Choreographer Liz Lerman concluded her two-week residency at Brown yesterday with an intense performance that challenged the definition of dance. In a packed show at Ashamu Dance Studio, Lerman posed basic questions - "Who gets to dance? Where is the dance happening? What is it about? Why does it matter?" By exploring these questions, participants in the residency created this final performance.
As the audience settled onto colorful pillows scattered throughout the studio floor, the dancers warmed up on the stage, hinting at the show's unconventional nature. Their appearances and attire were far from uniform. While a crowd of dancers prepared center stage - some in leotards and sweatpants, others in prints and skirts - an older man in a suit and tie, his white hair combed back neatly, stretched and then did push-ups in a corner. At the far end of the stage, a cluster of young girls practiced African-American step dancing. Lerman surveyed the scene from a seat in the front of the audience, coming forward to introduce the show.
In the space of an hour, the performance explored a wide range of human experience, from the tragic to the spiritual. It was both multidisciplinary and inclusive, based on the idea that everyone has a story to tell and a different way of telling it. The performance blended modern dance, interpretive movement, percussion beats and African-American stepping. Often accompanied by spoken word, the dances incorporated simple props, including stones, books and rags, keeping the focus on the dancers and their narratives.
The opening piece, an excerpt from a performance about human rights that Lerman created for Harvard Law School, was based on Clea Koff's book "The Bone Woman." Combining recorded narration with dance movements, it tells the story of an archaeologist on a mission to unearth the bones of genocide victims in Rwanda.
The dancers were sprawled on the floor so that they appeared lifeless, decaying and mistreated - bones destined to be touched and examined by forensic anthropologists in a futile attempt to understand the personalities, emotions and voices that had once given them life. Moving to percussive beats, a dancer who was meant to portray the archaeologist lifted and examined the "bones," haunted by the atrocities that placed them there.
Following the piece, Lerman read some of the correspondence with Harvard Law School that preceded the human rights performance. She was accompanied by a dance piece that featured four performers sitting in chairs facing away from the audience and clasping their backs as they struggled with what seemed to be imprisonment and excruciating physical pain.
Another dancer performed a piece behind them in which he fought to rise but continued to collapse loudly onto the hard floor. This part of the performance dealt with the incomprehensible topic of genocide - its victims and its perpetrators - and was undoubtedly the most tragic.
The dances that followed represented the culmination of the work that made up the two-week residency, during which individual stories and prayers were shared and collected to create gestures and movements.
One especially provoking piece perfectly conveyed the performance's overall purpose. It involved phrases and words taken from past events that comprised Lerman's ongoing project "613 Radical Acts of Prayer." The dancers gathered in separate clusters on the stage and through spoken words, gestures and movements, conveyed personal and ideological struggles. A girl contemplated two different stones, repeating the phrase, "You ask me to choose, but I cannot choose," while another dancer used extravagant and loud gestures as he recited, "It's not radicalism, it's fundamentalism." Simultaneously another dancer organized rags, containing scribbled prayers, on the floor with redundant motions, reading off their contents. As the words and movements overlapped and blended with increasing intensity, the piece began to resemble the chaos of the human mind.
The other pieces appeared more as memoirs. A male dancer spoke of the ultimate college challenge - choosing a major. Starting off with political science, he worked his way down the list to literary arts, getting a few laughs from the audience in an otherwise serious performance.
Another performer sang fragments of gospel songs as he recounted a day he found his family singing in tears. In an upbeat part of the performance, younger girls described their houses - from their bedrooms and living rooms to flat-screen TVs and stuffed animals - as they step-danced around benches dispersed on the stage.
At times synchronized and at times chaotic, the dances juxtaposed individual prayer and inner struggle with social action and collective solidarity.
The show's attempt to cover a wide range of themes in a short period of time was both its weakness and its strength. With such a strong emphasis on storytelling, the show became slightly melodramatic.
But overall, the performance gripped and inspired viewers, demonstrating that anyone's story is worth being told. As Lerman frequently says, "Everyone can dance."
