{"id":36,"date":"2012-01-11T16:17:45","date_gmt":"2012-01-11T16:17:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/idiosyncrazypro.wordpress.com\/?p=36"},"modified":"2012-01-16T15:30:05","modified_gmt":"2012-01-16T15:30:05","slug":"bruce-walsh-article-1-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.idiosyncrazy.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/11\/bruce-walsh-article-1-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Bruce Walsh, Article #1"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Hello folks,<\/p>\n

This past summer, journalist Bruce Walsh wrote a short series of articles centered around our work this summer on Private Places<\/em><\/strong>, then called The Flight Attendants Project<\/em>.\u00a0 Below is the first article from Bruce, in which he encounters Jumatatu Poe (the project’s director) and Caleb Levengood (scenic designer) working on the project.<\/p>\n

*also, check out our One-Year Vlog Project<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

_________________________________________________<\/p>\n

Modern Dance for Beginners<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jumatatu Poe traverses the barrier between audience and dance <\/strong><\/p>\n

On a blustery January night, an invited audience packs themselves neatly into the Performance Garage for an in-progress performance of Jumatatu Poe\u2019s FLATLAND 2010<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Twenty minutes into the show eleven dancers come bounding off the stage, darting up the aisles and tiptoeing lengthwise between the rows. Each dancer chooses someone to confront and what follows is indeed confrontational: while forcing eye contact, the dancer trembles with a growing fury, eventually releasing guttural, hiccupping bits of jumbled verbiage at their patron of choice.<\/p>\n

When mulled over after the showing, the tactic makes perfect sense. FLATLAND<\/em> is an exploration of the loss of intimacy in a culture dominated by two-dimensional social media. The moment forces audiences and dancers to confront the visceral, needy, uncomfortable aspects of an individual\u2014the parts of a person we typically keep at arm\u2019s length, a distance made all too easy by digital communication.<\/p>\n

But in the moment\u2014with dancers convulsing in their laps\u00ad\u2014the audience vacillates somewhere between awkward self-consciousness and downright freaked-outedness. \u201cPlease don\u2019t choose me,\u201d a woman murmurs to no one in particular, and stares at her shoes.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a problem Poe is acutely aware of, but he\u2019s not willing to dismiss the experiment. Despite these difficulties, audience interaction illuminates the basic question he poses in nearly all of his work: In what ways does this society obscure the human heart? <\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just something I\u2019m really interested in about contemporary communication. What does it mean to shift our psychology as performers?\u201d says Poe, sitting onstage at the Live Arts Brewery, where he is currently developing a new work, The Flight Attendants Project<\/em>. \u201cWhat does it mean to communicate with an audience member as they\u2019re performing the role of the audience at that time? I want to see those two psychologies\u2014performer and audience\u2014intersect.\u201d<\/p>\n

Attendants<\/em> was inspired by the book The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling<\/em> (University of California Press, 1985) by Arlie Hochschild, a Berkley sociologist. In it, Hochschild argues that the service industry has co-opted the psychological process we naturally use to manage our emotions: waiters, baristas, tour guides, bartenders and\u2014you guessed it\u2014flight attendants, must compartmentalize their feelings and perform<\/em> with a smile.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, a duet version of Attendants<\/em> was presented in Seattle and Minneapolis as part of the SCUBA National Touring Network for Dance. Poe received a $50,000 grant from PEW\/Dance Advance to further develop the piece with his company, idiosynCrazy productions.\u00a0 (This article is part of the journalistic component of the Dance Advance grant.)<\/p>\n

\u201cI was a little worried at first. Audience interaction is a tricky business,\u201d says Caleb Levengood, a New York set designer who has been hired by Poe to collaborate on Attendants<\/em>. \u201cThe danger is that you push the audience to the point where all they\u2019re concerned about is how they look to other people. But when I saw the video of the [original duet] performance, I saw something really fascinating. People were sitting onstage, but they were given a well-defined role, and that allowed them to be comfortable. I suddenly realized, \u2018Oh, they\u2019re passengers on the plane. They\u2019re scenery! I can work with that.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

\u201cNow I\u2019m getting a little obsessed with this,\u201d says Poe, as he carries chairs two-by-two onto the stage at the Live Arts Brewery performance space. I\u2019ve asked him to give me a broad sense of where the audience will sit\u2014at least for the initial in-progress version on July 31. But now he can\u2019t stop adjusting the chairs. Precise placement is important, however, since the choreography will be based on visual cues from the audience: i.e., a patron crosses her legs, triggering a specific movement phrase from the dancers.<\/p>\n

Three long pillars of seats shoot out from center stage like spokes on a wheel. The seats are arranged in pairs, an arrangement akin to a cramped midsize commercial flight.<\/p>\n

Three of Levengood\u2019s set pieces sit center stage: a serving cart and a pair of human-wingspan-length muslin rectangles that suggest a fuselage. \u201cI\u2019ve come to realize that this show is not about designing a set for a play,\u201d says Levengood, sitting in one the simulated passenger aisles. \u201cIt\u2019s about giving the performers added possibilities . . .\u201d<\/p>\n

Before he can finish, Poe has placed himself inside the serving cart and is crawling up the aisle propelled by his hands and arms while his lower body is concealed within the cart. It\u2019s a nightmarish, crablike effect.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never thought you\u2019d do that with it!\u201d says Levengood, with a hooting laugh.<\/p>\n

I invite Poe to sit with us for the interview. He gracefully dislodges himself from the cart and intentionally cuts across the aisle I\u2019m sitting in on his way to the adjacent seat.<\/p>\n

\u201cSee how you\u2019re dancing already?\u201d he says. And I\u2019m suddenly conscious of the way my legs instinctively shift when someone passes me in an aisle of seats.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never been called a dancer before but in this fleeting moment, perhaps I am.<\/p>\n

– Bruce Walsh<\/p>\n

<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

Hello folks, This past summer, journalist Bruce Walsh wrote a short series of articles centered around our work this summer on Private Places, then called The Flight Attendants Project.\u00a0 Below is the first article from Bruce, in which he encounters … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

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