Critical Acts Deer in the Headlights The Sites and Sights of Noémie Lafrance’s Home

Megan V. Nicely

Home—a dwelling, a family, a refuge, a state of participants touch, taste, hear, see, and imagine mind—has a directional component. We leave as two barely clothed figures present a series and return, sometimes often, and sometimes of carefully constructed vignettes along a large, only once in a lifetime. As a force acting on rectangular table flanked by two kimono- bodies in subtle and profound ways, home wearing attendants. If we do not feel entirely exerts a pull either avoided or surrendered to, “at home” in the work, it is because for and recognizable location is only one aspect Lafrance “the site is a resistance—something of the psychic embodiment this term attempts to work against” (Lafrance 2009b). In Home, to capture. Human geographer Yi-Fu Tuan sensations, thoughts, impulses, and human identifies home as place: “Place is security, behaviors unite and collide but never quite space is freedom: we are attracted to the one settle down. and long for the other. There is no place like Performed twice nightly for two weeks in home” (1977:3). Place is formed when the April, Home occurs in one room of an actual subject can tread a maze by rote so that residence in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Ushered “undifferentiated space ends as a single object- into a slightly musty, candle-lit entryway of situation” (72); space, on the other rustic décor, our audience of 24 surrender coats hand, is experienced as a limitless horizon and other personal belongings, wash hands as of imagination characterized by a feeling of requested, gather photography devices (digital freedom. Neither mutually exclusive nor cameras and cellular phones), and then linger universal positions, these two concepts are in the waiting area, surveying the apartment a way of understanding life’s expansions and and envisioning the life lived here. The aura contractions. “If we think of space as that which of mystery continues as double doors open and allows movement, then place is pause,” Tuan we are herded into a room dwarfed by a long, writes (6). Site-specific choreographer Noémie chair-lined table. We take our seats, leaving the Lafrance, in her newest work Home (2009), regal sheepskin-covered one at the table’s head reveals this relationship between actions and empty. The centerpiece, Lafrance’s side-prone suspensions by using the physical body as both and noticeably pregnant body (dressed in white the site where performance takes place and the underpants and a T-shirt) on whose head is means for creating multiple and overlapping affixed a majestic set of deer antlers, is sup- spaces. Over the course of the performance’s ported by eerie, damp sounds and far-off hour and a half, a small group of onlooker- calls—are they animal- or man-made?—

Megan V. Nicely is a dancer/choreographer and PhD candidate in Performance Studies at Tisch School of the Arts/NYU. She has published in Performance Research, Contact Quarterly, Dancer Magazine, and In Dance, and performed in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, the UK, and Europe,

most recently as a butoh dancer in the Handel opera Admeto under the direction of Doris Dörrie and Critical Acts Tadashi Endo. She holds an MFA in dance from Mills College, has taught in the Performing Arts and Social Justice program at the University of San Francisco, and served on the board of The Field/SF. Her recent artistic collaborations involving dance, video, and live sound will appear in New York and St. Louis in spring 2010.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.4.163 by guest on 27 September 2021 appears to be. Unlike Lafrance’s large-scale works such as Agora (2005), Agora II (2006), and Rapture (2008), which confront space on a massive scale (the first two occurred in the emp- tied McCarren Park Pool in Brooklyn, the other on the roof of Frank Gehry’s Fisher Center at Bard College), Home takes a step in. We are collectively invited to see the performer’s body up close, yet the personal component is not based in the figure we view so much as on our inner reactions to her. This reflection of the singular body in the group body of the audi- ence, which is also made up of individual members, is a concept the piece continually promotes. The group body is formed Figure 1. Noémie Lafrance in Home, choreographed and directed by early on. Lafrance, who has Noémie Lafrance. Brooklyn, NY, 2009. (Photo by Poppy de Villeneuve, slowly slithered down the line of 2009 © Sens Production Inc.) onlookers and is now seated at the table’s head, addresses us as if in a boardroom or at the reading that populate the dim room (score composed of the will of a long lost family by Brooks Williams). The setting is out of member. “These are not prosperous times, and Narnia, a half-human, half-animal hybrid yet you are all here,” Lafrance’s monologue aesthetic that seeks to move us out of, but pronounces, and “you must continue to strive.” not too far from, our comfort zone. However, We have a responsibility, a task ahead of us, we already the body in question is particular—it are told: to preserve this collective body that is not just any body—and this friction between will endure long after our own physical forms the idea of a universal body and the material have ceased to live. The first night Lafrance body as experienced provides the site’s contin- does not use the word “corporation,” but later ual resistance to simple interpretation. in the run she adds it to emphasize her point Once we are seated, attendants Celeste about the body’s relevance beyond mere Hastings and Melissa Lockwood place mag- biological existence: the corporate structure nifying glasses on the table, allowing us to “was created to live beyond people’s lives [ . . . ] to view in closer detail a small nature scene along throw into the future. In French we say it is a Lafrance’s leg and hip (created by Carlos moral person. That body is representative of Ancalmo), comprised of plastic animals and ideas—not the world of the physical.” Here, trees amidst a ground of green-dyed leg hair. Lafrance wants to reinforce that “we as a group Parts of this scene appear to be “in the wild,” are eternal, and we are going to be able to perhaps a forest, while fence dividers and continue these ideas into the future” (2009b). chickens in other areas suggest a farm. The While the very notion of “corporation” is animals roam the land that is this body, easily currently tainted by the global financial crisis, inverting more common notions of earthly Lafrance remains hopeful about this word’s scale. Our perspective is at once vast and more honorable qualities, even as she also telescopic as we consider the macrocosm of our laughs at this human construct and how it gives own bodies and the microcosm the earth now people a false sense of power. “We are sheep Critical Acts Critical

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.4.163 by guest on 27 September 2021 Figure 2. Viewers take up magnifying glasses to get a closer look at the landscape on Noémie Lafrance’s leg in Home, choreographed and directed by Noémie Lafrance. Brooklyn, NY, 2009. (Photo by Poppy de Villeneuve, 2009 © Sens Production Inc.)

and we imitate each other, and we learn by Home’s ambition is to craft an “intimate imitation too. We believe in our own individu- experience of the human body” (Lafrance ality, but in fact a lot of what we do does not 2009a) for the audience, who gets “to partici- stem from our individuality” (2009b). This pate in a way that opens them up and makes becomes obvious in the following group mir- them feel more ready to give and to create” roring exercise, which breaks the ice with a hint (2009b). The piece works most successfully, of mockery as we follow and imitate the person then, when considered a prompt for the across from us. As we do this, Lafrance holds a audience to redefine their preconceived notions large mirror just to the side of the head of the of the body, rather than as a glimpse into truths table, turning it first toward her audience, then from the dancer-body’s point of view. Human to herself. Perhaps the joke is already on us— form never quite dissolves, which is in keeping our own behaviors, fantasies, and beliefs about with the press release’s classic modernist set ourselves as humans and individuals, our place of dichotomies: “the micro and the macro in the world, and our ability to control, be con- body(ies), the subject and object body(ies), Critical Acts trolled, and preserve are reflected back at us the body(ies) as public vs. private” (2009a). throughout the evening: we act as both leaders Each of these realms inscribes a preexisting and followers, seers and seen. and discrete area of knowledge, defined by the

