- 1
- 2
- next
- | single page
E-mail
Print
David Gordon, writer, director and choreographer, acknowledges a practical reason for reworking his 1982 stage piece "Trying Times," this time as "Trying Times (remembered)." The National Endowment for the Arts offered him a grant to do it -- and times are tough when it comes to funding in the arts.
"It's the only piece anybody ever gave me money to revisit," Gordon says.
FOR THE RECORD:
David Gordon: An article in Tuesday's Calendar about writer-director-choreographer David Gordon misspelled the first name of one of his "Trying Times" collaborators, Power Boothe, as Powers. —
FOR THE RECORD:
David Gordon: An article in Tuesday's Calendar section on choreographer David Gordon referred to the Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance as REDCAT's Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance. The dance school is one of the schools at CalArts, not REDCAT. —
Even though the self-deprecating dance-maker was monumentally uncomfortable with the idea of submitting his work to the NEA in a grant category with the title "American Masterpieces," he allowed his manager-producer to send in an application -- and, even though Gordon was none too sure, the NEA indeed found "Trying Times" worthy of the "masterpiece" title.
"So, here we are," Gordon says, still sounding just a little surprised.
Here, in this case, is a rehearsal space at CalArts, where Gordon and his Pick Up Performance Co(S.) were rehearsing last week for "Trying Times" (remembered)," to be performed Wednesday through Sunday at REDCAT before moving on to a two-week run at the Dance Theater Workshop in New York, which commissioned the original.
Because the new version is a co-production of Gordon's company and REDCAT's Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance, eight CalArts dancers who were not yet born in 1982 are joining Gordon's own dancers in the cast, and CalArts is lending rehearsal space on its Valencia campus -- so, here we are.
Despite citing the financial motivation for revisiting one of his dances -- something he has never done before -- Gordon, often described as a postmodern choreographer, is relishing the challenge of rethinking "Trying Times," set to the score of Stravinsky's "Apollo" and inspired by George Balanchine's signature ballet.
He says he was introduced to Balanchine's work by New Yorker dance critic Arlene Croce, who frequently took him to performances. "She had wonderful tickets to New York City Ballet that I could not afford," he jokes.
The title "Trying Times" stemmed from the fact that Gordon, now 72, entered the dance world through the back door -- first studying English and drawing, then trying theater before ever performing as a dancer.
By the time he created "Trying Times," he had performed in the companies of James Waring and Yvonne Rainer and had been a founding artist at the cradle of postmodern dance, Judson Memorial Church in New York, and in the improvisational group the Grand Union. Still, even with those impressive credits, he felt himself on trial by the dance community for breaking convention in a variety of ways, most notably by having his dancers speak as well as dance.
Plus, there was the sheer audacity of borrowing from the master. "Who was this young upstart who dared to use the Stravinsky music for the Balanchine ballet?" Gordon recalls with a laugh.
"And because I knew I was causing kind of a to-do, the whole piece ended in a trial in which I wrote a script for a judge, a lawyer, a prosecutor and witnesses, and the prosecutor was prosecuting me for screwing around with postmodern principles and not staying where I belonged."
Gordon says that his penchant for blending spoken word with movement has a logical explanation. "It became clear to me, from early visits to dance performances, that when a ballet had a narrative, it used mime to tell a story: 'Her face is beautiful and I want to marry her, but her father won't let me so I'm killing him,' " he says, punctuating the end of the sentence with a lunge of an imaginary sword. "The dance movement stopped, in a way, and another form took over.
"And in modern dance, the way you knew the story was it was all in the program," he continues. "There was a page of talking in the program, and if you didn't read it before the curtain went up, you didn't have a bloody clue what was going on on that stage. I began to wonder why it couldn't just be said on the stage."
Then such decisions challenged the norm. Now much of the performing is being done by CalArts students who see Gordon's groundbreaking postmodern work as positively retro.
"Even though we learned quite a bit about this piece in our curriculum before David came, it's from a particular postmodern moment, and it's very interesting finding a home in it, where I didn't ever think I would find a home," muses 20-year-old dance major Kelsey Boone. "Our biggest challenge has been playing down our presentational habits. It definitely feels like a period piece because it is so understated."
