Hot Feet, Bugs & Birds

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The New York Sun

While watching outdoor performing arts is a pleasure for audiences, it doesn’t always come easy for those on (or behind) the stage. As Lincoln Center Out of Doors opens, technicians, choreographers, and dancers have to make adjustments, but there are rewards for dancing under the sky, too.

“You draw such a disparate audience,” choreographer Garth Fagan said. His company will perform a program of his energetic works, often inspired by Caribbean and jazz rhythms, on August 25 and 26.

“You get people who usually don’t pay for dance concerts, people who might just be in the park when it happens,” he said. “There’s no other way to reach so many people unfamiliar with dance at one time. With all eyes glued on you, you get the wonderful feeling that you are calming the city.”

Lincoln Center Out of Doors producer Adam Macks oversees two of the festival’s main venues, the Damrosch Park Bandshell and Josie Robertson Plaza. “The main thing we worry about are the elements,” he said. “It might be 95 to 100 degrees. With the sun on the bandshell until 1:00 or 2:00 p.m., I tell them to not even try to dance barefoot or they’ll burn their feet, even by nightfall. Even though they wear shoes we’ve sometimes had to bring buckets of ice and ice water and smear it on stage to cool it.”

Wind, rain, and dew can also cause problems. “Large sets are a bad idea,” he said. “They can blow right off the stage or into the shell or pit. If it rains, we try to dry off the stage when it stops.”

Like most outdoor venues, the Damrosch Park Bandshell has only rudimentary lighting, no curtain, and very narrow wings. “There’s basically nowhere for dancers to hide when they are offstage,” Mr. Macks said.

The Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heel Performance Group and Lula Washington Dance Theatre of Los Angeles will perform on a double bill August 10. Mr. Wilson confessed to some nervousness about an outdoor performance of his “The Tale: Npinpee Nckutchie and the Tail of the Golden Dek,” which draws on movement inspired by the blues and American slave cultures.

“You have to be ready for anything,” he said. “People walk in and out. A homeless man might jump onstage. Mosquitoes could fly into the light or your mouth. You don’t have the same distance from the audience. It’s hard not to watch people wandering around, and get caught up in their reactions.”

In order to make his dance clearer for this performance, Mr. Wilson has enlarged some of the movement so it can be more easily seen. He also altered the dancers’ exits and entrances because they cannot cross backstage easily. “I’m also trying to make little sections work on their own,” he said. “In case someone only catches a short segment, they should be able to get something out of it.”

Simply being outside tests the adaptability of the dancers. There are rarely adequate dressing room facilities, and toilets can be quite a distance from the performance space. Ms. Washington, whose Los Angeles-based company has been acclaimed for its jazzy, Afro-Caribbean influenced dances about African-American life, goes over the details with her members beforehand. “I get the dimensions of the space,” she said, “and then tailor the works to it. I mention bugs and heat and noise.They have to stay very focused. But it’s worth it, especially at Lincoln Center.”

The choreographers and dancers Terry Dean Bartlett and Katie Workum, cocurators of “Dance Off! Happy Hour” on August 17, gave an advisory to the artists in the line-up. “We told them no character or script-driven material,” said Mr. Bartlett, who is a member of the Streb Extreme Action company. “No dialogue and no quiet, introspective pieces. Those things just won’t fly in a big outdoor space. It’s good if they’re big, flashy, and fast.”

In Mr. Bartlett and Ms. Workum’s dance, she plays the cello while he performs for her in a tuxedo. “It’s sort of like an organ grinder with his monkey, and I’m the monkey,” he said. “Among the things I do are five back-flips in a row.When we do it in a theater, I almost kiss her at the end.That’s too subtle for outside, so I’ll probably kiss her.”

Few companies have as much experience performing outdoors as the Martha Graham Dance Company, which regularly tours the European summer arts festivals, and performs at Lincoln Center on August 16. “It’s so freeing,” artistic director Janet Eilber said. “Martha’s works are so organic, so connected to the world that they fit right in outside.”

Graham dancer David Zurak likes nothing better than performing her pieces in the open air. “I love being in the fresh air, seeing the sky, even having a stray animal fly by,” he said. “When we performed in an ancient Roman space in Italy, with only the rocks lit around us, it was as if we blended into the landscape.”

But the heat was a major factor. “I remember it being so hot that we rehearsed in running shoes, wearing sunglasses and carrying umbrellas,” Mr. Zurak said. “Another time, a grasshopper hopped on stage during a performance. None of us wanted to crush it, and it seemed to choreograph its jumps around us, and survived. If there’s any disadvantage in performing outdoors, it’s that occasionally I miss a few counts looking at the moon.”

Until August 27 (Lincoln Center, 212-546-2656, all performances are free).


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