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XIIIth Annual Contemporary Dance Conference & Performance Festival
Bytom, Poland
July 2 — 15, 2006
etc.

by George Jackson
copyright ©2006 by George Jackson

Bytom is as derelict as last year, still with dance as the exception. Architectural renovation of the many substantial old buildings has stalled. Some parks and plazas may be marginally more kempt, but it is the summer dance workshop and festival — two weeks long — that injects cosmopolitan culture and hard cash into this former coal mining town's life and economy.

The pace of the 2006 festival was hectic. Class hours of the dance history course, with which I was involved, were longer and precluded attending the 5 PM series of performances. On the 7:30 PM series, two presentations were outstanding. Both were choreographer solos. Joe Alter, from San Diego in the USA, took a few minutes to build a finely crafted, coherent dance that was thoughtful in a mellow way. Nora Chipaumire, from Zimbabwe, imbued a set of solos with body power and will power.

Alter — tallish, in loose trousers, topless — was the image of the quietly handsome, somewhat muscular, securely masculine, modestly independent individual who has arrived at the time of life when questions about age begin to be taken seriously. Dancers are among the first to reach this stage. Using muscle tone and stance in conjunction with overhead lighting, what Alter did (I suspect) was to peer into his years ahead. At first he had simply walked forward from the back of the stage as his July 3, 2006 self. But when he leaned forward under the lights, working one arm supplely while holding the other almost rigid at his side, he seemed to be both fighting time and giving in to the future. The tilt of Alter's torso, though, was anything but an old man's posture. It was taut, like a bridge span intended to connect two separate points and carry weight. The mobile arm and the still arm represented more than contrast. It didn't seem implausible that the energy reserve of the immobile arm fed the action of the other. More often but not always, the left arm was the active one. At the end, when Alter walked out from under of the overhead lighting, he looked even younger than his July 3 self but also wiser. The title of Alter's piece was simply "Solo". I believe he designed the lighting himself. Music was by Sigur Ros and the performance preceded presentations by CityDance from Washington, DC.

Chipaumire — head shaved, hand and toe nails whitened, megabodied — impressed especially with powerful slow motion and forceful poses. The strength with which she moved had impact on the floor and on her own frame. Overall she was assertive, the title of her total suite being "Chimurenga", which means revolution or struggle. In the first solo, wearing a flame red dress, she encountered and overcame "Convoys, Curfews and Roadblocks" (to sound structured by Alex Potts). Then, in "Dark Swan", Chipaumire — topless above blackish gauze — unbent a little. One game she played was to Saint-Saens' dreamy swan music and another to Sam Cooke jazz. It was still strong stuff. I could have watched her dance on and on, but Chipaumire was wise as to length.

There were two performances daily at Bytom, sometimes more than two and each was different. The companies and soloists came from 6 countries. Of course, Poland was represented, particularly by the festival's host organization — Jacek Luminski's Silesian Dance Theatre. There were several presentations from Britain and the USA. Belgium dominated with 5 groups, and the Belgian Embassy in Poland threw a party. Slovenia and Zimbabwe had single representatives.

I didn't care for much of what I saw. It was not full dance and not at all drama. Contemporary dance as seen at this festival was typically closer to performance art and at other times fell prone to the notions of conceptual art. What dance is and isn't may be difficult to formulate, yet to claim everything that moves and poses as being dance is to deny the human ability to draw distinctions, to discriminate, to analyze. Dance has traditionally been defined as rhythmically patterned motion, but doesn't dancing happen when the patterning starts to disappear and movement ceases to be mechanical, when it begins to breathe? Think of the moment in "Coppelia" when the doll draws in air and sends the spark of life through what had been rigid features and a stiff body. ("Coppelia" was one of the dance films screened on the festival's first weekend.) In order to dance well, though, nature is not enough. Good dancing requires selectivity and training, good training from early on in life and a lot of it until retirement. That training changes the normal body.

Quite a few of the festival's contemporary performances aimed for a pedestrian look. Bodies were ordinary or made to seem so by street clothes. The casts of the contemporary works, although rehearsed, did not appear to be fully trained or they purposely performed like civilians. Virtuosity occurred rarely. When it did, it looked like stunts and not the intensification of a norm. The usual contemporary work had no intermission and lasted over an hour. Organic development of movement themes was minimal, more common was automatic variation. Repetition was maximal and that made most pieces seem way too long. In the conceptual pieces, full dance was often absent and even the amount of common motion seemed strictly rationed. As for the concepts, the clear ones tended to be mundane. A few performers had flair, but more often they exhibited the chutzpah of the stand-up comic. It would be easy to satirize contemporary dance, but no one did.

The best of this type of work was "D'Orient" by Thierry Smits for the Belgian group, Compagnie Thor. An all male piece about the Orient, it shows leisure (male bonding in the hammam, the traditional bath house of the Near East) and labor (bales of camel hair are ever so slowly spread out over the stage and then gathered up in a few fell swoops). The last part deals with loyalty (a ceremony with religious and military overtones). Smits's bath house scene was delicate. He neither overstated nor denied the homoerotic aspects of this sanctioned institution. In the labor scene, the camel wool covered stage alluded to the endlessness of the desert. The loyalty scene hinted at the possibility of fanaticism in the Orient. Yet the structure of the piece was too programmed, too didactic compared to Michel Fokine's dramatic Orient or Maurice Bejart's sensual "Golestan".

