Words and Dance Combine

Movement and language may initially seem at odds with each other—one immediate, the other permanent; one physical, the other stored in the mind—but “BYO: Voices of the Contemporary at the Carpenter Center” successfully brought the two worlds together Wednesday night. The event demonstrated the overlapping emotions, ideas, and concerns of dancers and poets with “dance-text collaborations.” The event was part of the “Bring Your Own” series at the Carpenter Center, which is designed to foster debate  around issues in contemporary culture.

BYO invites emerging figures in contemporary art to campus to perform, speak, and engage in conversations with their audience. All organizers  ask is that, in the spirit of ecological sustainability, audience members bring their own dishware for the light dinner they provide.Julie Carr, one of the speakers, teaches English at the University of Colorado, Boulder  and is co-publisher of Counterpath Press, the author of four books of poetry, and a former professional dancer with 10  years of performing experience. She presented and commented on videos of key dance-text collaborations from the early 1980s to the present. The performances included “Come Home Charley Patton,” a work by poet and dancer Ralph Lemon, who is artistic director of the dance company Cross Performance.

This work featured a dancer speaking and struggling to continue his performance as he is hosed with water, combined with a sequence of videos and spoken word recited by a lone speaker. Other works presented included “NOX,” the stark, haunting combination of Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener dancing to Canadian poet Anne Carson’s words, and “PA RT” the iconic 1983 piece with text by composer Robert Ashley and dance by Lisa Nelson and Steve Paxton. According to Carr, “PA RT” was the piece that truly made her realize she wanted to be a dancer and led her to study with  K.J. Holmes, who became her longtime collaborator. She is now Artist in Residence at Movement Research NYC and an independent dance artist based in New York.The event culminated with a live performance of a collaboration in progress, with text by Carr and dance performance by Holmes, followed by a discussion of their creative process moderated by Carrie Lambert-Beatty, Professor of VES and History of Art and Architecture.

Titled “HIC SVNT DRACONES,” a reference to the inscriptions cartographers once used to label unexplored territory, the piece is about the inadequacy of representation.  “All poetry is really about the failure of poetry. You try, and you fail, but you keep trying. That is the pathos and eros of poetry,” Carr said. Holmes said she feels the piece also expresses themes of madness, obsession, and repetition.It began with Holmes kneeling, repeatedly holding sheets of tracing paper to her face and tracing her features until she created a stack of drawings that she then hung around the room, a sequence she said was inspired by her experience teaching a class where she had her students do creative tracings.

Carr’s recorded text, which described a cafe and included repetitions of the numbers 1-20,  then came into play as a frame for Holmes’ improvised dance. Carr said she was careful to keep the text from becoming too autobiographical, going through and changing pronouns, using other people’s voices for her recordings, and layering different speakers and words.The piece was continually changing and evolving, keeping some elements from previous performances while changing others. According to Holmes, the dance was influenced but not strictly governed by the text. “We were trying not to be too literal as we got to know the words,” she said.

Carr and Holmes both agreed that their collaborative art is a form of storytelling, a way of questioning and remaking identity. The event suggested that the interaction between poetry and dance can create new art form with a more powerful effect than either might have produced alone.