Family life, fantasy life: Tamar Rogoff at La MaMa

Cover of Cherry Ames, Student Nurse (1943),
the first volume in Helen Wells's popular novel series for girls.
(from Collection of the Museum of Health Care)

Core cast members of Grand Rounds, a world premiere by Tamar Rogoff
Center: Cadence Rotarius
At left: Morgan Sullivan, Glen Heroy, Cyndy Gilbertson
At right: Jake Szczypek and Emily Pope
(photo: Asya Danilova)

In the 1950s world of Grand Rounds, a 10-year-old inspired by the adventures of Cherry Ames, nurse and amateur sleuth, turns her perceptive gaze on the rituals of family life. What goes on behind closed doors and on the radio is fodder for her scientific reckonings. Rogoff invites audiences to sit bedsides to share the intimacy that propels her protagonist on a rescue mission of her own. 

-- from publicity for Grand Rounds

Core cast in rehearsal for Grand Rounds
(photo: Asya Danilova)

"They are the greatest cast I've ever worked with," said choreographer/director Tamar Rogoff after her world premiere of Grand Rounds at La MaMa's Ellen Stewart Theatre.

Well, they are certainly an interesting cast with individual backgrounds in everything from clowning for the Big Apple Circus to living with Parkinson's Disease. Working with all kinds of folks--even those without training in performance--is nothing new for the adventurous Rogoff. But while the unusual diversity of this cast, as well as their individual skills and all-in commitment, gives the work strength, none of that feels like enough. Even the expansive staging falls short of moving Grand Rounds from a curiosity to a consequential work of art.

Before seeing the show, I checked up on its title:

Medical Definition of grand rounds:  rounds involving the formal presentation by an expert of a clinical issue sometimes in the presence of selected patients (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

Grand rounds: A formal meeting at which physicians discuss the clinical case of one or more patients. Grand rounds originated as part of residency training wherein new information was taught and clinical reasoning skills were enhanced. Grand rounds today are an integral component of medical education. They present clinical problems in medicine by focusing on current or interesting cases. They are also sometimes utilized for dissemination of new research information. (MedicineNet)

You could say Rogoff brings her "patients" 'round to us--though, instead of hospital beds, we get a close-up view of beds in a family's home. The beds suggest a modest home and the relationships within.

Rogoff grew up the daughter of a doctor, and her research and work have led her to an understanding of the dual nature of her mission as an artist--transformation and healing. In this new work, she foregrounds a child--a stand-in for herself, one would assume--whose attraction to the Cherry Ames books, popular from the 1940s through the 1960s, leads her to examine family life with the avidity of a smart young sleuth. The happenings here are her "grand rounds," too.

To start, some of the audience members are made to sit on cardboard boxes for sitting shiva in traditional discomfort--clever, that--positioned around the performance space so that we face one of several makeshift beds. The characters--a young girl, her parents, her grandparents--will shift from bed to bed. But, at first, we don't know that. So, as dancers in front of you perform a long series of movements in and around a bed, you might find your interest drifting away to catch what's happening elsewhere, particularly when the noise over there distracts you.

But when I saw Grand Rounds last night, we only learned from Rogoff's Q&A that she had wanted each of us to stay focused on the bed directly in front of us. Since these initial performances rotate among the beds and repeat, she explained, we eventually get to see everything that each character does--the young soldier/brother handily slipping right beneath his bed and repeatedly lifting it like a set of weights, the grandparents coyly approaching each other and dancing to swing music, the parents (superb Emily Pope and Jake Szczypek) in stylized and tense, faintly erotic conflict.

So, are we mourners? Are we doctors on grand rounds? Or are we--each of us--that little blonde girl who shows up everywhere to eye, or maybe imagine, influence, remember--what happens in each instance? The answer could be any or all of these things, but the problem, as I see it, is that it ultimately does not matter. Intimations of mortality--for instance, in the doleful soundscore, in the eventually overused shiva boxes--lead to events too predictable, and to drawn out, to land with emotional force.

And what of the rest of the staging, a sort-of fantasy placed at a remote distance from all of us and perched high on the theater's usual seating risers, where hospital scenes with cutesy doctors, student nurses and a patient could have been excerpted from a Broadway musical?

Neither here nor there: I had some Cherry Ames books when I was a child. I don't remember a thing about them except having once thought, "Why don't I have Nancy Drew books like everybody else?"  This slight resentment that might or might not have been justified. I have no idea. We can talk, another time, about how my seamstress mother and aunt chose to adorn me relative to what every other girl was wearing at the time.

Grand Rounds continues through May 14, Wednesday to Saturday at 7pm; Sunday at 4pm.  For information and tickets, click here.

La Mama (Ellen Stewart Theatre)
66 East 4th Street (between 1st and 2nd Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)


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Vito Acconci, 77

Vito Acconci, Performance Artist and Uncommon Architect, Dies at 77
by Randy Kennedy, The New York Times, April 28, 2017

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Martha Lavey, 60

Martha Lavey, a Leading Lady of Chicago Theater, Dies at 60
by William Grimes, The New York Times, April 27, 2017

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Jonathan Demme, 73

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by Yohana Desta, Vanity Fair, April 26, 2017

Jonathan Demme, Oscar-Winning Director, Is Dead at 73
by Bruce Weber, The New York Times, April 26, 2017

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Robert M. Pirsig, 88

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by Paul Vitello, The New York Times, April 24, 2017

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Lea Marshall: Who--and what--reinvigorates ballet?

