the spectacle and the score
Yoshiko Chuma and the School of Hard Knocks at Lent Space


I had the privilege of working for Yoshiko Chuma during the creation of her latest piece, A-C-E One, a site-specific performance commissioned by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's SITELINES Festival and the River to River Festival. The piece was presented this week at Lent Space, a public park that is located in Hudson Square (at the intersection of Canal, Grand and 6th Avenue). Having worked very closely as the production assistant, rehearsal assistant and a performer (during the rehearsal process but not during the show), my thoughts on the actual piece are certainly a bit introspective. Inevitably, over the course of the process, I developed an interpretation of the dance that I would like to share here at the independent movershaker. 
 
A-C-E One  was a forty minute performance installation that used the space a malleable theater. The action started and developed around a black limousine which inches along the space, both marking time and serving as a moving-backstage space for the dancers and their props. The dance-action is strongly rooted in task-based movement. Five dancers pull string attached to the fence slowly across the length of the space. The string to me was a powerful symbol, seeming as a time line and a spatial divider. The colors of the strings (yellow and blue) made the horticultural installation, America's Possession and Dispossesion, an art piece that from an aerial view says, A M E R I C A, through the placement of plants, stand out vibrantly.

The piece develops by dancers and props exiting and returning to the limo. As the score develops, tarp is taken out, shredded paper is manipulated, and wine is thrown from wine glasses held by each dancer. The shred, which is contained in plastic bags and eventually torn, thrown and danced with by dancers, Ursula Eagly and Aaron Mattocks, metaphorically emulates the trash that is abound in New York City, the waste of corporate America (which surrounds the oasis-like Lent Space), and confetti-- which embodies the spectacle of parades, success, celebration, was tossed around in a heavy, burdensome manner. 


The live music, composed by John King, featuring French horns and percussion, builds the movement along so that the piece does not lose one's attention. From the audience, I was completely entranced as the music grew and Yoshiko inched across the space in a striking duet with the limo. She, a petite woman in pink, beckoned and directed the limo. The limo was an encroaching force-- this massive creature that at any moment could crush her but did not. Actually, the limo can symbolize many things. It can be seen as a threatening force, inhibiting a natural space, it can symbolize the current atmosphere of New York City-- the very wealthy and the very poor (outside of Lent Space, in an area covered with tall, impersonal buildings-- there is an awful lingering stench of garbage and I passed many homeless or impoverished people during the rehearsal and performance process) co-existing in an artificial oasis. 


In a rather thin review in The New York Times, Gia Kourlas wrote that the problem with the limo as a centerpiece is that it resonates as a symbol of Prom in 2010. I would say that Chuma incorporated many props and elements that can be simple and complex simultaneously. Sure, you can see prom from a black stretch limo, but I saw death (the black limo often functions for funerals), a threatning creature that can be potentially deadly, a comedic clown car (as the dancers often came out with strange but deliberate objects- a clock, metronome, buckets of water, dusty jackets). 


The performance piece was viewed by many people over the course of four performances, all non-ticketed and free to the public. Many people watched from the sidewalks, the streets, the bench's of Lent Space. Afterwards a woman noted that, while she may not respond to the aesthetic of Chuma's work, she felt the space was transformed by the piece. The space was wider, the plants were greener, and it became increasingly clear that we are constantly in transition-- the outdoor space (or any space) is always changing.

-m

Here is the NY Times Review: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/09/arts/dance/09chuma.html?ref=dance