Monthly Archive for September, 2008

Ladies and gentleman,

First of all a tip of a feath­ered dainty cap to our dear dear friend Tucker Neel and to all of the lovelies at Artillery Mag­a­zine, who I was for­tu­nate enough to meet last Sat­u­day night, danc­ing in cir­cles at Hop Louie. Your friends in bodyc­ity now grace the pages of the just released edi­tion of the pre­vi­ously men­tioned Artillery Mag­a­zine, which you can pick up for free at any art gallery in town. You can also read an unedited ver­sion of the arti­cle below or on Tucker’s blog. We, boys and girls, are on our way!

Danc­ing Daze: Bodyc­ity
Orig­i­nally printed in Artillery Mag­a­zine, sep/oct 2008 vol 3 issue 1

After being thor­oughly hijacked by fun­da­men­tal­ists, and injected into bombs and body bags in dis­tant lands, the term “democ­racy” has sus­tained a thor­ough lin­guis­tic beat­ing over the years. Despite the grim state of things today, there is hope for those who seek avenues for true eman­ci­pa­tory group par­tic­i­pa­tion. For these peo­ple it’s refresh­ing to see artists, espe­cially col­lec­tives, reclaim­ing democ­racy as a work­ing prac­tice, a way to describe how they make their art. One such group is a home­town dance col­lec­tive called bodycity.

A self-proclaimed “dance democ­racy”, bodyc­ity, pre­vi­ously known as col­lec­tive sta­tic, has per­formed in both pub­lic and pri­vate spaces in and around Los Ange­les for the past three years. Com­posed almost entirely of women, the group’s num­bers have swelled to over a dozen and waned to just five as mem­bers have come and gone. Only a few ever took clas­si­cal bal­let or mod­ern dance and most get their prior train­ing from rock­ing out alone at home. Col­lec­tively their dance phi­los­o­phy eschews any con­ser­v­a­tive ide­ol­ogy demand­ing chore­o­graphic or phys­i­cal per­fec­tion. Instead, their prac­tice bris­tles with a do-it-yourself spirit based in accept­ing imper­fec­tions, embrac­ing mis­takes as oppor­tu­ni­ties, assets that heighten the pos­si­bil­ity of demo­c­ra­tic inclusiveness.

The troupe’s aes­thetic is part Bar­bara Met­tler, with her totally impro­vi­sa­tional dance phi­los­o­phy (which got rid of the stage, and the audi­ence, all together), and part Jud­son Dance The­ater, which rev­o­lu­tion­ized the pro­fes­sional dance world by cre­at­ing per­for­mances empha­siz­ing chance and repet­i­tive move­ment. In line with this tra­di­tion, bodycity’s chore­og­ra­phy is full of awk­ward repet­i­tive actions, devel­oped through a process of impro­vi­sa­tion, indi­vid­ual and group research, and col­lec­tive decision-making. Yet while they acknowl­edge that dance has a liv­ing his­tory, they get more inspi­ra­tion from 80’s work­out videos, urban vis­tas, Youtube and dres­sage than from their mod­ernist predecessors.

Often sewing their own cos­tumes or enlist­ing friends’ cre­ative skills, they have danced as birds to lead flocks of peo­ple along the Santa Clara River in Valen­cia, donned util­ity gloves to dance/scale the steep­est street in Cal­i­for­nia, per­formed with cacti and bam­boo in the Hunt­ing­ton Gar­dens, and ini­ti­ated impromptu per­for­mances in Echo Park. In cos­tumes or not, Bodycity’s work is at its best when employ­ing con­sid­ered site speci­ficity to bring out unex­pected mean­ing in curi­ous loca­tions.

Ear­lier this year the dancers began col­lab­o­rat­ing with the musi­cal group Glasser (which sounds like the Kate Bush and The Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ irre­press­ible lovechild) to cre­ate Lady Stranger. Per­formed at Mr. T’s Bowl, a hipster/hobo water­ing hole in High­land Park, Lady Stranger seized the venue as the per­fect site to exca­vate latent sex­ual innu­endo. At the start of the dance the per­form­ers, decked out in pen­cil skirts, tight shirts and old-fashioned lace dick­ies shimmy on top of booths and do-wop next to the juke box, their actions con­jur­ing “loose women” arche­types from the 40’s and 50’s. Later the troupe erupts into fist-pounding stomps, gut­tural grunts, and arrow-hurling war­rior poses exe­cuted with hair-raising syn­chronic­ity. These sex pot / Ama­zon­ian jux­ta­po­si­tions, slyly com­mu­ni­cate how bar­room inter­ac­tions are them­selves coded dances walk­ing the line between fight­ing and for­ni­ca­tion.

For Wiki­d­ance, cre­ated in 2007, the group cap­i­tal­ized on our web 2.0 obsessed cul­ture and used the inter­net as a democ­ra­tiz­ing tool and a site unto itself. To ini­ti­ate the piece, bodyc­ity posted a video on vimeo.com as part of Ulti­mate Blog­ger 3, an inter­net blog­ging con­test (which they almost won), ask­ing view­ers to record any move­ment or small dance and sub­mit it to be incor­po­rated as part of a final piece unit­ing all the sub­mis­sions into one per­for­mance. The almost two-dozen sub­mis­sions ranged from the bootyshakin’ to the absurdly min­i­mal­ist: a man slowly leans a against a pole, a girl gyrates a’la The Vil­lage Peo­ple, a cou­ple awk­wardly mock an embrace, a mother and son lock hands and ges­ture tai-chi-style to the cam­era. Yet despite the unpre­dictabil­ity of the sub­mis­sions and the sys­tem­atic struc­ture required to put the entire piece together, the result­ing per­for­mance isn’t overly cere­bral or con­fus­ing; like the best user-generated inter­net con­tent, it’s per­fectly imper­fect, addic­tive, inspir­ing, and fun to watch.

When viewed in its intended envi­ron­ment — on the inter­net — the final Wiki­d­ance is as a mov­ing col­lage; the dancers prom­e­nade, pose, vogue, spin and wave, dupli­cat­ing the move­ments in the sub­mis­sion videos to Yeah by LCD Soundsys­tem. In a brief seg­ment two dancers, out­stretched arms scissor-like, embrace one another, mim­ic­k­ing a par­tic­u­lar sub­mis­sion video. A sec­ond later actual scis­sors enter the cam­era frame, like an animator’s eraser in a Bugs Bunny car­toon, to slice out each dancer from the video one-by-one. In de-centering choreographer’s stereo­typ­i­cally dic­ta­to­r­ial posi­tion and turn­ing the build­ing blocks of the per­for­mance over to the very audi­ence the dance addresses, Wikki­d­ance proves itself quite lib­er­at­ing and inspir­ing. And that’s the key to bodycity’s allure.

Their demo­c­ra­tic ide­al­ism requires that they prac­tice what they preach and work with con­cep­tual and phys­i­cal exer­tion bor­der­ing on exal­ta­tion to bring the viewer into their dances as much as pos­si­ble. When suc­cess­ful, their work breaks down the bound­aries between dancer and audi­ence, chore­o­g­ra­pher and com­pany, pub­lic and pri­vate to sin­cerely state that dance is every­where and that it can hap­pen with and to any­one at any time.

Bodyc­ity is cur­rently: Alisha Adams, Made­line Baugh, Betsy Hume, Jen­nifer Lehman, Cristina Paul, Molly Rodgveller, Lake Sharp and Mea­gan Yellott

–Tucker Neel

Thanks and remem­ber, we love you!