A Departure: Ralph Lemon’s "(the efflorescence of) Walter"

(Editor's note: I'd like to introduce and welcome Sasha Rodriguez, a graduate of my Spring 2007 Writing on Dance course at Dance Theater Workshop.)

A Departure: Ralph Lemon’s "(the efflorescence of) Walter"

by Sasha Rodriguez, guest contributing writer

On May 11, The Kitchen’s gallery space opened for the first night of Ralph Lemon’s solo art exhibition--(the efflorescence of) Walter--on view through June 23, 2007. Lemon, the renowned choreographer and dancer, recently disbanded his company of ten years to pursue more personal pressing questions. (the efflorescence of) Walter is the most recent creative addition of this personal venture that lured Mr. Lemon from the dance world-proper.

The show itself abounds with Lemon’s original drawings, paintings, video work, and installations, all of which draw inspiration from various African-American imagery and iconography–including James Baldwin, the Civil Rights movement, and Yazoo City, Mississippi’s oldest neighbor, 99-year-old Walter Carter. Installations include original stage-sets from one of his last dance productions, Come Home Charlie Patton: a wallpapered attic-space and rolling screens.

Lemon’s relationship to Walter Carter, however, lies at the heart of the show, the glue, so to speak, holding the multimedia exhibition together, which includes video imagery of Carter performing unique tasks, improvised in partnership with Lemon’s input.

“He’s a performer,” said Lemon in a phone interview, “and a mover–our work is completely collaborative. He and others I’ve worked with in Yazoo City trust this collaboration in a beautiful way…it’s this trust that I keep on watering and nourishing.

And here lies the method of investigation that could no longer be contained within the dance studio. “Geography (a reference to Lemon’s last dance-project which served as a bridge into this latest art show) was about finding new dance languages, and now it’s about finding new forms entirely.”

In pursuit of a form, Lemon has traveled distances–Yazoo City, Mississippi, for example, as well as other international locations – integrating himself within the fabric of a community to mutually explore possibilities. If this sounds vague, it is because on some level, it is.

If the dance studio is all but absent in Lemon’s work, however, choreography must still be acknowledged as a source of inspiration for the way he is choosing to move himself and others out into the world. A choreography of relationships in real-time, perhaps–either way, a most organic and unpredictable medium, from which it is impossible to demand clear-cut explanations. Indeed, the Chelsea exhibit of his collaborations, creative works of art in themselves, also act as evidence of the deeper project happening elsewhere.

“I have a community there,” says Lemon. “I know all the kids, and I have a relationship where I can generate a lot of interesting activity in a really collaborative way.”

“We made a spaceship that’s in the show, for example, which really felt like a prototype for more,” he adds. “And when we get together and share, we don’t even consider ourselves artists – and I want to keep as much of that as possible. ‘So we’re not artists,’ I tell myself. So we’re not making art…then what are we doing? When I work with Walter, he has this incredible vigor…what is this that we’re doing? And we move on without answering this question, without killing it.”

Lemon’s unorthodox behavior seems to be in response to a larger anxiety felt within portions of the modern dance community in New York, an anxiety that may be attributed to the limits of modern dance itself–once a cutting-edge form forged from a new generation’s imagination and particular experience, now may prove restrictive for some.

“It’s not just me,” says Lemon. “It’s the zeitgeist. There seems to be a community of us, although not necessarily a support group – where critics, for example, want more tradition.”

Susan Sontag told us that “Every era has to reinvent the project of spirituality for itself.” Lemon may not be embarking on something that will change the face of art as we know it, but he is definitely following a facet which is leading him to new horizons.

“I took risks,” Lemon begins when asked about his move away from dance.

“It wasn’t just about causing trouble – but risks that positioned me more in the world, literally. I didn’t want to get hurt in the unfamiliar situations I was putting myself in, but to see where my parameters were both bodily and with the larger questions…my relationship to the world. And these kinds of questions were going to take me beyond dance, if I was going to be honest with myself.”

“I wanted to have a conversation about my body interacting with the things that are interesting to me. I’m alive, and there’s a world out there. I don’t want to live a double…I want to integrate.”

Walter is the first non-dancer that Lemon has choreographed, so to speak–“but not the first ‘old body.’” Lemon recalled working with older farmers from the southwest countryside of China. “They were farmer bodies…they were a revelation to work with. That experience was a portal that directed me towards Walter. I had always been thinking about these prosaic bodies versus the trained body.”

The deeper in conversation one gets with Lemon, the more one realizes just to what extent the man is experiencing the world with a cognizing body--experienced by the entire sensory apparatus.

“My body’s dually going through it’s morphing. I don’t see a lot of dance work, but when I do go to the theater, I find it very strange,” begins Lemon. “When I sit and watch dance, I no longer understand it…in a good way. My body finds it very foreign–and I’ve been questioning about looking. Something’s really changed inside of me, and the way that I see things. So when I return to something (dance) that I knew hadn’t changed, it’s a very odd experience. Confusion may be what’s driven my thinking about my own solutions to what this space and genre should be…”

If we take to believe that the body figures as the site of both cultural inscription and individual resistance, one can trace this duality both in the content of Lemon’s show at The Kitchen, as well as in its form. The images of Walter’s body, as a cultural inscription of race, intermingles with his improvised performative gestures which are very much his own. Similarly, Lemon, in a role of curator as much as artist, and within a loose framework of African-American history, is individually resisting the cultural inscription of modern dance from his own body, in this attempt at learning to see, move and feel in more revealing ways.

A narrative approach to choreography and a cult of the beautiful body are still much stronger than choreography understood as discourse. So how does one find funding in this endeavor?

“The showcases are here in New York City, that’s not going to change. But the support system no longer is. I’ve been lucky, at Yale and Crannard, for example. But as far as the funding sources and presenters–they have to be able to talk about this work–and the system is indoctrinated by tradition; things have to sit within the canon, and that’s a big life/art problem.”

“I try not to overly politicize it–I’m not interested in being an outsider. At the end of the day it’s got to be a conversation, and I try to go out in as many ways as I can. What I can’t make on stage, I can write in a book–what I can’t say, I perform in a video. And I’m trying to be respectful to where I’m sharing the questions that I’m asking.”

“I forced my support system in a loving, kind way. I would convene my supporters and convince them, and not fight them. We have to do what we can to get out voice in the system.”

A future step in Lemon’s process will be working with young teenagers from Yazoo City, creating a “virtual institute” to explore solutions to different questions of cultural exchange. “I’m interested in expanding the project beyond Walter’s body.”

When asked as to any future possibility of dance, Lemon recalled a certain dance exercise from his schooling days. “You’re told to stand in a space for as long as it takes. ‘Don’t move until you absolutely have to,” we were told. So you don’t move–until you’ve found a real reason.”

(the efflorescence of) Walter runs through June 23 at The Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street, New York, NY. For hours and additional information, call (212)255-5793, or visit www.thekitchen.org.

(c)2007 Sasha Rodriguez

Sasha Rodriguez is an independent dance researcher and woodworker living in New York City. Specifically interested in the “arts of transition,” she is drawn to the art generated from the recent Argentinian economic crisis, and post-WWII German modern dance.