“People think that she does every day movement,” says Shannon Stewart (tEEth) of choreographer Deborah Hay’s reputation “…it’s a little bit more than that.” Stewart, along with fellow dancer, Mary Margaret Moore, will demonstrate exactly how much more this weekend at Washington Hall with an evening titled Who’s Afraid of Deborah Hay (April 5 & 6, two performances each night).
If you know postmodern dance you probably know the name Deborah Hay and you’re probably already planning on attending. If not then you may be wondering just what there is to fear about Deborah Hay. “It is hard work to cuddle up to,” Moore acknowledges “but there is something magnificent in it.”
A lack of traditional forms is certainly possible, if not likely, in Hay’s work though it isn’t totally open, free form, and purely improvised. The technique orients more toward a quality of performance through a given score rather than a form of any kind. Where dance improvisation may have dancers exploring an impulse, lingering in it and stretching it out to get the most out of it before moving on, Hay’s training asks performers to let go. It is a meditative approach in which distractions and impulses are released at every turn. This letting go is integral to Hay’s most recent work and the path she has taken to it.
As a dancer and choreographer, Hay is in the midst of a long journey. After spending her early professional years with Merce Cunningham she retreated from technique and even audience in the 70s before returning to audiences and trained performers in large group dances and, most recently, the Solo Performance Commissioning Project. Stewart and Moore are alumnae of that project.
The Solo Performance Commissioning Project covered a 14-year period beginning in 1998 on Whidbey Island and moving to Helsinki, briefly, in 2004 before settling in Findhorn, Scotland where it ended in 2012. The project centered on the process of disseminating and thereby releasing the work. This was accomplished by teaching the technique and the choreography (a loose, often highly metaphoric score rather than a precise series of steps) to a select group of dancers. Those dancers have been taking that work into the world and performing it, but they are more than simply the performers of a codified structure.
While maintaining nuanced degrees of inviolability in each solo, the dancers were given a high degree of ownership over their pieces. Most notably they paid for the training and choreography, but they didn’t buy it with their own money, they paid for it by winning commissions.
So, whereas the relationship between funding and dance often goes from granting organization to choreographer with the dancer as a servant to their agreement, Hay placed the dancer at the center. Stewart and Moore’s commissioning funders were a crowd of more than 500 donors. Their presentation is sponsored by Washington Hall, Velocity Dance Center, and Studio Current where they did much of the daily solo practice over a combined year, as required by the terms of the project.
There are limits to that ownership. The solo does not belong to one dancer but to a whole class of dancers—from a dozen in the early years to a score in the final year. That shared ownership and the looseness of the score makes for endless variations on each piece. In the four performances presented this weekend Seattle audiences will have a chance to see some of this variation as Stewart performs Dynamic!, which she received from Hay in the project’s final year. Moore will perform At Once from 2009.
Far from finding anything to fear in Hay’s work there will be opportunity for a more thorough understanding of it. Each evening will also feature non-panel presentations by local experts on Hay’s work including Peggy Piacenza, who goes back to Hay’s Whidbey Island days, along with Amelia Reeber and Kris Wheeerl, who go back to Hay’s Whidbey Island days.
So what is it we’re going to see this weekend? Stewart observes that there is “…art that makes you want to see and consume more art and art that makes you want to see more life. I think this work makes you want to see more life.”
Moore concurs: “Dancers are by-large known for their never-ending sacrifice and work-ethic, which can be life squandering. It is no wonder that these things find their way into the work, and that we train our audiences to see that and want more of that: an “art needs art” kind of paradigm. I hope that this work is a “life needs art needs life” kind of thing.”
“The practice of non-judgement, and “what if where I am is what I need?” can be such a relief for a dancer.” Moore says, “In our first hours together at Findhorn, Deborah said something like, ‘I’m not saying this because I’m nice. I’m saying it because it enlarges my dancing.’”
With any luck Who’s Afraid of Deborah Hay will be a relief for its audiences and will enlarge our lives leaving us eager to consume more life.
{Who’s Afraid of Deborah Hay can be seen at Washington Hall on May 5 and 6, more information and tickets can be found here.}
