Wartime Politics – Old and New – Hit the Dance Floor
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Fifteen dancers raced across the floor, nearly colliding with one another, in a studio in Dance New Amsterdam late last month. “Be careful!” choreographer David Dorfman shouted, watching them from the sidelines as Jonathan Bepler’s cacophonous score reached a crescendo. The dancers fell to the floor, flinging their arms and legs into the air, as if blasted by gunfire. “Now!” one dancer screamed repeatedly, as they rose shakily to their feet, leaning into one another for support.
Mr. Dorfman has never shied away from controversial subjects, but “underground,” which will be given its New York premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on November 14 is perhaps more provocative than anything he has previously choreographed. The work asks, through movement and words, whether violence is ever justifiable.
“Underground,” which had its world premiere last June at the American Dance Festival in Durham, N.C., grew out of questions Mr. Dorfman found himself asking. “I wondered if the frame through which we observe activism is more important than the act itself,” he said, stretching in the hallway along with his exhausted dancers between rehearsals. “Is terrorism to one culture heroism to another?”
As a teenager growing up in Chicago in the 1960s, Mr. Dorfman felt tremendous admiration for political activist groups like the Weather Underground and the Students for a Democratic Society, groups that engaged in anti-war activities — from staging nonviolent protests to setting off bombs in buildings they viewed as representative of the American government. Then, last year, Mr. Dorfman saw the documentary “Weather Underground” on PBS. “It brought memories graphically and powerfully to the present,” he said. Mr. Dorfman felt “an accompanying nudge to make a dance that ties that period to our current politically volatile one.”
He began developing “underground” at the Bates College Arts Festival in Maine during the summer of 2005. He tried various approaches in order to tell “the dancers’ and my reaction to their legacy, their actions,” he said. Out of those experiments evolved the concept of using a reporter figure to question members of the group. A dancer in Mr. Dorfman’s company, Karl Rogers, with his background in theater, turned out to be a natural in the role. Within the piece, the reporter must answer as well as ask questions, one of which comes from a role played by dancer Jen Nugent, who has been a member of Mr. Dorfman’s company for eight years.
“What should I do?” she asks in the piece, as images of protesters appear on a screen behind her, and other dancers scramble and lunge across the floor, as if looking for direction or help from someone. “I don’t know how to be,” she says later, expressing feelings of frustration and inadequacy.
“It’s odd for me,” Ms. Nugent says. “On the outside, I’m not very political. But I found out — through this role — that that I might be on the inside.”
When Mr. Dorfman began developing the piece at Bates College, its subject matter set off strong reactions among the dancers. When dancer Whitney Tucker joined the Bates troupe, she was on the verge of quitting her dance career.”I felt I had to do something more for society,” Ms. Tucker said. “I come from an activist family, and dance didn’t seem to me a good enough way to make a difference. But with this piece, David showed me that it could be. He asks you to really put your body and soul on the line.” Ms. Tucker said her political ideals at times created tension within the troupe. “I lean toward thinking violence is called for sometimes to change drastically wrong things in society. But others here don’t agree with me. For a period of time, it caused problems.”
To help dancers sort out their conflicting responses to the work, co-director Alex Timbers, a cofounder of the experimental theater group Les Freres Corbusier, introduced techniques from theater to the development of the dance.
“The dancers didn’t know who they were in the piece,” Mr. Timbers said. “They didn’t know whether to be specific activists from the past or themselves or a combination of both.” Mr. Timbers instructed the dancers to describe the characters played by themselves and their fellow dancers. The dancers then exchanged the descriptions. “It got them thinking more deeply about the characters,” Mr. Timbers said. “It was disturbing at first. But afterward, they stepped up to the plate and really took ownership of their material.”
While “underground” has enjoyed warm reception at is its previous performances, the work’s intensity has also prompted angry outbursts. According to Mr. Dorfman, a man at the Durham performance criticized him for what he imagined was his support of violence. In San Francisco, another spectator asked Mr. Dorfman,”What should I do? Go out and break things?”
Mr. Dorfman, though, maintains he has no desire to incite violence or destruction. “I’m paying homage to the Weather Underground,” he said, “not saying,‘Go out and do the same thing.'”
Indeed, Mr. Dorfman said he was initially hesitant about contacting any of the Weather Underground members. Recently, though, three of them — Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayer, and Jeff Jones — approached him, saying they had heard of his project and wanted to attend a performance. (Messrs. Dohrn and Jones are also scheduled to contribute with Mr. Dorfman to post-performance discussions open to audience members.) “I’m extremely nervous about their reaction,” Mr. Dorfman said of the former Weather Underground members. But, he added, “I’m ecstatic about being able to spend some time with people who I believe made a difference. It’s something deep down I’ve wanted to happen all along.”
Begins November 14 (BAM Harvey Theater,30 Lafayette Ave.,Brooklyn,718-636-4100).