removed them unceremoniously. Spradlin relies on repetition in her work but the effect can be uncertain — when a movement phrase returns it doesn’t feel as if she’s getting her point across.

The second part of the performance crossed and combined mediums. Video images, beautifully lit and shot by Glen Fogel in chestnut and sepia, had been used in the first part as a preamble and then intermittently. We sometimes saw only a single dancer’s face in close-up — blinking, thinking, nodding, waiting. Later, the faces gave way to harsh strobed images of clothing being unraveled and cut. In the second part the video, projected across the entire rear of the stage, was continuous. It moved from actual speed to slowed down and soundless faces — antique photographs eerily reanimated.

During the video, the men talked about painful breakups with their boyfriends, Andrieux about an ex-boyfriend who committed suicide after their relationship was over. Survival after that sort of personal tragedy was the impetus of the dance. Then, the dancers discussed the difficulties and tensions of the rehearsal process; it was the biggest misstep of the evening. Equating the difficulties of one’s own artistic process with the kind of difficulties implied in the rest of the dance is self-indulgent.

Meanwhile, the dancers reentered carrying cloth bundles of colorful scraps. They set them down one by one on the stage until the entire stage was covered in a brilliant mosaic of remnants and tatters. The performance ended on that potent metaphor, but it felt like a missed opportunity to take the next step and have the dancers interact with the design they spent so much time creating.

danceviewtimes

Mosaic of Survival