Men and Their Toys! Petite Mort Presents Prop Ballet and Comedy to problematize the representation of women's agency.
Between you, me and the clouds of powder, incessantly
pouffing around the stage throughout Jiří Kylián's 2nd piece in the
inaugural night—the hilarious Sechs Tänze
(Six Dances). I really wanted to like the first two works by Czech
choreographer Jiří Kylián. I wanted to switch off my brain
and enjoy what was clearly meant to be two light-hearted, bawdy, sensual,
mixed-media ballets. And I really would have and I could have, if it
hadn't been for those damned semiotics, my own sense of representation and
its importance--and also, a general feeling of unease that grew as I watched
each piece and my own pro-feminist-male knowledge that the body is more often, than
not, the frontline against sexism--came under attack—my Feminist Spidey-sense was on
overload—to mix, possibly too many metaphors in one sentence.
The first piece, Petite Mort--a
reference to orgasm, considered by the French to be a kind of death--a small
death so to speak--made me hope that we would see something sensual, erotic and
hopefully hard-hitting (no pun intended.) I didn't remember if I'd
reviewed these two pieces before, but I definitely remembered the goofy,
sliding bodices that appear in this series of mixed-media, extended metaphors, and
I definitely remembered Cacti—the concluding piece of the first night of the 51st
season.
The Dance begins innocently
if not innocuously enough, with boys doing exactly what boys do best and that
is playing with their toys. In this case, their "foils,"
"swords," or even "daggers," (to wax linguistic,) which by
any other name have always been referents for a very specific part of the male
anatomy. These boys, flexing their
turgid muscles and shining of sweat—are shown practicing giving tender loving
care to their weapons in what amounts to a very naughty, very masculinist—extended
metaphor.
When women do finally enter
upon the stage--they are rushed in on their backs under cover of a very large
sheet and the very first thing that Kylián has his male dancers do is to step on
them--a very strange introduction indeed--unless, of course the women in these
dances aren’t meant to thought of as humans, but rather as objects, no less so
than the sabers the men are brandishing--an odd positionality--especially for the generally more gender--aware 80's.
Sometimes a text completely deconstructs itself, right before your eyes. Sometimes you sit there, and you ask yourself--did they just do what you thought they did? That couldn't have just happened the way that I/you/we just saw it a second ago, and then you realize that it did exactly just do that, and you sit there in befuddled bewilderment. The first two dances of the 51st season of the Pacific Northwest Ballet is one of those extended moments when everything goes into slow motion, and you watch a choreography that shows such a lack of sensitivity that you can't imagine it as being anything other than its opposite. What follows here is men playing with their swords and manhandling women, who, in this dance are rarely shown to make any movements of their own--on their own. They are held down, choked, groped and otherwise controlled—and not just one instance, throughout both of the first dances. Kylián 's women here are puppets, and heaven forbid that any of them show any agency or make any movements that are not centered around the men of the piece--in fact the only times we see any of these women moving without men nearby, they are being carried along on remote controlled buttresses that parody the female form--and going back to the swords, the only time a woman in Petite is allowed to even handle one of the foils, the whole event lasts seconds and she hands it back to the man, not even attempting to do anything with it. Not anything.
Now, I am not attempting to accuse Jiří Kylián of overt sexism or of actively treating women dancers as objects. I mean, if no other Seattle critics or anyone in the audience other than myself had any problems with the text, perhaps, I am making too much of it—yeah, right! I don’t need anyone to agree with me on these things. What with moments in which the male dancers are swiping their fencing foils at the women’s faces, more female crotch-shots than your garden-variety porn movie and a beginning that makes you think you are going to embark on a smarter plot--it is in the scenes where the ballerinas take center stage, wearing a remote-controlled bodice that I won't describe as not to give away too much, it is in these scenes that the problem really makes itself clear. Kylián is not presenting us with women, but rather these are idealizations of the feminine--here they take the conceptualized, symbolic form of “woman”, they have no legs, they have no identifying marks, they have no individuation--they have no identities.
In Sechs Tänze--which one would be forgiven to read, like Kraftwerk's "Fun, fun, fun on the Autobahn," as being, instead of Six Dances--rather as Sex Dance. A pun that Kylián takes to great effect--this dance is more enjoyable, more raucous and even at times--quite sexy. Whereas Mort was, at times dour and far too serious, even at its silliest. Sechs dares to have fun and even plays with the powder in those silly Mozart-era wigs, filling the air while the dancers’ flitter about. Miles Pertl and James Yoichi Moore cut it up, stretching their acting chops--which is always such a joy to see, and the piece is fun--but the problem remains--the ballerinas are yet again—not much more than props, nearly always, they are attached to the ballerinos from whom they take their cues. This is ultimately a boy's show--to speak in terms of theater--they have all the best lines—or in Disco--they have the best moves. At several points the boys grab the women by their petticoats and when the women react by pulling their dresses away--the boys respond with a "What me worry!?" shrug. Throughout, much is made of their crossdressing moments in the style of farce. It is a fun piece, and it is interesting that this earlier dance actually gives its women a little more agency, a little more personality than the later work. Make of that, what you will.
After these two, I asked myself, how will the next
piece address female agency. Of course, I had forgotten that Cacti does
so by eliminating gender altogether--it simply is not an issue. The
dancers, for the most part here are all objects, just as they are subjects and
foils of the vicissitudes of post-modernity, they are characters, who rather
than being in search of an exit are in search of an answer--not the meaning of
gender--but rather the meaning of life--itself, or at least the meaning of the
cacti. I'm not going to ruin Cacti for you, just to say that is a
succulent piece of madness that touches on the tenuous dance between the
choreographer, the dancers and me--the art critic. And it does it all
with a wry smile on its face. One of my all-time favorite ballets--you
will love it.
Comments
Post a Comment