By Michael Hart
There are myriad unpredictable elements to take into account when performances take place outside a traditional theatrical setting. For Untitled Corner, the site-specific collaboration between Daniel Arsham, Jonah Bokaer and Judith Sanchez Ruiz, one such consideration was the fact that office workers from the 60 stories looming over the space, One Chase Manhattan Plaza, might be viewing the performance. At the same time, for the four lunch-hour performances, there is likely to be the interaction of a steady stream of traffic through the revolving doors at the front of the 1964 Gordon Bunshaft skyscraper.
Untitled Corner is one of four dance events presented by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s ever-adventurous Sitelines series this summer. Part of the expansive River to River Festival, Sitelines encourages artists to explore the possibilities of Downtown spaces. Bokaer, the multi-faceted former Merce Cunningham dancer who has participated in a number of intriguing collaborative presentations over the past year, spoke about the project recently, but took pains to emphasize that it is entirely an equal three-way collaboration. Bokaer and Arsham, an architect, have been collaborating since 2007, while he and Ruiz, a Cuban dancer who performs with Trisha Brown, “have spent just under a year doing a series of studies and improvisations together in the studio.”
“When I was invited by LMCC to participate in Sitelines, because of the architectural and sculptural nature of Daniel’s work, it seemed like a natural fit to invite him to propose something for this context. He has responded resiliently—everything from determining the location of the performance to designing the custom-made work for that space, which is then changed and animated and subtracted as the performance progresses.
“What Daniel has accomplished is both very elaborate and very practical. It is an eight-by-eight-foot solid cube. He has found a way to orchestrate his signature wall erosions in real time, as the performance progresses. It begins as a solid, and we’ve staged an erosion to happen, on a certain surface of the cube. Then the inverse happens on the other side, creating two passageways. That was another observation that Daniel made: In the absence of wings, there has to be some sort of entrance/exit. So he’s created that.”
The 40-minute Untitled Corner examines memory loss, pattern recognition and perceptual faculties as they apply to the human body in public space. “Memory was more a motivator for how we built movement for this production,” Bokaer explains, referring to a 2007 film, Inconsolable Memory, which served as a partial inspiration. Some very personal experiences also informed the direction of the piece. “In 2008, I experienced two, thankfully very brief, episodes of short-term memory loss. That was right when Judith and I began our work together in the studio. She was born in Havana, and she extended these ideas about memory and temporality into cultural memory: How are cultural memories or associations formed? She talked about forgetting Cuba.”
Speaking of the movement itself, which he and Ruiz will perform, Bokaer notes that “our work, rather than being upright and centered on a vertical axis, a lot of it is floor-bound, or completely torqued. Daniel has come up with two simple white lines that extend the rays of the cube and then meet at the corner of the floor. So he’s bisected the space into three parts, forming three triangles. That’s an interesting spatial extension of the cube that he’s made. For our choreography, suddenly there’s this whole other spatial situation to navigate. We’re really dealing with triangles.”
The trio has also collaborated on Replica, a larger-scale project that includes two-channel video, which recently had its premiere in Valencia, Spain, and will receive local performances at The New Museum in December.
Two additional Sitelines ‘09 events will enliven very different Downtown spaces. Nicholas Leichter Dance will present A Space Funk Invasion, Leichter and Monstah Black’s unique take on the future of underground music, culture and fashion in the South Street Seaport’s from July 20 through 30. Look for dancers in pirate-inspired garb to interact with patrons at the area’s outdoor bars and cafes. And when Gabrielle Lansner & Company performs Turning Heads, Frocks in Flight at the South Cove of Battery Park City (Aug. 3 through 13), the wardrobe will be quite different. This “celebration of freedom,” performed by women of many different cultural backgrounds, is inspired by and features designer Caterina Bertolotto’s colorful, fanciful “Dresses of Transformation.”
>Sitelines
For a complete schedule, visit www.lmcc.net/sitelines
