MUSIC & DANCE : The Mystery About ‘What’s So Funny’: Is It Theater or Dance?

David Gordon cites “the asking of questions” as a primary force guiding his work, which has charmed and provoked the dance world since his emergence amid the experimental heyday of the Judson Dance Theater in the 1960s.

Those who seek specific answers may not be attuned to his method of constructing works (the term he prefers to choreographing ) out of the questions and conflicts--from the mundane to the profound--that he observes people confronting and wrestling with. For Gordon, each question does not imply an answer; the asking itself is significant.

Plenty of questions are asked in the course of Gordon’s newest work, “The Mysteries, and What’s So Funny,” a collaboration with composer Philip Glass and artist Red Grooms that has its premiere May 30 at the Spoleto Festival U.S.A. Gordon describes it as “full of whys and why nots, doubts, detours, right and wrong terms, circumstantial evidence and small, confounding mysteries.”

For those obsessed with categories, the questions “Is it a dance?” and “Is it a play?” will be prompted by the piece, which was commissioned by the festival and features five members of Gordon’s Pick Up Company (including his wife and longtime leading lady, Valda Setterfield) as well as eight actors chosen by audition.

Although Gordon has never shied away from the spoken word--his earlier Pick Up Company works clearly influenced many of the downtown choreographers of the mid- and late ‘80s who incorporated texts into their dances--”The Mysteries,” with its 72-page script, is more text-driven than his other works.

Its cast of characters includes the French artist Marcel Duchamp (portrayed by the elegantly English, endlessly versatile Setterfield, a piece of casting in which Gordon clearly delights); an elderly, long-married couple, Rose and Sam; their child; the Detective (who asks plenty of questions); the Actor, and Anger.

Gordon’s intention, he said, is that “the audience does not pick out answers and actors. Everybody in the piece is moving, everybody is talking--just some people very quietly do some things more than others.”

Veteran Pick Up members perform alongside actors representing a wide range of ages and backgrounds, including Broadway veteran Alice Playten, Lola Pashalinski, who has worked with Charles Ludlum’s Ridiculous Theatre, and Karen Kandel, who appeared in the recent Mabou Mines version of “King Lear.”

“Various people’s versions of moving became an integral part of the piece,” Gordon said appreciatively of his diverse task. “Also, it’s very nice to stop being the oldest person in the room.”

In a recent interview during the final rehearsals for “The Mysteries,” Gordon mused on how his approach in this latest work marked a change: “In the past, with some frequency, the scripted sections were like divertissements in the dancing--or the dancing was a divertissement in the script; whichever way you like to think about. Now I think that the stage action here is very much based on the script all the way through.”

“The Mysteries” has been in workshop for 18 months, with Gordon developing and adapting the material to a series of residencies in different nonprofit theaters around the country.

The material was further developed at New York’s Playwright Horizon Theatre School and then with graduate acting students at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Mass.

By that time, Gordon recalled, “I had started to draw and cut out the various objects which became an integral part of what was going on, and the characters developed to their almost completed state.” Glass’ solo piano score, which both underscores spoken scenes and accompanies movement, was developed during this period in what Gordon describes as “a very integrated collaboration.”

In their finished form, Red Grooms’ multitude of objects--including a shopping cart, a clock, panels representing the seasons, a chess board and a restaurant table--are expressively colorful and are in motion as constantly as the performers, who transport them through a seamless progression of scenes. Gordon chose Grooms, the creator of “Ruckus Manhattan” and other environmental designs, because “what he does makes a kind of comment on character and circumstance.”

The other visual artist Gordon chose to incorporate into the works, Duchamp, is one he has long considered a kindred spirit.

“He did everything I’ve ever thought of before I did it, so he seemed a pretty fair role model,” Gordon observed. “He says things that interest me, things about the asking of questions. By the very nature of his career, by what he chose to do and not to do, by what he chose to make public and to not make public, Duchamp seems to be a very good example of what it is I think I’m doing. I don’t compare myself; I compare the nature of the search.”

In the course of “The Mysteries,” Duchamp is interviewed about his intentions and themes in making art; his blithe responses include such lines as “Not knowing what you’re doing is not necessarily making art.”

“It’s always been very interesting to me that in the dance world, people are so ready to name any piece of work that you did which received any popular acclaim your ‘signature piece,’ ” Gordon said. “As if some piece of work defines all your work. My idea is that no piece of work defines all my work. A piece of work only defines itself, and I’m allowed to move between these pieces in the directions that pose questions I’m interested in dealing with.”

Gordon may or may not have a personal identification with Rose and Sam, the characters whose 50-year marriage is portrayed in “The Mysteries.” Their names are the same as those of Gordon’s parents, yet to Gordon this work is no more (or less) autobiographical than his previous ones. “I don’t know any other kind of works--how do you make any works that you know nothing about? Something matters to you, you think about it, and that goes into the work. To that extent, everything is autobiographical.

“Very early in the piece there’s a dialogue between the Young Sam and the Young Artist in which they talk about the things they’re searching for--how to make things and how to make relationships. And about how are those things and those relationships perhaps not so dissimilar, and how do you keep being interested in anything or anybody over a long period of years?”

Questions, questions--from the mysterious to the mundane. In “The Mysteries,” questions are asked about love at first sight, about work and children, about time and death. Gordon continues to delight in asking them, and out of his bemused, wry curiosity have sprung three decades of work that avoid the easy answers.