unaltered images of movement
by Douglas
Messerli
John Adams
(music), Lucinda Childs (choreography), and Frank O. Gehry (stage design) Available Light / Los Angeles, Walt
Disney Concert Hall, June 6, 2015
Although
often referred to as a “performance art work,” and despite the collaborative
contributions of composer John Adams, architect and, here designer, Frank
Gehry, Available Light is very much a
modern balletic piece in which choreographer Lucinda Childs plays the major
role. That this work from 1983 was first performed in the museum space of the
Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Arts “Temporary Contemporary” venue, and was
curated by art curator Julie Lazar, may have made this dance seem to be
something other than is, leading some art critics such as Los Angeles Times’ William Wilson to dismiss it and others to
praise it as an avant-garde, cutting edge piece. But as its revival at the Walt
Disney Concert Hall last evening confirmed, it is a beautifully conceived work
of contemporary dance that is different from others, perhaps, only through its
venues: besides MOCA and the Concert Hall, the work was also revived at Mass
MoCA and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, all rather untraditional locations for
works dedicated to movement.
To say that this work primarily
functions in the dance world, however, does not take anything away from the
lush musical circlings of Adams’ score nor detract from the breathtaking
two-tiered platforms that Gehry has created for the dancers to perform on, the
top layer held up plinths of a kind of delicately laced chain-link fence-like
construction that reminded us, of course, of the architect’s early
constructions. While the original MOCA audience sat on two sides of the
platforms, experiencing it, accordingly, from completely different vantage
points, most of the Concert Hall audience members were able to observe the
patterned movements of the two layers of dancers from a shared perspective. My
only presumption is that, as Deborah Meadows and I were seated on the
fourth-floor level, the action of the dancers came into sharper focus,
revealing the fact that the ten dancers on the lower level, moving in pairs of
twos and threes in repeated spins (generally one and a half turns), skips, and
leaps were determined by similar movements along a lateral bias by the two
dancers above—although those patterns alternated later in the performance. In
short, like two waves of movement, it appeared that the dancers of the top
platform determined, for the most part, the larger image of dancers in a group
on the lower level.
While these series of “patterns and
permutations, repetitions and variations,” as dance critic Anna Kisselgoff
suggested in her 1983 review of the Brooklyn performance, are all signatures of
Child’s minimalist esthetic, we might almost read this two-layered patterning
in a different manner, particularly if we explore the metaphoric associations
of the work’s title, perceiving the “available light” as having to do with
photographing or imaging a reality without artificial light sources, and
imagining the two layers of movement to reflect actions of two hands (the two
top-positioned dancers) moving through water and chemicals to the resultant
image (the ballet corps below).
Such a reading is surely encouraged by the
fact that the dancers are all dressed by costumer Kasia Ealicka Maimone in the
three colors of the photographic studio, white, black and red, and that, from
time to time, light designer Beverly Emmons dims her normally bright white
lights into near darkness and briefly introduces red tones. And while we feel
some guilt, perhaps, for reading Child’s obviously abstract movements in this
more literal manner, it appears to give significant structure and depth to the
whole, particularly if we believe, as Kisselgoff argued, that “the piece is not
simply [an] exercise in perception, [but]… an aid to perception.” For in this
work of wide-eyed availability, the observer can readily see how each movement
gives direct rise to others, and transforms simple elements into waves of wider
motion and expression.
However, one might “read” her dance with
Adams’ joyous music and Gehry’s simple but elegant designs, Childs has created
in Available Light something truly
profound. And the Los Angeles Philharmonic should be commended for returning
this excellent work to the city of its birth. I feel fortunate to have been
part of the audience rediscovering this work of art.
Los Angeles, June 6, 2015
Reprinted
from USTheater, Opera and Performance (June
2015).
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