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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In the fog with "Vulture-Wally"

Dance artist Jillian Sweeney and director/writer Jeffrey Cranor strike just the right balance between earnest mysteriousness and kickass satire in their new work, Vulture-Wally, a presentation of Incubator Arts Project's New Performance Series at St. Mark's Church. As described by Sweeney, the 65-minute, immersive Vulture-Wally

uses spoken word, song, and dialog to create a long-form poem about who owns our bodies and who authors our stories. Based on the 19th century Austrian Alps folk novel Geier-Wally, the dance dissects the melodramatic hero(ine) by examining individual body parts and pairing the movement with deconstructed classic film scores.

Set in IAP's small, black box theater--upstairs from the more familiar Danspace Project home in the church's sanctuary--the work unfolds in a dimly-lit space engulfed in artificial fog.* Faint lines of light often demarcate areas of new action, guiding the circulating audience members to position themselves out of the way of developing scenes. People sometimes perch on risers that extend across one wall but, now and again, watchers have to make way for dancers.

In fact, Vulture-Wally opens with Sweeney's dancers--Siobhan Burke, Lydia Chrisman and Tara Willis--dramatically gesturing as they tread back and forth, in strained and grave slow motion, across those risers in the mist and Vincent Vigilante's filtered light. Vaguely romantic music plays faintly in the background. Sweeney, moving even more sparingly, occupies a separate box of light in a corner of the theater, and we must deliberately lose sight of the severe trio to turn around and catch up on whatever she's doing. The "chapters" of the piece unfold a story of either conforming to authority or striking off on one's own. Hell is indeed other people who wield cosmetic brushes or singalong hymns.

Cranor's clever text and the excellent performance by Sweeney and company make a worthwhile event of this smart, accomplished work.

*One important note of caution: If you have respiratory allergies, a cold or asthma, the ever-present fog might prove challenging. It's not the same as watching fake fog billow across the stage of a big theater at the normal, safer remove. You're all up in it for a full hour. I'm still struggling this morning with congested nasal passages and a severely irritated throat. For information on adverse health effects of fog or smoke machines, see here.

Vulture-Wally continues this evening through Sunday with performances at 8pm. For tickets, click here.

Incubator Arts Project
St. Marks Church-in-the-Bowery
131 East 10th Street at Second Avenue, 2nd Floor, Manhattan
(directions)

Sweeney: Could be

In This could be it, choreographer-soloist Jillian Sweeney, gives herself a tough assignment. She must fill a fairly unforgiving space--The Chocolate Factory, modest in size, intimate for the audience and raw in aspect--with the stuff of her inner, psychic life. She must also fill an hour and hold it down with the force of her personality. I'm not convinced that she's totally there yet--a compelling performer who can, indeed, hold down an hour and keep it from feeling too lengthy and self-indulgent--but I admire her poise and moxie.

This solo evening--concluding its run tomorrow--hinges on the artist's apparent predisposition to spontaneously go out of body. Through various creative means, it tells of her history with this phenomenon. Now, consider that we're talking about a dancer. The notion of a dancer not being all that tightly wedded to her actual physical form is pretty interesting, and Sweeney's ambitious approach offers a variety of ways to contemplate this state of affairs.

Sweeney's a pleasant, wholesome-looking young woman who starts her show by striking glamour-girl poses, hip jutting in a ridiculous fashion--not how you'd normally think of her. So, immediately, she's showing something of a disconnection, a picture of unreality. Her poses become tense, and her tiny moves quiver as if she's in a silent movie. She's also subject to the psychological lashings of a disembodied voice--her own, recorded--that meets her gentle equivocations with a demand that she "Say it!" and issues instructions, some of them contradictory. I was tickled when Sweeney finally--finally!--figured out that she could simultaneously "Go to the shaft!" and "Stay down!" if she just rolled the hell over to that shaftway!

That unrelenting Voice can be a bit of hoot. For those of you who will go tonight or tomorrow, I won't spoil it for you by revealing my favorite moment. At the risk of sounding like The Voice that she's already got inside her artist's head, I'd like to see her push that wit harder and Say It! Whatever it is, just Say It!

This could be it unfolds, with fine support for Sweeney, in a space created by Brian Rogers (sound and video) and Chloë Z. Brown (lighting). Sweeney collaborated with her director Jeffrey Cranor on the writing and set (which consists of her storytelling props) and with Mary McKenzie on the costumes.

See This could be it tonight or Saturday night at The Chocolate Factory, 8pm. Information, directions and tickets here.