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.4.163 by guest on 27 September 2021 exclusion of its opposite and waiting to be which is served in thimble-sized cups that we entered into rather than constituted in the down in a shot (“lapsang souchong,” the man moment of encounter. However, as Harvie next to me whispers); then she decants the Ferguson notes in his questioning of moder- remaining liquid by pouring it down each nity’s defined boundaries, the relation between breast and into an awaiting cup. Lafrance exits subject and object, inside and outside, is more in darkness into a side room and the lights “asymmetrical” than one of “real” difference come up on Hieronimus, strutting the table top (2000:18). As becomes apparent during the in red spike heels and a fur-trimmed miniskirt performance, “there is no obvious connection and top to the gravelly Tom Waits lyric: “When between outsides and insides; a closed box you walk through the garden, you gotta watch might contain anything, whereas the line on an your back.” We are positioned to look up her unmarked sheet of paper is an arbitrary division skirt, yet the dim lighting and her model-like within a uniform medium [ . . . ;] it is only the stride prevent full disclosure. She pauses, perspective of the observer that changes” (18). stroking certain audience members with a Relying primarily on shifting visually based feather duster she carries, then suddenly falls to perspectives, Home presents various ways that her knees as the lights change, removing her inner and outer infinitely spiral into and out shoes to show the bottoms of her feet, covered from one another; the piece’s life unfolds not in in mud. The mood shifts: Are we all to feel a a linear fashion but as a myriad web of thematic little dirty here? The dancer asks for our hands strands that intersect and solidify only when we to help her move down the table, then ties on a attempt to understand such irrationalities as maid’s apron and proceeds to wash the surface life, death, instinct, and behavior, rather than down, finally disrobing and bathing herself with experience them. Some of the ideas introduced, a wet cloth taken from a small basin of water such as female stereotypes and fantasies of an positioned at the end of the table. One man’s animal world, are uncomfortable if carried to catcalls during this number break my attention, their standard, if outdated, conclusions—i.e., an acting out that demonstrates how some take humans are civilized, rational, have a certain this sexually charged imagery as an invitation. form, and exist in contrast to other spheres Does he really feel his vocalization is the “outside” of them. But Home’s journey from “appropriate” response at this particular discovery to extinction resists easy interpre­ moment, or is he just uncomfortable? I consider tation, for we never remain in one viewing various splits between subject, object, and position. If sense is to be made here, it is gained subject/object, as I keep one eye on my safety, in the friction between embodied experience one out for the female performer’s protection and the piece’s repeated references to such —in which I participate as both a woman and familiar markers as cultural notions of the a fellow human—and another on the man’s human body, particularly in life and death. escalating excitement. A sense of danger is Home is a place of tension and beauty, a present even if there is no real risk here—the space in which to observe and touch rather pervasive threat to women in many societies than unquestionably accept ourselves and invades the room. our histories. “All really inhabited space bears the After bringing the audience together and essence of the notion of home,” writes Gaston imparting its mission, the piece progresses as Bachelard ([1958] 1969:5), and the house as a series of vignettes for Lafrance and fellow the container for habitation has the benefit of dancer Maré Hieronimus, all performed on the protecting the dreamer, “allowing them to long tabletop. The scenes are sensual, sexual, dream in peace” (6). But whose house and and tactile, each one a task approached in a whose dreams? Lafrance says this piece was deliberate manner. The dancers’ close proxim- “designed with woman as subject” and is about ity and partial nudity make the piece seem “how women experience their bodies [ . . . ] the intimate, and yet boundaries (from rules of joy and the suffering of the experience.” She behavior to flesh-colored underwear) also wants to play with the idea of women putting remain in place. Lafrance carefully brews tea, on characters in order to address “femininity and how it is seen by society, how it is mis- Critical Acts Critical

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.4.163 by guest on 27 September 2021 interpreted, [and] what these clichés are about a realm outside the human one, an exclusion that have kept women in a certain role, and how upon which the human depends for its own these roles play out” (2009b). Yet, when I talked existence and superiority (see Agamben [2002] to her early in the run, Lafrance seemed uncom- 2004). Lafrance uses animal references in Home, fortable with certain audience responses, such she says, to remind us of “forgotten” aspects as the man’s catcalls described above (and on of ourselves—i.e., our physicality (Lafrance another night a group of slightly intoxicated 2009b)—but this correlation is too simple. If gigglers)—and suggested that they might need the animal disappears from humanity’s habitat to be managed—by telling the audience more and then reappears as humanity’s reflection of explicitly how to behave—to maintain a safe itself (Lippit 2000:3), then animals in Home space for creative imagination. Lafrance wants serve to reflect this now unacceptable definition to let the public into a private realm, but she of human back to us again. “Animal being also wants to guide the invitation. This is founds the site of excess, a place of being that tricky for both the performers and the exceeds the subject” (26), as in Gilles Deleuze audience, but the problem may lie not in the and Félix Guattari’s breaking down of human actual response but in the fact that it interrupts subjectivity by “becoming-animal” ([1980] whatever personal journey each participant is 1987:232–309), but Lafrance resists this utopic on in addition to the group activities. Lafrance process. Instead, while touching on most of rejects early 20th-century avantgarde perfor- the body’s senses, her understanding of body mance tactics for abusively shocking audiences does not dissolve old ideas but instead requires into awareness but says, “You have to trust new perspectives and ways of seeing them. your feelings [ . . . ] you can’t control someone’s Ultimately, Home remains firmly rooted in a emotional response” (2009b). In this perfor- visual paradigm where seer and seen try to mance world, a certain amount of taming catch each other. seems acceptable to keep inside and outside, Lafrance views looking as the subject safety and hostility, home and elsewhere, con- perspective and being looked at as the object tinually in flux, but keeping this shifting one (Lafrance 2009b), but she also wants to ground only slightly off-balance remains a complicate these positions. As a choreographer delicate issue. who works with the relationship between Home’s use of animal images shines a light bodies and sites, she is used to trying to “see on our further confusion—are these meant to the whole picture” before moving in to create indicate real creatures or are animal parts put the dance within the chosen environment. But, on just for show? The deer sightings during as with her other, larger-scale works, “to see the performance call up images of innocent all the dancers at the same time takes so much doe-eyes caught in car headlights, the trophy of distance [ . . . ;] you can’t actually see everyone at a hunting excursion, some hidden beast within, once” (2009b). In creating Home, the challenge or more optimistically a mutual recognition for Lafrance was not to step back but to find during a silent walk in the woods—a profound ways of seeing herself, something she says she accusation of nature looking back at us humans can never really do, “unless I look in a mirror, with question. As the part-deer, part-human but that’s not a true feeling of what it’s like to be Lafrance turns her eyes on us for a moment with me” (2009b)—you can never experience during the piece’s opening, we glimpse a yourself as others do. In order to work with wildness that is immediately tamed by her sly these issues of seeing and experiencing self smile or laugh. Some of her expressions are during the rehearsal process, Lafrance had even lifted off faces in the audience. She toys the second dancer perform her role while she with us, asking for compassion and then seizing watched. And yet the other dancer did not do power. This is intended to be unsettling, and it things in the same manner, making Lafrance is—can we really accept this deer woman as a realize that some of the tasks, such as pouring new world order that demolishes the patriarchy, the tea, were uniquely her own, and the other Critical Acts or does the female/animal stereotype negate dancer’s actions likewise had to be hers. In any hope of progress? In our writing of human order to approach the condition of “being history, the animal world has been relegated to with” that Lafrance sought, the objects had to