Dance writer and educator Lea Marshall
(photo: courtesy of Lea Marshall)

Guest contributor Lea Marshall responds to New York Times dance writer Roslyn Sulcas's conversation with three contemporary ballet choreographers--Justin Peck, Alexei Ratmansky and Christopher Wheeldon (April 20, 2017).

*****

Open Letter to The New York Times

on the Memorable Occasion of 

“A Conversation With Three Choreographers 

Who Are Reinvigorating Ballet.”

by guest contributor Lea Marshall

Monday morning, when I opened my weekly ArtsJournal emailed roundup of dance articles from around the web, I knew better than to click on the title above. I knew better, but I clicked anyway. And then I posted the piece on Facebook with the comment, “Huh. Three white men. Imagine.”

The image alone was enough.  You wouldn’t even have to read the piece to understand whose voices are most valued in ballet today, according to the Times. There they are, all in a row: Justin Peck, Alexei Ratmansky and Christopher Wheeldon--three white men.

Under my Facebook post, a friend asked: “Lea, not being into the dance scene like you, and acknowledging the racist and sexist nature of the article, if you had written this article, who would you have included?”

In response, I realized I wanted to dismantle the whole premise of the article and start over. Editors, the problem lies not just with ballet, but with you.

If we’re presented with this question--“Which choreographers have reinvigorated ballet?”--and the answer we come up with is “These three white male choreographers,” we must re-examine the question. What does it mean to “reinvigorate ballet”? Obviously, in this equation it doesn’t mean taking dramatic steps toward diversity, or critically thinking about ballet’s de facto position at the “top” of our white, western, racist, sexist, popular cultural understanding of what dance is. Rather, it appears that in this context to “reinvigorate” means to make dances that seem fresh and appeal to the tired eye of the Eurocentric or Balanchine-worshiping balletomane.

Of course these choreographers make great work. But the context for that work demands examination and discussion. Sulcas actually asks the men why more women don’t hold “major choreographer” status in ballet. For the most part, their answers are laughably inadequate.

So, let’s change the whole question so that the answer includes Dance Theatre of Harlem; includes Misty Copeland, Michaela DePrince, Yuan Yuan Tan; includes American Ballet Theatre's Project Plié’s goal to diversify American ballet companies; includes Ballez (performance, company, class and community, that invites everyone to witness and celebrate the history and performances of lesbian, queer and transgender people). New York Times, you can do so much better.

Throughout the day after the piece appeared, a great flurry arose that focused in large part on the choreographers’ responses to that question about women. But the problem, as I’d hope we all realize, extends far past the privileged men; it’s with the system that privileges them, including the Times.

There’s an easy fix for this article, as a start. Change the headline to: “Privileged Positions: Three White Male Choreographers Get Extra Credit in Ballet.”

*****

Lea Marshall is Associate Chair of the Department of Dance and Choreography at Virginia Commonwealth University, as well as a dance writer, critic and poet. She writes for Dance Magazine, Dance Teacher and Richmond’s Style Weekly.

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Dancer Kayla Hamilton up close at BAAD!

Dance artist Kayla Hamilton
(photos: Travis Magee)

She moves through the world with a chronic illness that has left her with sight in one eye, loss of peripheral vision, double vision, blurred vision, and difficulty seeing in low light.

 --from publicity for Nearly Sighted by Kayla Hamilton

My experience of Nearly Sighted, Kayla Hamilton's solo performance at BAAD!, actually started before I reached the theater. Coming off the #6 train at Zerega Avenue, I ran into a group of people--including some I knew--heading for the show, all in good spirits. We walked together past the churchyard and, once inside BAAD!, were warmly greeted by more people we knew. While we waited for Hamilton to perform, we watched a wonderful video compilation of interviews and studio scenes with the much-loved choreographers, all Black and women, who contributed work to this evening--Francine E. Ott, Nia Love, Christal Brown, Crystal U. Davis and Jaimè Dzandu. Fond co-workers and at least one grateful student of Hamilton spoke up during the post-show discussion. Yes, that kind of evening. More like a family gathering than most anything you'll find at your typical New York dance concert.

Clearly, Nearly Sighted is the place to be. And you're lucky if you can get a ticket. Yes, BAAD! is not the largest venue in town, but even so.

For the suite of dances, which is surprisingly short--maybe 45 minutes at most--Hamilton has woven together material from the choreographers as well as video artists Sammie Amachree and Drake Creative.  Each member of the audience is encouraged to wear an eye patch through most of the performance, giving us a small taste of how Hamilton's vision disability alters her perception of and relationship to her surrounding environment. To work with this, I left my distance glasses off and, given the intimacy of the space, did not need them. I adjusted to the eye patch over time.

If you've ever seen Hamilton dance, you know she brings presence, passion, momentum and juicy fluidity. In her program notes, she calls herself "thick."

"Thick not as in muscular, but thick thick." She adds, "I rarely get to see a thick-bodied disabled person on stage...."

She is a thick spinning top, a thick blossoming flower, a thick burst of fire, a system of thick coursing energy. She is also Black and female all day and embodies Nia Love's words: "It's the way that you stand, the way you sit...the notion that all that you are is all that's right and powerful and good. That's dignity." Her work is a healing gift.

Nearly Sighted was two years in the making. It was fun to talk in our small discussion groups about it and hear Christal Brown tell us none of the choreographers had previous exposure to the finished work. They had no idea how Hamilton would turn their individual material into a this tapestry. The performance, then, was a revelation for everyone.

Nearly Sighted concludes this evening with a performance at 7:30pm. It is sold out, but if you want to try for a last-minute, unclaimed ticket, click here for information.

BAAD!

The Bronx Academy of Arts & Dance

2474 Westchester Avenue (Westchester Square), Bronx

(map/directions)

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