"It's the only piece anybody ever gave me money to revisit," Gordon says.
FOR THE RECORD:
David Gordon: An article in Tuesday's Calendar about writer-director-choreographer David Gordon misspelled the first name of one of his "Trying Times" collaborators, Power Boothe, as Powers. —
FOR THE RECORD:
David Gordon: An article in Tuesday's Calendar section on choreographer David Gordon referred to the Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance as REDCAT's Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance. The dance school is one of the schools at CalArts, not REDCAT. —
Even though the self-deprecating dance-maker was monumentally uncomfortable with the idea of submitting his work to the NEA in a grant category with the title "American Masterpieces," he allowed his manager-producer to send in an application -- and, even though Gordon was none too sure, the NEA indeed found "Trying Times" worthy of the "masterpiece" title.
"So, here we are," Gordon says, still sounding just a little surprised.
Here, in this case, is a rehearsal space at CalArts, where Gordon and his Pick Up Performance Co(S.) were rehearsing last week for "Trying Times" (remembered)," to be performed Wednesday through Sunday at REDCAT before moving on to a two-week run at the Dance Theater Workshop in New York, which commissioned the original.
Because the new version is a co-production of Gordon's company and REDCAT's Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance, eight CalArts dancers who were not yet born in 1982 are joining Gordon's own dancers in the cast, and CalArts is lending rehearsal space on its Valencia campus -- so, here we are.
Despite citing the financial motivation for revisiting one of his dances -- something he has never done before -- Gordon, often described as a postmodern choreographer, is relishing the challenge of rethinking "Trying Times," set to the score of Stravinsky's "Apollo" and inspired by George Balanchine's signature ballet.
He says he was introduced to Balanchine's work by New Yorker dance critic Arlene Croce, who frequently took him to performances. "She had wonderful tickets to New York City Ballet that I could not afford," he jokes.
The title "Trying Times" stemmed from the fact that Gordon, now 72, entered the dance world through the back door -- first studying English and drawing, then trying theater before ever performing as a dancer.
By the time he created "Trying Times," he had performed in the companies of James Waring and Yvonne Rainer and had been a founding artist at the cradle of postmodern dance, Judson Memorial Church in New York, and in the improvisational group the Grand Union. Still, even with those impressive credits, he felt himself on trial by the dance community for breaking convention in a variety of ways, most notably by having his dancers speak as well as dance.
Plus, there was the sheer audacity of borrowing from the master. "Who was this young upstart who dared to use the Stravinsky music for the Balanchine ballet?" Gordon recalls with a laugh.
"And because I knew I was causing kind of a to-do, the whole piece ended in a trial in which I wrote a script for a judge, a lawyer, a prosecutor and witnesses, and the prosecutor was prosecuting me for screwing around with postmodern principles and not staying where I belonged."
Gordon says that his penchant for blending spoken word with movement has a logical explanation. "It became clear to me, from early visits to dance performances, that when a ballet had a narrative, it used mime to tell a story: 'Her face is beautiful and I want to marry her, but her father won't let me so I'm killing him,' " he says, punctuating the end of the sentence with a lunge of an imaginary sword. "The dance movement stopped, in a way, and another form took over.
"And in modern dance, the way you knew the story was it was all in the program," he continues. "There was a page of talking in the program, and if you didn't read it before the curtain went up, you didn't have a bloody clue what was going on on that stage. I began to wonder why it couldn't just be said on the stage."
Then such decisions challenged the norm. Now much of the performing is being done by CalArts students who see Gordon's groundbreaking postmodern work as positively retro.
"Even though we learned quite a bit about this piece in our curriculum before David came, it's from a particular postmodern moment, and it's very interesting finding a home in it, where I didn't ever think I would find a home," muses 20-year-old dance major Kelsey Boone. "Our biggest challenge has been playing down our presentational habits. It definitely feels like a period piece because it is so understated."
Digg
Twitter
Facebook
StumbleUpon
Save more than