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.4.163 by guest on 27 September 2021 room, dressed as a schoolteacher in a dark skirt, white blouse, and glasses, and leads us in a game of exquisite corpse—the Surrealist technique for assembling words and images by passing a blank page from one participant to the next, each adding something. Sheets of paper race around the table to her calls of “faster,” and the words that emerge are increasingly food- and sex- related. As we each try to make our hand keep up with the overall task, the world shrinks to a singular realm and mental Figure 3. The results of the participatory writing section of Home, focus. When I finally look up, choreographed and directed by Noémie Lafrance. Brooklyn, NY, 2009. I am surprised that the massive (Photo by Poppy de Villeneuve, 2009 © Sens Production Inc.) stacks of paper have spread over the table and Hieronimus, now clad only in flesh-colored relate to the performer, not to the outside eye underwear, is standing and of the choreographer. pushing the sheets off the table onto us as we sit politely, waves of paper covering laps and the According to Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the floor. Once the table is cleared she comes to body is not an object but instead the condition stillness, arriving on her back at the table’s and context through which we have a relation center and closing her eyes. The attendants to objects ([1945] 2004:77–232). This notion who serve as subtle instigators for our actions of being-in-the-world moves away from the move in to write on the body with crayons narcissism of vision’s one-way trajectory to that, dipped in water, mark easily on her skin’s consider that we are also possessed by things surface. Tentatively at first, our group moves rather than separate from them—we are of forward, covering this body with words of our them, connected by what he calls flesh. The choosing, but also pictures, in locations both getting closer of lived experience is a kind of aesthetic and risky. Our attention is careful, haptic vision where, as seer and seen, we are the composition considered, and this activity is simultaneously touching and touched, rather both a continuation of and a departure from than standing apart from objects ([1964] our earlier writing. No one seems to be using 1968:130–55). In a similar vein, vision in words to vandalize the body, even when tagging Home is used not to show us what is known a personal territory, but our unrestricted access but instead to confound by disclosing multiple to this person gives pause. A lens opens as one perspectives without displacing us from our attendant displays a placard permitting us to seats. When invited to touch the body pre- take photos documenting our intervention, an sented, we are touched back in turn, but less “I was here” moment. Shutters click to capture by the other body’s skin than by the multitude the marked figure, and then the lens closes—no of ideas about body that this actual body more photos. Hieronimus’s marked and seem- references. Subject and object fold into one ingly lifeless form is then moved by the atten- another, giving us many partial views rather dants to the head of the table and placed in the than an all-knowing singular focus. chair, her back to us. Touch and vision mingle in a longer Taking advantage of our slightly stunned participatory section of the piece that brings predicament, the lights fade and Lafrance the bodies of audience and performer into near- reenters for a particularly beautiful vignette: direct contact. Hieronimus enters from the side her now naked body’s slow sideways undulation Critical Acts Critical

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.4.163 by guest on 27 September 2021 down the table in the dark, lit only by one unusual handheld flashlight. Given to us by an attendant, it only ignites when its handle is continuously pumped by the fingers of the seated audience members who pass it down the line. Our brief glimpses when the light is on suggest a larger world we can only partially access, as if looking through the lens of now another camera. The soothing music at this point also lends the scene a filmic quality, and perhaps for this reason keeps onlookers at a polite distance—we take in what Figure 4. Audience photo opportunity of Maré Hieronimus in Home, unfolds on the table, yet there is choreographed and directed by Noémie Lafrance. Brooklyn, NY, 2009. no need to scrutinize, and what (Photo by Megan V. Nicely) is visible seems far out of reach. The movement activity is not enacted for us but rather beyond our consump- exit-point, for we have just performed a unified tion and clear comprehension, even as it clearly task only to be snapped back to ourselves as has purpose for the performer. Once at the individuals and escorted from the room, more table’s end, Lafrance proceeds back down its in the realm of contemplation than with a firm length, backward and on her knees this time, blueprint for the future. Perhaps this evening’s uncorking a set of matryoshka and lining them events are actually small preparations for death? up, all the while whispering “inside something,” The questions of whether life has a size or form which is hauntingly echoed by the attendants and how infinity can be conveyed return us to behind us. The site of Lafrance’s pregnant body the piece’s theme, but now beyond the body’s birthing these nesting dolls adds another layer physical boundary, and hopefully some of to the piece’s micro/macro enfolding. Lafrance our restrictive thinking about it. We are left is deeply involved in her own task, her atten- holding the idea of body, and the question of tion turned not on us but inward. Only here how to live it. does she finally dissolve her subject and ob- Lafrance’s work conveys that the territory ject bodies, neither seeing nor seen but we call home—pursued and preserved by truly absorbed. killing, conquering, ownership, and boundary- At the piece’s conclusion we are returned to drawing—might be more generously engaged the body within the context of life and death, by attending to the physical body as site, rather phenomena whose scale when taken together than to the sites it occupies. Other intimate is the pinnacle of unmeasurability. The dance works, such as Julie Tolentino’s For You attendants move Hieronimus’s limp body on (2005), a piece performed in an art gallery for to a sheet and to the table’s center, then place a single witness, or Paul Sermon’s Telematic bowls of paste and cloth near us and, following Dreaming (1992), an interactive installation their lead, we begin the process of mummifica- involving live bodies and technology conceived tion, a practice that preserves the body, even around Jean Baudrillard’s notion of home as life has exited its physical form. Once (1998:145–54), similarly invite close contact Hieronimus is well covered, attendants wrap with a physical body during performance as the sheet around her entire body. We are then a space-making encounter. Tolentino’s work Critical Acts left with her dead corpse, and the task entrusted builds a suspended and deeply felt atmosphere, to us at the piece’s beginning: to preserve the perhaps similar to when death approaches, life of the group. This ending is not an easy by moving the witness to various perspectives

