Charles Isherwood: Feeling Not So Good

Soon after I completed my now rather famous post on Alastair Macaulay, I sensed that a "Part Two" might be waiting in the wings--something about the welcome demise of the Great Man Theory and Practice of Criticism in this age of new media. However, writing that follow-up never became a serious project. Over the past two weeks, I've mainly dealt with the aftermath of writing about Macaulay.

To the extent that anything related to contemporary dance in New York can go viral, my calling out of Macaulay has spread all over the physical and virtual dance community. I've received numerous supportive comments on InfiniteBody and Facebook. People have emailed me privately in celebration of the post. They have emailed the link to friends and colleagues and posted it on their own blogs and Facebook pages. Now when I go to dance events, people thank me for having the guts to take on a powerful critic and news outlet.

Grateful for this outpouring of respect and support, I've been reminding everyone to find a way to take action. Be part of the solution. All of that released energy must be channeled into effective community strategies.

Meanwhile, another Times man was gearing up for battle. Theater critic Charles Isherwood suddenly decided that it was time to share his "conflicted reactions" to Bill T. Jones's musical Fela!

Fela! premiered in 2008 Off Broadway at 37 Arts Theater, winning raves from Times critic Ben Brantley, among others. It moved to Broadway last year. But Isherwood has remained silent, all this time, about his misgivings.

Burying the point of his essay--Feeling Unsettled at a Feel-Good Show--way below references to David Mamet's Race and Harry Reid's accurate, if inelegant, remarks about Obama, Isherwood eventually gets around to declaring that he enjoyed Fela! but it left him with "lingering questions about the depiction of the African milieu it evoked." As a white man, though, he'd thought it best to keep these misgivings to himself rather than risk saying that the highly successful production "tilted a little too closely towards minstrelsy."

Next, Isherwood provides a two-sentence definition and (inaccurate) history of the minstrel show in America. He takes pains to remind us that minstrelsy "disseminated ugly racial stereotypes." The paragraph continues, explaining the genesis of Fela! in the remarkable career of the late Fela Anikulapo–Kuti, the outspoken Nigerian singer/musician who created Afrobeat. The show--presented in concert form--is, in the critic's own words, "vibrant, exciting and fabulously performed."

Yes, indeed it is.

But now Isherwood arrives at his problem:

"...there are really no characters, aside from Fela Kuti himself." And though the critic goes on to name two actual characters--Fela's mother and an American woman activist--he clearly does not deem these two women sufficiently built out. Why can't they contribute to what should have been a far more conventionally conceived production? He expects "sustained dialogue" and "clearly defined roles to play." Most of all, he's bothered by all of those "hip-wriggling riffs on African dance."

This delicate concern--which continues to bother Isherwood throughout the piece--wouldn't pass the laugh test with anyone familiar with Fela's exuberant marathon performances. I never had the privilege of seeing the man perform live, although I have seen his son, Femi Kuti, who took up Fela's Afrobeat mantle as well as his role as emperor of the stage, deploying a mighty army of "hip-wriggling" African women. Jones and co-writer Jim Lewis, telling Fela's story, have merely faithfully recreated what Fela himself created.

On a roll, and warming to his once intimidating subject, Isherwood complains that the women are "largely festive window dressing." They are "attired in eye-catching, vibrantly colored, flesh-baring ensembles." They "strut around the stage and the theater looking exotic, imperious and sexy. So too do the male members of the ensemble, who also bare a lot of flesh but have little to do other than sing and dance."

"Hence my discomfort," he continues, now sternly instructing anyone unfamiliar with the festishization of the Black body.

"The presentation of African culture as a feast of exotic pageantry has the potential, at least, to reinforce stereotypes of African people as primitive and unsophisticated, albeit endowed with astounding aptitudes for song and dance." Later he writes that "the way the dancers weave in and out of the audience repeatedly seems ingratiating, a sort of seduction that almost sexualizes the performers."

