“Walking Mad” is choreographed by Johan Inger to Ravel’s Bolero. You know Bolero and now that you’ve been reminded of it you’ve started humming it and you will be humming it til you leave the house to hear Dashing Through the Snow from every street corner, you hear. Bolero starts like a march, like an accompaniment to a Medieval processional straight to hell in a tableau from Hieronymus Bosch and it repeats at ever increasing insistence and volume til it falls apart in blaring discord and exhaustion. It’s usually associated with sexual frenzy. But Johan Inger takes a less lascivious view of the old chestnut. There are pelvises, thighs and groins to relate to and there’s a wall. The dancers interact with a wall. They hit the wall, they are slammed against the wall, they jump at the wall, they hang from the wall, they try to climb the wall; the wall folds, opens and lies down flat and gets walked on. Plenty of frenzy here–sexual, violent and existential.
I saw this performance by Hubbart Street Dance Chicago two months ago. Two months. It was such a knock-out, that I didn’t think I could come up with a drawing associated to it. I watched clips on You Tube of other dance companies performing passages from this piece and kept being overwhelmed. No way could I do justice to this piece, as a concept and as theater. A couple of days ago, on a sunny Sunday afternoon, I just decided to watch the clip again and I started to draw.
The agony I had put myself through for two months was the same as the agony my students experience when they draw from life. It’s the feeling that you can’t do justice to the grandeur and complexity of the model and the model will judge you, implicitly. So, I speak from fresh memory and insight, when I say, that’s not what it’s about. It’s not about the model, it’s about you finding a new perception. Yes, the drawing will refer to the model, but it will not be dominated by the model. The drawing will be something new, will exist in its own right as a new object , never been seen before and full of surprises—most importantly to YOU.
Johan Inger was not paralyzed by the history of Bolero, not by its clichéd currency nor by any torture about what Ravel “really” meant to say. He did not hit a wall. Well, yes, he did and then he put it into the work and worked with it.
We need to get back to this. In the meantime, take a piece of paper and some pencil or marker, whatever is lying around, and draw. Draw something, the celery on the counter, the mug on your desk, the cover you just pulled off your printer.
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Hubbard Street Dance Chicago will be at the Museum of Contemporary Art for two more performances, January 28 and 29. I saw them last night. During the intermission I scribbled in my sketch book. These performances leave me speechless. Best to just let the pen make some marks.
artamaze by Katherine Hilden 