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.4.163 by guest on 27 September 2021 References Agamben, Giorgio. [2002] 2004. The Open: Man and Animal. Trans. Kevin Attell. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Bachelard, Gaston. [1958] 1969. The Poetics of Space. Trans. Maria Jolas. Boston: Beacon Press. Baudrillard, Jean. 1998. “The Ecstasy of Commun­ication.” In The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, ed. Hal Foster, 145–54. New York: The New Press. Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. [1980] 1987. “1730: Becoming-Intense, Becoming- Animal, Becoming-Imperceptible . . . ” In A Figure 5. Maré Hieronimus in Home, choreographed and Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and directed by Noémie Lafrance. Brooklyn, NY, 2009. (Photo by Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi, 232–309. Richard Termine, 2009 © Sens Production Inc.) Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

—a bedside, a chair from which to observe Ferguson, Harvie. 2000. Modernity & Subjectivity: Tolentino dancing, and then to a closer angle Body, Soul, Spirit. Charlottesville: University Press as the performer moves to the song the watcher of Virginia. has preselected. Finally, Tolentino thanks the Kozel, Susan. 1998. “Spacemaking: Experiences of a viewer and holds his or her hand for as long Virtual Body.” In The Routledge Dance Studies as the viewer wishes to stay. Susan Kozel, Reader, ed. Alexandra Carter, 81–88. London: Routledge. writing about her experience of performing Sermon’s piece, also notes a visceral exchange: Lafrance, Noémie. 2009a. Home: The Body as Place. her material body, safely located in a separate Program notes. room, watches as its virtual projection is Lafrance, Noémie. 2009b. Personal interview with stabbed or caressed by audience participants. author. Brooklyn, New York, 2 April. The experience is not only visual—what Kozel Lippit, Akira Mizuta. 2000. Electric Animal: Toward a sees actually penetrates her entire physical body Rhetoric of Wildlife. Minneapolis: University of (1998:81–88). Proximity and contact open up Minnesota Press. new spaces in Home as well, as the dancer’s Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. [1945] 2004. Phenomenology body is seen, touched, remembered, and of Perception. Trans. Colin Smith. London: ultimately left—or is the body taken with Routledge. us? Home, finally, may not inscribe a safe place Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. [1964] 1968. The Visible and but instead characterizes an experience when the Invisible. Ed. Claude Lefort, trans. Alphonso Lingis. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. subject and object cease to matter and, instead of standing separate, are mutually engaged. Tuan, Yi-Fu. 1977. Space and Place: The Perspective of Lafrance’s Home does not achieve a synthesis— Experience. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. we struggle with coming and going rather than arriving—but the piece continually reveals the TDR: The Drama Review 53:4 (T204) Winter 2009. obstacles such a course requires us to confront. ©2009 New York University and the Massachusetts The ambition of Lafrance’s piece, like that of Institute of Technology the humanistic enterprise, is simply “to increase the burden of awareness” (Tuan 1977:203)— and Lafrance’s work does just that. Critical Acts Critical

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.4.163 by guest on 27 September 2021 The Sensation of Waiting Beth Gill’s what it looks like, what it feels like

Gillian Lipton

How do representation and sensation meet life to begin while she serves the lives of others. in dance? Though dance is in part a visual In 2008 as part of WACK: Art and the Feminist medium, there is also a subrepresentative or Revolution, an exhibition presented at P.S. 1 paravisual experience of danced performance MoMA from 17 February to 12 May, Wilding that is often ignored. Sensation, the invisible reconceived her performance piece, this time animating force of the body, may be determined entitled Wait-with. In this more contemporary by instinct, context, environment, or even version, waiting is reimagined as a feminine memory. Through restrained timing and clever mode of production. For this performance, dramaturgy, Beth Gill’s what it looks like, what it Wilding invited the public to participate in feels like (2008), a piece for six female dancers the ritual of waiting as a productive becoming: that ran at The Kitchen in New York City from waiting as a space of refuge, waiting as an active 20 to 22 November 2008, subverts the domi- refusal to dominate, to possess, to force nance of the visual in dance and foregrounds production, or to consume (Wilding 2007). sensation in the gesture of waiting. In Gill’s piece for six female dancers, waiting By withholding movement, or at least determines the pace of the performance. withholding gross, quick actions, Gill forces Actions patiently unfold or suspend altogether. her audience to wait. Formalized waiting This choreographic strategy imposes the becomes a palpable material element of the sensation of waiting on both performers and work and a suspenseful and provocative the audience. In so doing, the work employs a choreographic strategy: waiting for a body feminine mode of production that opens onto to move; waiting to be moved. Waiting brackets that which Kristeva termed the “pre-figurative” a dimension of enormous potentiality for dance, of women’s space and time (Kristeva 1986). and in what it looks like, what is feels like, Gill Participating in this feminist tradition, Gill’s employs a feminist use of the gesture of waiting gestures of waiting visually index the invisible, to open our perception of the dance event and yet productive, experience of sensation. the dancing body as object of our attention. In The piece begins as the houselights dim so doing, she builds upon a feminist critique of and the entire black box theatre is consumed visuality started generations ago. by utter darkness. With this initial gesture of In the seminal essay “Women’s Time,” erasure, Gill immediately presents the central feminist theorist Julia Kristeva claims that the concern of her work: How to challenge the goals of a new feminism (post-1968 France) dominance of the visual experience in dance must address alternate modes of production for both the audience and performers. Sitting apart from predominant symbolic regimes of blind, the audience meditates on its position power, delineating a pre-figurative realm that within the expanse of the theatre space, aware she called the semiotic (1986:187–213). In of the rustling of a coat or a shifting body in a performance art of that time, artist Faith nearby seat. Without sight, the mind conjures Wilding distilled the gesture of waiting as a imaginary scenarios in this dark and mysterious specifically feminine modality of presence: In space. Just as the pause becomes uncomfortably a 15-minute monologue (Waiting; 1972), a long, oddly formed smudges of light shimmer seated woman sways in a chair, reciting a on the back wall of the stage and then evapo- repetitive monologue about waiting for her rate. Impossible to identify as objects, the subtle Critical Acts Gillian Lipton is completing a dissertation in the Department of Performance Studies at Tisch School of the Arts/NYU. She has taught in the Art and Public Policy Program and the Expository Writing Program at NYU. She has performed in works by Richard Foreman, Douglas Dunn, and Nancy Meehan, among others, and in solo work of her own.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.4.163 by guest on 27 September 2021 Figure 1. From left to right: Hannah Spongberg (feet), Danielle Goldman, Carly Pansulla, Katie Eastburn (feet) in what it looks like, what it feels like by Beth Gill at The Kitchen, New York City, 2008. (Photo © Paula Court)

