 photo by JOHN BIELEMEIER |
BY CATHERINE THOMAS |
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The Gregg Bielemeier Dance Project's Odd Duck Lake Portland State University, Lincoln Hall, 1620 SW Park Ave., 725-3307. 8 pm Friday-Saturday, 7 pm Sunday, Sept. 25-27. $18, $10 students. Gregg Bielemeier loves chaos, improvisation and abstract expression. In art galleries, his eye goes to the abstract first. "I'm interested in what someone is putting there for me to extrapolate," he says. "If it's straightforward, there's not enough room to interpret." The artistic director and choreographer of the Gregg Bielemeier Dance Project, he doesn't assume that the creative process ends with the creator. He teaches a phrase to his dancers, presents them with kinesthetic problems and then leaves them to figure out a solution. "I'm not into lines. We aren't linear. I want to get the dancers used to relating their bodies to space. I'm not a perfectionist. I'm not into ownership of the piece." What does he want from his performers and his audience? "Questions," he says. "Free interpretation, free association, and free imagination." His latest piece, Odd Duck Lake, abounds with chaotic exchanges of bodies in movement. A lot happens at once: contrasts and unison; soft solos and whirlwind pairings; figures that gravitate to each other, interchange and repel. For an audience willing to surrender to the peculiarites of the experience, an underlying theme emerges. By way of explanation, Bielemeier recently gestured from a downtown cafe window at the pedestrian traffic outside and said, "Look at it. That is how we live. That's the world we're in. People support each other, release, leave and come back." Odd Duck Lake, he says, "is not about support as much as how we are here together and have to deal with that." He makes the point with subtle humor revealed through wordplay, costuming and unique interpretations of everyday movements. The work's abstraction is both kinetic and visual. Bielemeier choreographed it to showcase the dancers' individual styles, contrasting them by repeating movements and layering solos. But the most stimulating visual aspect of the performance is when these divergent styles come together, filling every available area of the stage, including the floor and the space above it. This was the most demanding challenge of the piece, "taking on the physicality... and combining it with our collective technical experience," says Bielemeier. Nearly eight months of rehearsing have paid off. Silhouettes of dancers hurtling themselves at interesting angles across the stage fill the eye. There is simultaneous movement on many planes, and the exchange continuously narrows and widens the visual space. Even in midair, the dancers experiment; they reach up and out, but also down and under, sometimes pushing the force of gravity in drops where a painful crash to the stage appears imminent. They're not timid. In rehearsal they were more likely to narrowly miss a collision than to move away to avoid one. It feels at times like a precariously flying and plummeting frenzy. But brief interludes of synchronous leaps, repetition and fast, fluid transitions pull it together. Bielemeier's choreography builds a larger emotional theme of human interaction and isolation with bizarre gesticulation, body percussion, exploration of space beyond the edge of the stage and powerful pushing and pulling. The dancers don't stop relating even when exiting. In most of the transitions, they propel their partners offstage and pull others in, trading in a rapid and continous introduction, exchange and departure. Their styles entangle with and complement one another, sometimes assisting and at other times resisting. The spectrum of emotion in Odd Duck Lake is complex: the dancers hurtle chaotically, contort into fetal positions, become puppets and simulate two-bodied or symbiotic creatures, and at times they seem to pull each other by invisible bungee cords. The contrast of pacing and form mirrors that of transitory individuals' varied daily lives, shifting from speed and strength to floppiness to slow, graceful lines. Bielemeier has always done nontraditional pairings, and there are multiple and surprising permutations in this piece. In a change from tradition, lighter dancers lift much heavier dancers. The mix of sharp and soft action and response results in an expression of experience that is not always emotionally comfortable to watch but is conceptually, visually and kinesthetically dynamic. As Bielemeier says, "it's about being the odd duck, which artists are. But it's a pleasure, not a negative at all." His own appearances in rehearsal reveal an artist who is adept at improvisation. Bielemeier mimes with his entire body, sometimes puppet-like, other times in a light and bouncy fashion. Some of his moves seem almost yoga-like in their careful fluidity. He uses his knowledge of natural body carriage and technical form to distort them. As Bielemeier exlains, he is most interested in the descent and momentum of a movement than in its height, an aesthetic well captured in the choreography. The ensemble includes 10 dancers in addition to Bielemeier. They will contribute their styles to the visual mix when Odd Duck Lake premières as White Bird's opener for its first subscription season. Live musical accompaniment will be provided by Portland's vocalist extraordinaire Lyndee Mah and 3 Leg Torso, the popular chamber ensemble consisting of violinist Béla Balogh, cellist Gabe Leavitt and accordionist Courtney von Drehle.
originally published September 23 , 1998
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