Wrestling With the Inner ‘Beast’

Choreographer Donald Byrd is describing a scene between lovers that two of his dancers performed recently for students at Mira Costa High School in Manhattan Beach--a scene that pointedly illustrates the difference between talking about an issue and dancing about it.

As he explains the way the couple clasped hands and embraced, Byrd stretches his arms into courtly curves and gentle touches that are familiar from ballet versions of “Romeo and Juliet.” At first, the students watching had seemed dreamily wrapped up in the love story aspect, Byrd says, “but as the idealized gestures got more controlling, they got that there was something odd about it--like when she attempts to move her hand away and he puts it back where he wants it, or he won’t let her initiate a movement.”

Still, the fact that the sequence ended in a slap took them by surprise, and that started a discussion about how gestures of love might become methods of control. One student described a girl who gets beeped by her boyfriend at school and has to call him back within 5 minutes. Kids who might have thought keeping constant tabs on a loved one was romantic started to think up other interpretations.

Byrd, 52, is sitting in a coffee shop not far from El Camino College in Torrance, where his 10-member company has been doing a residency in connection with tonight’s performance of “The Beast: The Domestic Violence Project,” a 75-minute dance theater piece he choreographed in 1996.

High school workshops have been part of the residency, which coincides with National Domestic Violence Awareness Month. In the same way that the students started to look at gestures and movement critically, Byrd hopes that audiences for “The Beast” will understand the power of dance while they’re learning more about domestic violence.

“I think movement has a way of getting past intellectual barriers--it sneaks in,” Byrd says with quiet enthusiasm. “Watching dance creates a kinesthetic, muscular response that’s closely related to what it’s like to be in that situation. Then you start to notice what’s going on and that if you keep silent, you’re complicit.”

When Byrd was first asked by a presenter to create a work that involved a social issue, he decided that exploring domestic violence might uncover some of the roots of violence in general. Indeed, Byrd points out links between this issue and global events; he’s read that one agency in Northern California reported a significant increase in domestic violence incidents since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, and he notes that rising unemployment has traditionally resulted in more domestic violence.

But making a dance that illuminates an issue while retaining artistic integrity isn’t easy, Byrd admits. It’s a challenge he faced before, in 1991, when an interest in the history of minstrel shows led to his bold deconstruction of the genre in “The Minstrel Show.” Byrd included satirical segments, like a Ku Klux Klan pas de deux, and had dancers acting out racist jokes minstrel-style in order to explore biases. At one performance in La Jolla, there was a near-riot when white audience members felt accused--there was no racism in their community, some said--and Byrd had to stop the show for a calming discussion.

Since then, he has often faced the fact that--as one participant in a “Beast” educational session once told him--some people don’t want to think when they see dance.

“I don’t know what to say to that,” Byrd says, shaking his head. “I do two kinds of work--the issue-driven and the work that’s really about abstraction, dancerly issues. I try to find the balance--it can never be a kind of community feel-good fest; the quality has to be good, working from a kind of authenticity.”

To gain as much knowledge about domestic violence as he could before choreographing “The Beast,” Byrd talked to victims, counselors and offenders, then sat down with his dancers to discuss their personal connections to the issue and their feelings about it. A dramaturge helped guide discussions, leading to a structure in which there is a central couple, whose problems are echoed in other duets and scenes that use dialogue and song as well as dance. The results, said one reviewer at the New York Times, “seethes with the turbulence of German Expressionism” and is saved from melodrama by a “Brechtian intellectual coolness.”

Counselors Available After Performances

On opening night, in 1996 in Seattle, “The Beast” engendered a highly emotional response, Byrd recalls. “I hadn’t realized that would happen,” Byrd says, “Since I didn’t feel equipped to help the way professionals do, we never do the piece now without having counselors available afterward. People seem to want to hang around and talk about it. Survivors have told me that it’s accurate emotionally, and I think that’s the best validation you can get.”

Performed only a few times in the years since its premiere, “The Beast” is often passed up by presenters, who may shy away from the subject matter. “To tell you the truth,” Byrd says, “I’m confused about the general public’s willingness to really be engaged by something that’s heart-wrenching and intellectually stimulating. I just have to put it out there and hope.”

Tim Van Leer, the former director of El Camino College Arts Center who booked “The Beast,” says his idea was “to step outside the bounds of normal presentations.” On the phone from Kansas, where he now directs another arts facility, Van Leer says, “I think you’re going to see a lot more people using the arts as a platform to discuss social issues after [Sept. 11]; that’s our domestic violence these days, and artists are going to want to communicate something about it.”

When Byrd is asked if a dance-theater piece like “The Beast” can change lives, he almost rolls his eyes, reacting to the weight of the question.

“People have said to me that it has changed their lives,” he finally says. “It certainly has changed my life, because it’s made me really sensitive to this issue and aware of what in my behavior could be read as abusive. Like when I want things my own way, I start thinking about issues around male privilege and abusing someone’s trust. You don’t have to hit someone to abuse them.”

Byrd thinks that a piece like “The Beast” will attract people who don’t ordinarily go to see dance, a fact confirmed by Paula Van Doren, a mental health services administrator from the Beach Cities Health District who joined Byrd for coffee after attending a high school session. She says that interest is running high among professionals and clients who deal with domestic violence issues.

Byrd hopes that regular theatergoers will also attend, ready to engage in the subject matter, as they would with any performance that has many layers. Or as Byrd puts it, “It’s not just outreach; I hope it’s art too.”

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Donald Byrd/The Group, tonight at 8, “The Beast: The Domestic Violence Project,” Marsee Auditorium, El Camino College, 16007 Crenshaw Blvd., Torrance. $24-21, (310) 329-5345, 1-800-832-ARTS.