Gerstler’s ‘Arena’: A Work About Love as a Sickness

All her life, L.A. choreographer Tina Gerstler has fallen under the spell of strong, authoritarian artists--usually women--only to eventually rebel against them. For instance, two of her strongest influences were her sister, poet Amy Gerstler, and choreographer Mary Jane Eisenberg. With her sister, she’s mended the relationship, but not so with Eisenberg.

While she describes her see-sawing between devotion and antagonism as “destructive,” it has played a key role in her growing recognition in the dance world.

Indeed, her newest creation, “Arena,”--a 20-person, dance-based outdoor multimedia work to be presented today at 4 p.m. and Saturday at the Burns Fine Arts Center Courtyard at Loyola Marymount University--”is about seeing love as a sickness--a form of insanity and self-abuse,” she says.

While Gerstler confesses to having experienced “painful stuff in the romantic department with men,” the most trying events in her life have taken place in purely career relationships with women.

She suggests that “a desire to break this cycle” may be why she chose as her current boyfriend someone who is not an artist.

In a departure from her more dancey works (seen recently at LACE and Dance Kaleidoscope), “Arena” contains verbal narrative. The text, presented on taped voice-over, is composed by the choreographer’s sister, Amy Gerstler, 32, a poet known for a pessimistic world view.

Amy Gerstler researched the history of love sickness, quoting Sir Richard Burton and 17th-Century philosophers. She says she came up with a psychic analysis of the way love obsession can actually riddle the body with pain and remorse.

“There are many things in the piece that are ugly and upsetting,” Gerstler-the-choreographer admits. “I have this pattern of being manipulated by the people I look up to and of giving my all until I drop dead and burn out.

The two sisters have collaborated for the last year on “Arena”--with Gerstler-the-poet helping to shape the themes and the younger sister choreographing the movement that she describes as both sensual and assaultive.

The two admit to having a rocky history characterized by youthful animosity, the clashing of opposites as teen-agers and, eventually, a loving relationship as adults.

“We were Mutt and Jeff,” confesses Amy Gerstler. “I am introverted and a complete klutz. Tina is passionate and a total athlete. As an adolescent, the last thing I wanted was this giddy thing jumping around all the time. Our parents thought she was hyperactive.”

But the choreographer has a different memory of their relationship. “I idolized her,” Tina Gerstler admits. “The reason I started dancing was because she was taking ballet and I followed her around constantly.”

But the poet interrupts. “I was taking dance because of doctor’s orders--I had fallen arches--and was in the baby class for five years. They immediately put toe shoes on Tina. It was humiliating.”

The banter hides much pain and estrangement. Even now the older sister tries to shield the choreographer from talking about the wretching process of leaving the Mary Jane Eisenberg Dance Company, with which Tina Gerstler danced for the last six years.

“I was there for all the changes and traumas,” the dancing Gerstler says. “Leaving was very painful--a real divorce.

“I am open, she is not,” Gerstler says. “I didn’t feel like the energy as a company was moving in a direction where I was going to continue to grow. It felt stuck. And maybe it felt stuck because she feels stuck.”

While Gerstler says she and Eisenberg were once close friends, she claims the relationship deteriorated in “the worst possible way.” The two no longer speak.

“I was trying to find my own voice,” she adds. “I am not laying blame on her. It’s just the way it was.”

Eisenberg comments: “That’s her opinion of what happened. Modern dance is built on a history of rebellion.”

Gerstler says she never considered the possibility that she was re-creating with Eisenberg the cycle of domination and liberation that she played out with her sister.

She laughs nervously at the suggestion. “That’s a great question. I would have to see some connection there,” she says.

“I believe you experience certain situations in your life because you need to learn from them, and if you don’t learn from them you are put in that arena over and over again with varying intensity until you figure it out,” she says.

“Maybe that’s why my work is so much about people and the pain and healing power of relationships--the ability to channel suffering into life force, good works, insight and the ability of each person to transform herself.”