light paintings by designer Joe Levasseur of objecthood. These works assert their ambigu- suggest both the mystery and suspense of a ous status on the continuum between painting subrepresentative field, later metaphorically and everyday objects, and, in their ambiguity echoed in the choreography of the dance. The and tendency toward human scale, they give the introduction of another mode of perceiving beholder a sense that the work is inexhaustible: danced performance—through one’s own “Endlessness, being able to go on and on, even sensations—questions the representation of the having to go on and on, is central to both the dancing body as figure. Without much to look concept of interest and to that of objecthood” at, physical sensations confront each audience (Fried 1998:166). member; there is time to acknowledge expecta- In an interview for her 2007 piece Eleanor tions and desires for the performance, namely: and Eleanor, Gill explains her interest in what it will look like. working with the body as object: The stage, even in a black box theatre such The dancers are trying to abstract them- as the Kitchen’s, is often treated as a frame for selves in the space—I’m not even sure if visual spectacle. Yet, by playing with percep- I understand, at times, what that means. tion, Gill extends the boundaries of the dance We don’t want to disengage from what event to include the audience’s embodied we’re doing, but we also don’t want to experiences in a manner reminiscent of 1960s over-engage. minimalist sculpture and dance. Art critic Michael Fried famously critiqued artists from We’re trying to really be present— that period for removing the frame of their I think that word is used a lot, but it’s a artwork and introducing a kind of theatricality complicated place to be. The agenda is to art by opening the definition of sculpture to to allow the composition of the dance both the duration of time and the experience of to come to the forefront; the individual the beholder, thus affording the artwork a sense drops back. (in Kourlas 2007) Critical Acts Critical

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.4.163 by guest on 27 September 2021 The abstraction of self into space suggests and leggings enter from the upstage corners, a break with the boundaries of the body as walking toward each other across a floor that delineated by its representation as figure, glistens with the 18 mirrored panels that have which often connotes identity and individuality. been arranged to form a grid. The dancers This extension of the body-object into space is pause at the center, face one another with no reminiscent of the minimalist project that Fried visible reaction, and then walk off. The lights so loathed but which Yvonne Rainer embraced dim. The stillness of the space is stirred by the in her 1960s work. She treated movement as inconspicuous crawling of one dancer along the found object in order to open the time of side edge of the mirrored floor. The movement the performance on to everyday experience. is barely perceptible, much like the initial light Rainer’s effect was a revolutionary overhaul of paintings at the opening of the piece. Quietly, the “look” of movement; it’s exterior appear- she drags the weight of one leg . . . then an ance was intended to give the spectator the arm . . . then her other leg and arm. Her actions sense of the easy execution of an action, rather are slow, steady, and even. The dancer seems than impress him with technical proficiency. to wait to be moved rather than to deliberately The moving body in Rainer’s pieces displayed move her own limbs. Once she reaches the objective presence, rather than individual or upstage end of the mirrored floor, the lights mimetic expression. This objectivist attitude go up. She stands . . . pauses . . . turns one leg toward the body was encapsulated by her outward from the knee to open her hip . . . famous statement: “my body remains the pauses . . . finally the other leg and hip follow enduring reality” (1974:71). as she repeats the small rotations on her vertical Gill’s aesthetic aligns with this minimalist axis, like a slowly metamorphosing crystal. dance tradition: pedestrian movement, even- As she continues a phrase full of dynamically keeled dynamics, and little display of overt monotonous actions (sitting, straddling her legs virtuosity. Though Gill also may be interested open, squatting, splaying her arms like bird in draining the body of character or ego—and wings or raising them overhead in an O-shape), as such produces work reminiscent of Rainer’s her movements are often punctuated and then project—she seems less concerned with the animated by the substance in the pauses—the surface effects of movement than with the wait for sensation. actual experience of them. The gesture of waiting creates an interval This difference in the work of the two cho- for the paravisual phenomenon of dance, which reographers is manifest in their distinct uses of issues a critique of the visual infrastructure of timing. One choreographic strategy that Rainer Western dance training and performance. Gill used for Trio A (1962) was the construction of a supports the gesture with her dramaturgy. In dance as one long unpunctuated phrase: “One the first section of Gill’s piece, all of the actions of the most singular elements is that there are are reflected in the mirrored floor, although no pauses between phrases” (Rainer 1974:66). these reflections are ignored by the dancers. As a result, in her work the illusion of continu- The mirrors make the dancers’ images appear ous movement creates a palpable surface of the as aftereffects of their movement, reversing dance. In contrast, Gill has frequent pauses in the force that the visual usually exerts on the her work. Long, pregnant pauses. These direct Western dancing body. In typical studios, for the audience’s attention to the duration of the example, a dancer gazes at her reflection in the performance. The subrepresentative aspects of mirrored wall and disciplines her reflected movement, not only their visual appearance, image according to internalized ideals of become elements for contemplation. The alignment and form. In these instances, what it pauses unsettle the visual to mark the invisible looks like determines what it feels like—vision phenomena of dance. Waiting emphasizes guides sensation. But here in Gill’s piece, the sensed experience: what it feels like. mirror is relegated to the floor, out of the direct line of the dancers’ and the audience’s gaze. Critical Acts Waiting and minimal movement character- This dramaturgical gesture unsettles the visual ize the performer’s sensed experience as well. order that typically determines the appearance Two dancers dressed in oversized black T-shirts

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of the body and constructs the dancer’s notion Immediately after the mirrors are cleared of identity and character. away, while sitting in darkness again, there is This subversion of the visual aligns with a thunderous assault of percussive drumming. feminist critiques of phallocentrism and of It makes one’s innards tremble. The sensation vision as the determining force of our per­ of vibration. At the same time, a dancer stands ception. Rainer attempted a similar critique in profile at the right edge of the grid outlined through visual strategies such as averting on the floor in white tape (a shadow of the her audience’s gaze. While Rainer’s early mirrored floor). When the drumming stops, work concentrated on the manipulation the dancer bends her head down to her chest, of the visual field, Gill’s piece interrupts then navel, and lowers herself to the floor. the visual to open the danced event onto Falling onto her knees, she lies down and rolls additional dimensions. Gestures of wait- to the center of the grid until she resolves into ing or pausing question and suspend the a seated position and looks back over her usefulness of vision in her work and fore- shoulder. Another dancer enters from the ground sensation. exposed stage wing on the opposite side of the grid. The first dancer approaches her The second part of the dance extends this from behind, lifts her vertically, and holds her critique of the visual when the dancers and in place for several minutes. The sensation of production crew methodically lift the mirrors weight, the sensation of waiting. Here, in what it off the stage. The audience watches as the looks like, what it feels like, we experience the mirrors are held up to intercept their line invisible materiality of the body object through of vision; spectators view their collective the weighted sensation of bodies that wait. image, and then watch as it is cleared away. The gesture suspends the audience’s perception Gilles Deleuze writes that sensation of the body (the dancers’ and their own bodies) has one face turned toward the subject as mere image. (the nervous system, vital movement, Critical Acts Critical