These oddly forced objections lead me to suspect that primitive, exotic lack of sophistication lies in the eye of the critical beholder. How dare these dancers, bringing their “astounding” and “frolicking” bodies so close, ignore the sacred fourth wall--the protective barrier that, Isherwood says, gives the audience "some intellectual perspective."

It seems to me that not only has Isherwood had little or no exposure to the Fela aesthetic, he's been sheltered from much traditional African culture, which is gloriously colorful and undeniably sensual--although not necessarily sexual in intent--without the Western Christian overlay of judgment and shame. And--given his call for "individual moments" and "individual voices"--he not only ignores what Fela's shows were like but he also misses the point that traditional African cultures privilege inclusive, communal participation over isolated, spotlit expressiveness. Perhaps an annual trip to Brooklyn's far less stressful Dance Africa fest might eventually ease this critic out of his discomfort.

I'm not certain who "might not pick up on the fact" that these women represent Fela's wives--Isherwood's next worry. Would it be someone who knows nothing about Fela's life and, perhaps, failed to peruse the play's biographical material?

Isherwood is so sure that he'd feel on safer ground around all of this Black sensuality if Fela!'s sociopolitical narrative was spelled out in big, neon letters that he overlooks the fact that the man's defiant politics and grievous experiences are right there--in Fela's songs and in the play's unfolding. Isherwood needs to stop fretting about how close certain wrigglng hips are getting to him and pay better attention. Jones and Lewis have brought in as much stark material as popular theater will allow in what is, after all, a concert musical. The balance works.

Fela! is not telling the stories that Lynn Nottage told in Ruined or Danai Gurira told in Eclipsed which, Isherwood says, "explore the hard experience of African women by depicting fully developed lives caught in trying, sometimes terrible circumstances." But wait, why don't we take a count of all the Hollywood, Broadway and television stories about white women that skip over harsh reality in favor of romance or sex or lightweight comedy?

In its final three paragraphs, Isherwood's essay runs off the rails. First, he wonders if he'd feel any discomfort if he were "attending an African dance recital at Dance Theater Workshop." African dance at Dance Theater Workshop? I might not feel discomfort, but I'd feel amazement. African dance--let alone something labeled a "recital"--is not exactly DTW fare. It sounds as if he attends “downtown” dance as often as Macaulay does.

He next beats up on the Broadway production for being surrounded by $20 programs and T-shirts. (Hello! It's Broadway!) He takes exception to the decor--"the theater is bedecked in vibrantly colored panels of corrugated metal and African gewgaws"--which seems aimed at recreating, as best as would be possible, the feeling of The Shrine, Fela's nightclub. Should it look, instead, like a straight-up Broadway theater?

At this point, Isherwood gazes around--metaphorically speaking--and realizes the audience is "largely white, middle aged and middle class." (Hello! It's Broadway!) What must they be thinking? "Many will have had little exposure to African culture and some may come away with the impression that partying played a larger role in the lives of the people surrounding Fela than the grim political battles and the economic hardship...."

Leaving aside the strong possibility that Isherwood is projecting--well, let's not leave that too far to the side--let's give some credit to the audience for intelligence and the possibility that they might be able to detect a measure of complexity in the show or might actually have read the program notes.

Finally, Isherwood ends his critique with a curious "to be sure" paragraph that contradicts everything he has tried to establish in his previous argument and concludes with him throwing up his hands and basically urging people to go see Fela! and make up their own minds.

Here the critic abruptly acknowledges the inclusion of "grim, harrowing detail," the death of Fela's mother, the "horrific abuse of his wives during a government raid on his compound." He credits the co-writers for doing their best "to include as much pertinent history as the concept for the show can comfortably allow."

"The signal truth of Fela Kuti's life is that his music was the vehicle for his political activism; the two cannot be separated."

Bingo!

I guess the whole thing comes down to all that African hip-wriggling. A little too much and way too close.

Other than that, one has to ask Isherwood that old question, "Was this trip necessary?"#