Posted by Tony Schultz
This Sunday I went to see The Movement Movement presented by Martha Williams. The venue was a strange two-floor 7000 square foot converted retail clothing store with no address at South Street Seaport. This (dis)location provided an interesting space for the installation and performance of this project. The work consisted of three dances that blended into each other.
The first piece Stacked used the old changing rooms to stage 9 simultaneous performances. Each artist was responsible for creating small environment which they performed in. The artists included Scotty the Blue Bunny, Eric Bradley, Clare Byrne, Alberto Denis, Jen Kosky, Amy Larimer, Peter and Vicky Virgin, Luke Wiley and Martha Williams. Each room had sound and video feed that were mixed in the main space by sound artist newclueless and video artist Chris Jordan. Though I felt a bit claustrophobic watching the dances in the confined viewing space amidst many other audience members, I enjoyed seeing the performers up close. The dancers were very focused in each of their environments which made watching them feel particularly voyeuristic. The video feeds also added to the surveillance gestalt.
Stacked culminated in all of the dancers leaving their separate spaces and convening in the upstairs common space to improvise together. I watched from the top of the staircase. At one point Scotty the Blue Bunny set a brief case down at my feet. Shortly after all of the performers formed a procession to relocate to the bottom floor. The last performer in the line, Luke Wiley picked up the briefcase that had been left at my feet and followed the rest of the group downstairs. This precession was beautiful as it put me into such close proximity to the dancers. Many brushed against me as they passed. I felt my breathing adjusting to the tempo of the slow moving dancers, drawing me in as a performer.
The precession ended downstairs where Martha Williams and Luke Wiley danced a duet titled Currency Break. I had seen Luke dance as a member of Misnomer in Future Perfect. He is one of those tall, long legged bendy dancers that is hard to keep your eyes off. Martha Williams is also a tall statuesque dancer who is really gorgeous to watch. The power of these two creatures made for a stunning dance. In the midst of their duet the briefcase Luke had picked up from my feet reappeared. The two struggled with the case and ended up throwing it open. Its contents came spilling out. Stacks of cash! Just what I like. The two then used scissors to destroy the bundles of currency. I went downstairs to recover one of the bundles before they were all destroyed. It makes a great memento. The duet ended with a solo by Luke. It was a pleasure to watch from only a few feet away.
During the procession, duet and solo the videographer sent a live video feed to a multimedia mixing board that produced multiple live remixes shown in the main space on various projectors. The camera work, video mixing and sound were well executed and made an impressive technical performance that was integrated and complemented the “real” dancing bodies.