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.4.163 by guest on 27 September 2021 “instinct,” “temperament” [ . . . ]) and one face turned toward the object (the “fact,” the place, the event). Or rather, it has no faces at all, it is both things indissolubly, it is Being-in-the-World, as the phenomenologists say: at one and the same time I become in the sensation and something happens through the sensation, one through the other, one in the other. ([2002] 2004:31) The capacity of sensation to dissolve subject-object relations makes it a useful agent for the minimalist project, which obscures the performer/object and audience/beholder divide. For dance, specifically, the opportunity to focus on sensation liberates the perception of the body as figure—as representational object of the gaze only. The final section ofwhat it looks like, what it feels like allows sensation to alter the form of the event and the dancers’ configurations in space. This is explored when all six female dancers line up in tandem, in profile to the audience. The form of the Figure 3. From front to back: Danielle Goldman, Carly Pansulla, Beth Gill, group is reminiscent of Trisha Nicole Mannarino, Katie Eastburn, and Hannah Spongberg in what it looks Brown’s Spanish Dance (1973), like, what it feels like by Beth Gill at The Kitchen, New York City, 2008. (Photo which included parts of © Paula Court) Brown’s Accumulating Pieces (1973), and was performed to strategy is based on the mathematical logic of Bob Dylan’s rendition of “Early Mornin’ Rain.” accumulation according to which dancers join In Brown’s piece, five women dressed all in the line one by one. Yet in Gill’s work, the line white stand in profile to the audience, forming seems to disassemble randomly according to a line across the performance space. One each dancer’s instinct to move or sense of dancer begins to move by shifting her weight timing. Dressed in an assortment of colorful into her hips as she steps in rhythm with the tops and bottoms, each dancer swings an arm, music and approaches the next dancer from lunges out of line, comes back to the line, Critical Acts behind. The five dancers form a train of hip- relevés onto the balls of her feet, then sinks her swaying women. Brown’s choreographic weight into one hip while lowering one foot to

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.4.163 by guest on 27 September 2021 the floor. They all repeat the sequence until References each dancer’s timing falls out of sync with Deleuze, Gilles. [2002] 2004. Francis Bacon: The Logic the others; three dancers break away to form of Sensation. Trans. Daniel W. Smith. Minneapolis: a second parallel line. Even their dissonant University of Minnesota Press. moves become exaggerated as the form of the Fried, Michael. 1998. Art and Objecthood. Chicago: line is interrupted and the dancers are further University of Chicago Press. individuated. What it feels like determines what Kourlas, Gia. 2007. “Duped! Beth Gill Experiments it looks like. with Transcendent Body Doubles.” http:// While the minimalist movement in newyork.timeout.com/articles/dance/24573/ dance, founded by Rainer’s experiments, duped. 29 November–5 December. (2 July 2009). adopted a language of art and art production Kristeva, Julia. 1986. The Kristeva Reader. Ed. Toril from a revolutionary agenda initiated by men, Moi. New York: Columbia University Press. waiting in Gill’s piece introduces a novel Rainer, Yvonne. 1974. Work: 1961–1973. New York: feminist approach to some key minimalist New York University Press. concerns. Most importantly, it persists with Wilding, Faith. 2007. “An Invitation to Wait—with the exploration of the body as object of per- Faith Wilding.” WACK! Art and the Feminist formance. So while Gill returns to many of the Revolution. www.moca.org/wack/?p=111 (8 founding questions of early minimalist chore- March). ographers, she furthers their project by opening TDR: The Drama Review 53:4 (T204) Winter 2009. the materiality of the body and the danced ©2009 New York University and the Massachusetts event to the experience of sensation. Institute of Technology

Crossing Paths SIGNA’s The 11th Knife at PSi #14

Philipp Dominik Keidl, Theresa Smalec, and Sarah Espi-Sanchis

Introduction Players: two young men and a woman who Within the world of the “Game,” a voluptuous were allegedly competing to avoid death. peroxide blonde named the Goddess was a However, her power to save them seemed mother figure of sorts. As visitors entered the doubtful. On our first visit, we saw that the camp, two women dressed in maid’s uniforms men slept fitfully on a cot; the woman wept in led us to her “temple”—a vintage caravan. The a chair while the Goddess smoked. When Goddess claimed she was there to comfort the visitors asked what was wrong, this tearful

Philipp Dominik Keidl has studied theatre, film, and media at the University of Vienna, the University of Copenhagen, and Trinity College, Dublin. He participated in projects with the Deutsche Kinemathek, Deutsches Historisches Museum, and the Bundesarchiv-Filmarchi, and is currently writing his dissertation about the representation of HIV/AIDS in visual art. Theresa Smalec’s dissertation from the Department of Performance Studies, New York University— “Body of Work: Reconstructing Ron Vawter’s Performance Career”—won her the 2009 Monroe Lippman Award for Distinguished Doctoral Dissertation. She is a Substitute Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Arts and Sciences at Bronx Community College/CUNY. Sarah Espi-Sanchis is an MA candidate in the Erasmus Mundus program in International Performance Research. She graduated from the University of Cape Town with a degree in drama and anthropology and later participated in the African Programme of Museum and Heritage Studies. She was given PSi’s 2009 Dwight Conquergood Award in recognition of drama workshops she devel-

Critical Acts Critical oped with juvenile offenders in Cape Town.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.4.163 by guest on 27 September 2021 Player informed us that she had just lost a inside the University of Copenhagen’s modern round and her life was at stake. By virtue of Amagar campus, The 11th Knife unfolded out- the fact that we were watching the action doors in a remote and rustic area of the original unfold in peaceful Copenhagen, Denmark— 1970s-era university grounds. in the middle of a university campus, no less —the female Player’s words sounded melo- dramatic. And yet, her anxiety was palpable. The upset Player belonged to a disorient- ing universe entitled The 11th Knife, a perfor- mance-installation commissioned by Gunhild Borggreen and Rune Gade, directors of the 2008 Performance Studies international conference. The PSi program billed The 11th Knife as a campground that audiences could visit anytime: “At all hours the inhabitants of the camp play a fatal and mysterious game” (56). The Game was the campground’s organizing core, and the audience was encour- aged to actively participate in it. It recalled the ritual-like plots of Reality TV, where contes- tants are subject to arduous and degrading tasks, only to be eliminated one by one. Rumor had it among conferencegoers who had spent sufficient time at the performance that one of the male Players had actually escaped from prison in real life. All of them claimed to be drifters. They seemed like people who could disappear unnoticed, with few questions asked. Over time, the implications of this idea became troubling. Figure 1. Frank Bätge (The Old Master). The At least since its “Performing Rights” 11th Knife, performed by SIGNA at PSi #14, conference in London (2006), PSi has pledged INTERREGNUM: In Between States, University of to “engage with the political, aesthetic, and Copenhagen, Amager Campus; Copenhagen, philosophical dimensions of the relationship Denmark, 20–24 August 2008. (Photo by Mette between performance and human rights” Hultquist) (2005). But what does it mean for experimental theatre artists to cast the PSi conferencegoer in a participatory show that manifests the Two male performers (one young and one multifaceted allure of power in ways that seem very old) were identified by the other perform- to undermine basic human rights? In short, ers as “Masters,” and they appeared to control what happens when a company turns from the camp. The Masters sported colonial wigs, representing abusive situations symbolically, powdered faces, and Victorian petticoats. to literally enacting those scenarios in front Servants catered to their whims while the of witnesses? Maids officiously read the camp rules: No eating or drinking without the Masters’ The Danish partnership SIGNA, formed consent. No photos. No mobiles. No greeting in 2001 by Signa Köstler and Arthur Köstler, the Goddess without an offering, etc. explored these questions through The 11th Knife, designed to run for the duration of PSi #14 Although the rules of participation were

