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, however, 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
No comments:
Post a Comment