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Introspective voyeurism
In "Just Two Dancers", John Jasperse creates dance that defies performance with movement so modest that it pushes the levels of subjectivity to new heights.
By ALEXANDRA BELLER
Offoffoff.com
You walk into a room in which you expect to find a theatre. You do not. You find, instead, a space reconstructed, reconstituted and redefined. There are mini stages fracturing the audience space into an unrecognizable arena. You look for the stage, and you find it, but it is swathed in old white lace, like a makeshift house you made beneath your grandmother's bed. Already, things are not what they should be. Already, you feel that you are at once, a voyeur, and implicitly involved. You are handed a mirror. Do you dare to look at yourself?
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You realize, even before the show begins, that you are dealing with expectations and perception. But the show has "just two dancers" in it, in fact that's even the title, so how many choices can there be? Well, usually as an audience member you have about as many choices as a well-trained dog: sit, stand, clap or play dead. In this world, things are different. There are two dancers (John Jasperse, the director and creator, and Juliette Mapp, the co-creator and performer) moving into the spaces around, behind and beside you. You can look at them in your hand mirror or turn around to look at them. But you begin to feel that you don't even have to look at them. Why not look at your boyfriend, who is sitting next to you, or that woman in the front row? You can stare at the razor burn on Juliette Mapp's legs, if you want. I mean: how often do you get to do that? You can look at their faces: deeply resonant, curious and emotive. Or you can look at the movement: Butoh-inspired, trancelike adagio, cut by quick bursts of manic, masochistic falling. The point isn't what's happening, or even where, but what part you play. Do you like what you see? Do you fake it if you don't? Maybe you should: John Jasperse is looking right at you and he is swinging his left foot right above your head.
A piece like this makes a difficult job of dance criticism because nothing could remind me more that my perception is mine alone and no one can possibly share it with me. Everyone has their own separate and personal experience and that experience is defined as much by your perspective and your random view of the action as by the choices you make.
So I'll share my experience. I was captivated by the intelligent ideas, but I wasn't emotionally engaged until the very end when, after almost no physical contact, they finally touched. They reminded me of robots who had been given beating fleshy hearts and no instructions. The time seemed to be spent investigating their inner sensations. What I missed sorely was the dancing. Knowing how deliciously and delightfully Jasperse and Mapp can move, I went in wanting to see them dance, dance, dance. They didn't, not in the way I expected them to, which put me, once again, up against the agenda I had brought with me. And they made me examine my capacity for stillness, which any Buddhist will tell you is serious business. In the end, I felt like it danced through my mind with great abandon, with love and hunger and humor and loss, but it never traveled as far down as my heart and only I can say whether or not that was my choice or theirs.
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JUNE 20, 2003
OFFOFFOFF.COM • THE GUIDE TO ALTERNATIVE NEW YORK
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