(from Wednesday 20 August until Saturday 23 rigid, visitors were nonetheless encouraged Critical Acts August). Whereas the conference proper, titled to form bonds with the performers. We drank “Interregnum: In Between States,” took place their coffee, heard their stories, and grew to

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.4.163 by guest on 27 September 2021 care about some of them. A charismatic figure humiliating scenarios intended to see how known as the Rabbit functioned as a low-key well they improvised, or to identify the most narrator. The Rabbit knew the ins and outs subservient contestant? No one knew for sure, of the Game because she had played it for but the buzz was that on the final night, the seven years. Her acumen was seductive. Oddly, Player with the least points would be buried the Players were the personae with the least alive in a grave they had dug on the first day personal appeal. They were painfully non- of the conference/performance. descript—named Ten, Eleven, and Twelve— Philipp Dominik Keidl, Theresa Smalec, and seemed resigned to the idea that, within the and Sarah Espi-Sanchis met as strangers during Game, only the winner would survive, while The 11th Knife’s last afternoon. Lured by the the others would die. All three Players behaved promise of the ultimate violation of theatrical like self-fulfilling prophecies, discussing the performance—the much-discussed death of probable details of their impending demise. one of the Players—we returned to the camp at midnight to see if our new acquain- tances would go through with their macabre finale. In the pro- cess, we learned about our- selves—three different people, from Germany, Canada, and South Africa—and these are our stories. Philipp’s Story That the audience did not protest against the Masters’ use of power was not the most disturbing aspect of The 11th Knife. The real revelation was how readily we accepted the hierarchy, with the Masters on top. Over time, each visitor found a place in the pecking Figure 2. The encampment site: The Goddess’s temple. The 11th Knife, order, becoming a victim or performed by SIGNA at PSi #14, INTERREGNUM: In Between States, University of Copenhagen, Amager Campus; Copenhagen, Denmark, perpetrator in the Game. 20–24 August 2008. (Photo by Kim Skjoldager-Nielsen) The first step was following orders and paying respect to the Goddess and Masters with gifts or a bow; but the Masters also asked some The wheels of fortune were spun every people to sing or play a small electric piano few hours, at once structuring and interrupt- near their parlor, and visitors complied. ing our social interactions with the characters. The Game resumed whenever the Masters If the Masters liked a spectator, they gave spun the wheels of fortune to determine the the Players tasks to pleasure that person. On Players’ roles in the next round. The roles the second night, they ordered the Rabbit to were limited: soldier, slave, animal, or whore. dance an explicit striptease on top of a car for Visitors watched as the barely dressed Players three audience members. The spectators left (the men wore long underwear while the the car laughing and chatting. (Later, I asked woman wore a petticoat) confronted a range one of the women who watched what she was of tasks: from simple housework to full-on feeling during the Rabbit’s strip show. She told stripping, from barking to saying “thank you” me she enjoyed it, as she had performed with as the Master took a strap to their open hands. SIGNA before and trusted them even when None of the Players complained. Were these their performances were risqué.) Another time, Critical Acts Critical

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.4.163 by guest on 27 September 2021 the Master invited some- body to take a car ride with him; a Player climbed under the hood, pretend- ing to be an engine. Not every viewer seemed comfortable in these situations, but we did not interfere, watching until the Masters set the Players free. A Player eating the Master’s vomit was the most complex action I witnessed. When the younger Master announced he felt sick, one woman from the audience offered in jest to help him throw up. The Master accepted and asked a Servant to bring him a bowl while the woman stuck her finger down his throat. He took several minutes to puke, and then ordered a Player to eat the vomit. Nobody objected or protected the Player. Although some PSi conferencegoers had Figure 3. From left: Maria Pia Bertoldi (Female Player), Signa Köstler (The previously encountered Rabbit), Emil Groth Larsen (Male Player); in background: Thomas Bo this kind of extreme Nilsson (Servant). The 11th Knife, performed by SIGNA at PSi #14, physical performance INTERREGNUM: In Between States, University of Copenhagen, Amager in books, no one seemed Campus; Copenhagen, Denmark, 20–24 August 2008. (Photo by Kim prepared to witness it up Skjoldager-Nielsen) close. Instead, we left the scene in shock or looked winner and pulled that person out of the grave. away while the Player ate the vomit. The They invited us to throw a handful of dirt on Master quietly declared that this Player would the three remaining losers. Throughout the certainly win that round. performance, we were led to expect only one Given our inner conflicts—between loser, but this number inexplicably changed at excitement and disgust, pity and schadenfreude the end. Each handful of dirt was not simply —it was no surprise when, at the end, the a gesture of participation, but an actual and audience loyally followed the Masters to the very personal decision to throw earth on a real grave, located in a secluded corner of the camp. human being and to take part in the terminal There, the naked, helpless, crying Players and ritual. The Masters did not allow us to see if the

the Rabbit were shoved one by one into the Players were completely buried, but for me it Critical Acts grave. After calculating points earned during felt as if every hand that threw dirt signaled that the Game, the Masters finally declared a sole the participant had accepted the hierarchy as it