Perhaps the festival's most negative moments were passages for the crowd in Luminski's "Outcast". This was choreography that not only did not develop but actually decayed. True, Luminski was showing confusion, group anomie, but why couldn't he have been structured and fascinating like Rilke who was anything but repetitious and boring when he described the monotony of riding horseback day in, day out, hour upon hour?

Zvidance (USA) in Zvi Gotheiner's "The Amber Room" started with clever solos, duos, trios (the beginnings of satire of contemporary dance?). The group finale, though, was overdone. Gotheiner had made his point about endless endings and still went on and on. Gerard Charles's non-contemporary BalletMet from Columbus, Ohio, USA was meticulously rehearsed and had well trained dancers, most notably Adam Hundt. Its selection of dances, though, was rather tame. Regrettably I had to miss Michele Anne de Mey's farewell solo, "12 Easy Waltzes". I did see her company (one of the Belgian ones) which worked hard to make Beethoven's "Eroica" look common.

Of the student showings on the festival's last Friday, the short etudes by members of the class of Austrian teacher Georg Blashke were worth seeing. A high proportion of these studies actually were dancing and not just movement. Polish ballet teacher Olga Wachala, trained at Russia's Vaganova Academy, made a fresh number for herself and three of her boys. In it, she was a flower vendor who encounters a trio of street kids and teaches them a lesson. All the lads had challenging variations and at least one of them is competition material.

Kazuko Yamazaki, who presented the lectures on Japanese dance for the festival's dance history and criticism course, also proved to be a versatile and vivid performer. She discussed Japan's two key concepts of dance (Mai and Odori), and for the 11 major styles from the 15th Century onward (Kagura, Dengaku, Furyu, Gigaku, Gagaku/Bugaku, Sangaku, Sarugaku, Nogaku, Kabuki, Bunraku and Nihon Buyo) she demonstrated key aspects, also touching very briefly on Butoh and such imports as Eurythmics. The collection of kimonos Yamazaki showed off seemed inexhaustible. There were five core instructors for the course, four occasional teachers plus guest lecturers. Modern dance in America was Don McDonagh's focus. His calm and comprehensively detailed presentations were very satisfying to listen to. Stuart Sweeney's coverage of the British dance scene, from aesthetics to economics, was enthusiastic. Sweeney also mentored writing for the internet and led the effort to produce a daily newspaper for the festival. It had Polish and English editions. Roman Pawlowski's very practical classes on "How to Become a Dance Critic in a Week" emphasized overnight reviewing for general readers. Leslie Getz, thanks to whom Bytom has a dance library, gave two sessions on navigating the dance literature. She spoke with the discrimination and love of a true bibliophile and astute dance goer. We were so busy in these sessions that I didn't get the chance to look in on the many technique and style classes, the arts management workshop, or the projects on community outreach and dance photography. All talk in classes is translated from English to Polish or vice versa.

* * *

After the festival, a swing to the northeast took me to Vilnius in Lithuania, Riga in Latvia and Tallinn in Estonia. From the latter, I also ferried over to Helsinki, Finland for a five hour walk-around. The first three of these cities have shared and distinct features. All have a medieval quarter. Vilnius's is on hills, Riga's at harbor side and Tallinn's combines hill and harbor. Each capital also has a high rise section that does not interfere visually with the old neighborhoods. Helsinki has no high rises but also little that is antique. It is expensive and luxurious compared to the three small ex-Soviet capitals. All four cities have opera houses with fairly large ballet companies. The Vilnius Opera is quite new with much glass and steel. The house in Riga is reminiscent of Moscow's massive Bolshoi Theater. Tallinn has Siamese twin pavilions — an almost identical opera house and concert hall with a one-story connection. Their neoclassic architecture has a touch of art nouveau that makes it lighter than that of Riga's house. Helsinki's new Opera is white tile on the outside. This, though, was vacation time and there were no regular performances.

In Vilnius, I caught one dance program — an Odissi recital by an American woman of Lithuanian Jewish ancestry who lives in India and has studied dance there. Sharon Lowen is pear shaped, has a buoyant rebound, expressive features and a foot patter that's strong and clear. The hall (Lietuvos Pasto Kulturos, July 18) was hot and jammed. The audience was restless beforehand. Lowen had no problem getting and holding the public's attention. Her eyes are compelling, her smile is subtle with hints of pride and passion. Lowen set herself in motion and surmounted mere action, dancing to music we could hear and, so it seemed, to rhythms and melodies sensed only by her.

In Riga, I missed a gala in honor of the late Bolshoi ballet star, Maris Liepa, but attended the press conference for it. Presiding were two of the Liepa children, Andris and Ilse. Andris oversees productions now but no longer dances. Once a pin-up boy of the ballet, he's become a bit pudgy. Ilse is slim as ever and always seemed on-camera. A feature of the gala was to be a new version of "Thamar" for Ilse. The dancing I did see in Riga was by a street entertainer, an elderly woman who turned and turned — stiffly but with determination.

Alternative dance spaces the world over are in need of fresh paint, and the one in Tallinn's old city is no exception. What it did have was lots of activity — rehearsal and planning sessions going on although my visit was late in the evening. There were people on vacation here, but working vacations. With a widespread heat wave elsewhere in the world, the weather in the Baltics was ideal for dance. Blue skies during the day, a few white clouds and always a cool breeze to temper the sunshine. The twilight at night lasted until dawn and gave the sky a liquid glaze.

Volume 4, No. 30
August 7, 2006
copyright ©2006 George Jackson
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