Jillian Sweeney's (un)reality show at University Settlement

Top: Jillian Sweeney dances in her Arrows & Errors
Bottom: from left,
Lindsay Reuter, Tara O'Con, Laurie Berg and Jodi Bender
(photos: Maria Baranova)

Who is "Myrna?" I'm certainly not going to tell, but if you go to see dancer-choreographer Jillian Sweeney's Arrows & Errors at University Settlement, you will not forget her--Myrna, that is. Or, at least, that's what Sweeney tells us, with insistence: You will never forget Myrna. I've got my own idea of who/what Myrna is, and I'm going to hold onto it. Yes, I guess Sweeney's right. Unforgettable.

What are the arts for if not to make something necessary where there was nothing. Even if that something is an illusion. That illusion points to something we could have and gives it a shape we can be energized by, a shape we can use. Why not Myrna, then? It seems artists know that however we manage this, it's okay. They give themselves permission to do it imperfectly, because imperfection works, too. There seems to be human energy in imperfection that just works--especially when people get together.

So, Jodi Bender starts off sitting in a chair on the top edge of an oval of light, an odd kind of spotlight. Her casual aspect is hardly star-like, and it's like the light is aware of her but half-heartedly includes her in its own space. In any case, she's just sitting, serenely gazing out at us. Then she's easily replaced by one or another of Sweeney's other dancers--Laurie Berg, Tara O'Con or Lindsay Reuter. Easy substitutes.

Reuter, seated, introduces a rippling through the body, from tailbone to head, that the others copy, each in her own way. Some get up and carry this sloshing into short walks across the stage from one set of chairs to another. And, by the way, those lines of chairs along either side of the performance space? A few members of the audience sit there, too. So dancers periodically melt into the lineup, becoming almost invisible, or at least unremarkable, and only rise into visibility when it's time for the next task.

I noticed O'Con's and Bender's tiny smirks, completely absent from the other dancers' faces--the blank Reuter, the sullen or quietly skeptical Berg. The differences opened a few dimensions in the work, alternate places where it could live and be received. It seemed to ask me to notice these present but unforced expressions and to watch and see if they might change over time.

Beyond those micro-features, though, were the macro ones--like the way aggressive Sweeney imagined folding chairs--a game of musical chairs under new rules that might find two dancers crowding and pressing into each other and using chairs as supports, props or even costumes. The adaptive play parallels the choreographic process and life itself.

Sweeney goes old school with a collection of old tape recorders and cassette tapes that serve multiple imaginative functions--sonic and visual--throughout the piece. These also evoke the past, our memories of the past, which may or may not still be on Memorex, and they are beat up and outmoded, just like our very human memories. They have energy, though. Just the sight of them can take us places. Like to an old, classic tap dance routine that lights up in some of our heads (the more senior heads, surely) while she's showing us something entirely different.

I'm not sure what it is that makes Sweeney herself so fascinating to watch dance, both borderline amusing and borderline formidable. I'm not sure why, when she carries or drags out a bizarre mix-match of kitschy props (credit Michael DiPietro) they start off somewhat irritating to look at and end up making sense because, you understand, she's got an inner vision of them making sense and they must and they just sort of do or your resistance has been worn down and now you're seeing in them what she's seeing. In any case, as with Myrna, you're suddenly able to see them. Choreography!

Sound consultation: Robert Ramirez
Lighting:Vincent Vigilante
Dramaturgical support: Jeffrey Crano

Arrows & Errors continues with a performances tonight at 8pm and Sunday at 2pm. For information and tickets, click here.

University Settlement
184 Eldridge Street, Manhattan
(map/directions)

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