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.4.163 by guest on 27 September 2021 Figure 4. On sofa: Frank Bätge (Old Master), Arthur Köstler (Young Master); kneeling: Stig Eivind Vatne, Maria Pia Bertoldi, Emil Groth Larsen (Players); standing: audience. The 11th Knife, performed by SIGNA at PSi #14, INTERREGNUM: In Between States, University of Copenhagen, Amager Campus; Copenhagen, Denmark, 20–24 August 2008.(Photo by Kim Skjoldager-Nielsen)

was presented and was resigned to living with as a whore. To embody this cliché, the Rabbit unfair power structures—both in the camp and donned a wig and a ratty fur coat. Meanwhile, in the world that surrounded it. the younger Master lifted his crinoline skirt, placed his flaccid penis into a vase, and then Theresa’s Story slowly withdrew it. A Maid took the vessel and paraded it through the garden, declaring: “The During my first visit toThe 11th Knife, I met a striking young woman called the Rabbit. A pee of the Master!” I’ve seen enough, I thought, former champion of the Game, she was beloved and left the camp. Beyond this incident, my by the Masters. The Rabbit claimed they had hasty retreat was prompted by the squalor in picked her up on the German-Czech border which these characters lived: they were cold, seven years earlier, and she alluded to her dirty, and constantly abusive or demeaned. “shady” past. Before I could ask for details, When Sarah urged us to return to The 11th she left to compete. (The veteran Rabbit was Knife for its finale, I wanted no part of it. It was no longer a Player, but she still participated in only when she recounted Philipp’s vomit-eating the Game, explaining aspects of it to viewers story that horror surpassed my disgust. I could based on her past experiences.) not fathom stomaching a transgression of this Visitors assembled around the Masters’ nature for the sake of art and began to wonder parlor. I felt sorry for the older Master, who if the Game’s “fiction” was real. Perhaps the limped through the pouring rain to spin the Players had nothing to lose, no one to mourn roulette-like wheels. My sympathy faded, them if they lost? Under moonlight, they however, when his spinning cast the Rabbit seemed drunk and truly distressed. We over- Critical Acts Critical

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.4.163 by guest on 27 September 2021 heard the men musing on whether they would nature. As an audience member, you could be killed with a drug or a gun. “Holy cow,” “play” with that darkness and be part of it, yet I exclaimed, “I’m calling the police!” Sarah at the same time feel certain that nothing really laughed joyfully, asking if I knew Copenhagen’s bad would happen. emergency number. Of course, I did not. Recent events in South Africa colored my We got lost looking for a bathroom and response. Beginning in May 2008, in poor returned in time to see the Rabbit standing townships all over South Africa, there was a naked beside a massive grave that I had not spate of violent attacks on immigrants from noticed earlier. Stunned, I approached and other parts of Africa. I struggled with how to held my umbrella over her. A man covered respond to this wave of xenophobia, so much her with his jacket. “This is crazy,” I whis- at odds with the ideal of South Africa as a “rain- pered. She agreed. bow nation.” With the painful experiences in The younger Master commanded me South Africa fresh in my being, I deeply to throw the Rabbit in the ditch. “Are you appreciated both the courage of the SIGNA kidding?” I retorted angrily, “I want to pro- performance, with its willingness to explore tect the Rabbit.” A Servant stepped in. I won- human darkness, as well as its artifice. The dered whether to struggle. “It’s okay,” the intimate camp setting often encouraged visitors Rabbit said, and I quickly let her go. The ser- to become very emotionally involved in the vant pushed her roughly into the ditch. She happenings, but we maintained the assumption landed hard. I saw that it hurt. that these proceedings weren’t real and that we always had the option of detaching ourselves. Sarah’s Story While I observed that members of SIGNA were physically—and sometimes emotionally— My need to return to The 11th Knife site to see what would happen at midnight began as uncomfortable during The 11th Knife, I also a casual desire and became an itch that had to realized this was a privileged (if deranged) be scratched. It was raining hard when we got performance company doing what they wanted there. The Players had dug a big trench on the to do, and that no one would really get hurt. first day, which now lay ominously at the Or even if there was some injury, this was campsite’s edge. something the performers had signed on for; they had made the choice to suffer for their The two Masters hobbled to the lip of the art. Standing next to that pit as a part of a wild pit and invited the audience to gather around but safe crisis felt like a gift: like being let off in the darkness. People looked on apprehen- the hook. sively. A character called the Rabbit stood proudly, despite her nakedness, in front of the Aftereffects pit. A male audience member draped a coat over her shoulders and Theresa stood over her After the Masters threw the four contestants with an umbrella. Mozart’s Requiem boomed into the grave and pulled out the triumphant from a record player in the background while Rabbit, they awarded her the silver dagger: the Players lined up miserably in damp long the 11th Knife. When they instructed the rest johns and petticoats. The Goddess presided of us to “say goodbye to our beloved Players” over their sacrifice from a sofa at the pit’s edge. by throwing handfuls of dirt, many people did as they were told; others left shaken, without Something about the scene made me throwing anything. inexplicably exultant. I laughed throughout the proceedings, perhaps inappropriately. The next morning at the artist’s talk, con- Theresa’s anxiety intensified and she talked ferencegoers learned that SIGNA’s female about calling the police. That idea made me director had played the Rabbit. Signa Köstler laugh more. Analyzing this hysteria in retro- (born in 1975) voiced reservations about academia, noting our impulse to analyze the spect, I think it came from an appreciation of Critical Acts how, in that final scene, SIGNA explored the piece as either fictionor reality. She expanded dark, dirty, and twisted aspects of human this binary framework by stressing “the bodily encounter.” SIGNA’s performers subject their

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.4.163 by guest on 27 September 2021 if performers were disgusted by people who stayed so long to watch others humiliated. Köstler replied that participants need not feel ashamed: “Emotional attachment varies from game to game. And audiences change, too.” Speaking in the Rabbit’s candid manner, she confided that someone who came every day initially made her feel “safe,” as this person sided with the Players. Soon, however, that spectator began holding court with the Masters. “It was you, Joanne,” Köstler addressed a young woman in the audience. Joanne blushed, yet shared her self-discovery that she “liked being close to people in power” and “enjoyed watching others get punished.” The 11th Knife had invited viewers to perform the last act of sacrilege in their minds. In the last minute, before they supposedly buried the Players alive, the Masters ordered us to abandon the gravesite. Although we logically expected that the Players would live, the Masters’ refusal to let us be their witnesses Figure 5. Emil Groth Larsen (Player), Stig Eivind somehow made leaving the camp much more Vatne (Player). The 11th Knife, performed by SIGNA difficult. Someone offered us a ride downtown, at PSi #14, INTERREGNUM: In Between States, but we wanted to walk. Long after the confer- University of Copenhagen, Amager Campus; Copenhagen, Denmark, 20–24 August 2008. ence, we still think about what we did that (Photo by Kim Skjoldager-Nielsen) night, and what we failed to do.

References bodies to extreme conditions: poor food and Performance Studies international. 2005. “PSi #12 sleep deprivation. “At some point,” Köstler Performing Rights.” Queen Mary, University of suggested, “the whole debate between fiction London. www.psi12.qmul.ac.uk/archive/psi12/ and reality ceases to be relevant, in a way.” index.html (15 January 2009). Espi-Sanchis proposed that even the Performance Studies international. 2008. PSi #14: Interregnum: In Between States. Conference talkback felt like a Survivor episode, where Program. Copenhagen: University of participants (back on “dry land”) relive surreal Copenhagen. and traumatic events. Someone confessed to spending the entire conference at The 11th TDR: The Drama Review 53:4 (T204) Winter 2009. Knife; she described SIGNA’s members as ©2009 New York University and the Massachusetts “her only friends.” Another spectator asked Institute of Technology Critical Acts Critical

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