DEBORAH HAY
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Hay’s method for 30 years has been to find the simplest, most emotionally rooted movements. She now uses mantras to create a kind of meditative dancing; the mantra she used in her Chicago workshop was “All 53 trillion cells in my body are saying yes and no at the same time.” She encourages a roomful of people to move in any way they want while remaining mindful of the mantra. During the workshop I had the exhilarating experience of feeling completely alive–serious adult intentions melted away, and I felt a child’s emotional immediacy again.
Hay’s concert was more controversial. Her solo Lamb at the Altar violates almost every aesthetic principle I’ve learned. It never makes much sense, it meanders terribly, it’s excessive, trite, and even boring at times, it doesn’t have many kinetic thrills, and it’s self-involved. But it does resonate emotionally because Hay is completely present at every moment. And she devises new movements that express emotional states quite precisely.
Each dancer has a solo section in which the other dancers act as a chorus. I was struck by the emotional insight of each section: Cynthia Reid’s anger and the ways the other dancers slip past it; Michele Marie White’s fearful negotiation of a hostile field of staring dancers; Leif Tellman’s tentative friend making; Marianne Kim’s wonderful strange howling; Bob Eisen’s aerobic game of follow-the-leader; Lezlee Crawford’s off-kilter mechanical toy that keeps to itself; Susan Bradford’s swirling connections with the other women; Sylvia Jania’s and Karen Lurie’s desire to be absorbed by the crowd; Ron Bieganski’s outrageous, funny version of a soft-shoe routine. Each section is filled with quirky, raw movement and loose, unself-conscious performance. The dance is marred, though, by a long introductory section in which nothing happens.
