SITI: "Okay. That feels good to me."

In her Director's Note, Anne Bogart wonders how SITI Company's new DTW production of bobrauschenbergamerica--a work premiered in the innocent American spring of 2001--will resonate with today's audiences. Let me take a stab: We are now either too scarred and scared--and cynical--for this or we are greatly in need of its delirious good spirits. Actually, I can't decide which way to go on this question, but I can tell you that I, for one, love this show.

bobrauschenbergamerica works like one of Raushenberg's "combines" of homely things. It makes something magic(k)al of the mess. In its wild and basically good-natured juxtapositions, it keeps prodding you to reconcile what's artificial with what's natural or sincere. No, you don't get to choose.

It doesn't take diversity, of any kind, seriously in any dreary kind of way but rather turns the seriousness of social diversity into the exuberance of a neighborly smorgasbord, mercilessly dragging you to the table. If you're still kicking and screaming--you're overthinking, perhaps, why the whole cast is suddenly doing the Electric Slide or, at another moment, square dancing--this is a vaudevillian show that shoves pop music and fried chicken at you until you're helpless and giggling because, basically, it knows who you are. You're an American. This stuff--all of it--is your DNA.

And that's the way it should be--America, a delicious mess, a raucous work-in-progress. This visually-festive production and playwright Charles L. Mee spliced material argue that there's nothing we need to fix about that--and keep that in mind, Arizona. As the final words go, "Okay. That feels good to me."

Bogart's ensemble is, overall, great. But pay particular attention to performances by Ellen Lauren (Susan, a white woman in a racially-mixed couple rocked by fairly ordinary challenges) and Leon Ingulsrud (darkly sculpted by Brian H Scott's lighting and his own physical discipline, as he delivers his decreasingly funny chicken jokes).

bobrauschenbergamerica continues at Dance Theater Workshop through May 16. Click here for complete schedule information and ticketing.

Anne Bogart: the effort of balance

In connection with attending last night's conversation among director Anne Bogart, playwright Charles L. Mee, Jr. and other members of Bogart's SITI Company at Dance Theater Workshop, I discovered Bogart's interesting blog. Here's some of wonderful ruminating...

Instinct vs. Impulse
by Anne Bogart, SEE (SITI Extended Ensemble), February 2010

Last in the SITI Company Mondays@DTW series:

March 8 (7pm) SITI's devised creations--the why, what and how. Tickets: $10. Call 212-924-0077 or click here.

And coming up at The Joyce in June: 

American Document, by visionary choreographer Martha Graham, premiered during the summer of 1938. Her most theatrical ballet at the time of its creation, Graham’s piece incorporated vaudevillian structures, folk rhythms, and spoken text to examine Americana and the continual conflict between the rights of the individual and society. Although there is no complete record of Graham’s first
popular work, the Martha Graham Dance Company has enlisted director Anne Bogart, playwright Charles L. Mee Jr. and SITI Company to reinvent American Document using filmed excerpts, written descriptions and Graham’s handwritten notes. This stirring new theatrical work will feature a groundbreaking collaboration between SITI Company actors and Martha Graham Company dancers. American Document reflects our current cultural concerns by answering the same questions Martha Graham asked over seventy years ago: What is an American? And, what is America?

American Document (World Premiere)
June 8-13
The Joyce Theater
175 8th Avenue (19th Street), Manhattan
Box office at 212-242-0800 or purchase online