Steps From the Streets

It’s high noon in Westwood and dancer/comic/mime Robert Shields is back in town. No one in the self-aware, very ‘80s crowd is safe from his sharpshooter’s eye as he prowls the streets, tape recorder cocked, scouting attitudes and gathering material for his new one-man show coming up Nov. 19 and 20 at Pasadena’s Ambassador Auditorium.

Demonstrating his research technique for an accompanying writer, he targets a relentlessly chic couple entering an upscale shop. Following three paces behind the oblivious man, he mirrors his every movement and nuance with dead-on accuracy. “Now his moves are mine,” says Shields. “I never forget a movement I want to keep.”

He must have amassed an encyclopedia of movements by now. Shields began his professional career in San Francisco 18 years ago, where he worked the streets as a mime (and was arrested several times for disturbing the peace). Later he teamed with dancer and then-wife Lorene Yarnell for 10 years of television, theatrical and night club performances, garnering many awards, including an Emmy in 1978 (for “Toys on the Town”). Now, after six years of polishing a solo act in Japan, he’s back in Los Angeles to unleash his American version of the show, which he describes as “a visual cartoon comedy of life, my child coming out to play.”

“Audiences will see me doing dance mixed with mime, comedy, sound effects, voice-overs and spoken words, which is a new blend for me and something I never did in the old act. Although people know me as a mime, I’ve never liked it. Mime is one of the most boring art forms I’ve ever seen and usually goes on far too long.

“Now I’ve devised ways of bringing dance into mime and comedy into dance, as Ray Bolger, Donald O’Connor and others did, but in my own way, expressing my life and energy. My act used to be tricks and sight gags, but now it has more dance and pathos--it’s more of an art form. I see every movement as a dance that can be combined with music and choreographed.”

As for his dance background, it’s notable that the man who didn’t speak until he was four, who “faked my way through school,” who says he was voted “Most Likely to Not Succeed” by North Hollywood High School’s class of 1969, has been able to achieve success through movement talents that he says are self-taught.

Despite early attempts at tap and ballet class, Shields says, “I never liked anything that had instruction. I couldn’t understand ‘do it this way.’ I went through seven or eight teachers, including Marcel Marceau--I stayed in his school about 3 1/2 weeks and I couldn’t take it. Everyone was wearing stripe shirts and walking against the wind, like little Marceaus. So I quit and trained myself, which has been a blessing and a curse, because when you do that you favor one side. I’m left-handed so my left side is artistic, graceful and developed like a ballet dancer, while my right side is strong and very mechanical.

“My greatest teacher was the streets where I’d watch people, look at walking rhythms and study animals, machines and inanimate objects. But it was really Lorene who trained me and got me to see the benefits of discipline and working out. She taught me that you have to do plies to warm up and now I do a long workout every day with ballet, yoga, T’ai Chi, karate and weight lifting.”

Nor is his workout confined to a studio. Shields, a perpetual motion communicator who needs to physically demonstrate his ideas, is frequently in action in public, dancing, gesturing, voicing his dual vocabulary of odd little sounds and movements, often resembling his well-known “Robbie the Robot” character. When people stare he says, “I don’t care what they think. I can’t help it--it’s like an energy that comes through, and all parts of my body have to be stretched and tuned like an instrument.”

Often those body parts go in different directions simultaneously, a Shields trademark which he derives from his isolation skill. “I do eccentric dancing,” he says, “and my technique is strict isolation mixed with absolutely feeling the character. I’m also good at grace. I’ll do an isolation thing and finish it off with a graceful movement. Fred Astaire was so great at that, the way he’d stop with dramatic stillness and then go on dancing.”

His American act differs markedly from his work in Japan, he says. “In Japan they like my high-tech, neon, racy, edgy moves, but they also appreciate Noh and Kabuki, beauty and grace. It was great to play with those two extremes, to use Japanese folk tales and stylized dance and take my time.

“But Americans have such a short attention span, that won’t work here yet. The first half of the show is traditional and graceful with the Harlequin dancing through the acts of life, while the second half is like performance theater, my commentary on society with twist and bite. The movements are harder and faster, on a gut level, more contemporary, with a snap, crackle and pop--they come out of the things I’m trying to say.”

Shields feels he has a lot more to say than he used to. “The problem with ‘Shields and Yarnell’ was that I hardly wrote any new material. We had so much fame given to us we weren’t hungry any more. But when the marriage and the act broke up a few years ago, I couldn’t get bookings as a solo in this country. I needed that hurt in my life to regroup and write and come back with a second wind. People say there are no new moves, but I disagree. I have moves I haven’t discovered yet, very subtle things. I feel my new material is as fresh as it was when I was 18.”