Like all great minimalists,David Greenberger understands the power of small. I’ve never been the subject of one of his interviews, but he surely has the listening knack of Studs Terkel. But unlike that late, great oral historian, Greenberger isn’t necessarily a conduit, helping the unvoiced (or unheard) find words to tell their great stories. Greenberger listens, but he doesn’t transcribe. Instead, he finds jewel-like miniatures that dance around in his conversations, cuts and polishes them, and places them in a setting in which their brilliance shines.
Greenberger brought his latest project to the Pabst Theater last week with Paul Cebar and a group of crack musicians. He speaks the words to his “songs” without any actorliness or attempt to mimic his subjects. And the pieces themselves are often no longer than a Haiku. But the people emerge with full force through the words and the music. There are touching admissions of the failures of age (“It’s like there’s a hole in my head,”), fist shaking life affirmations, and lots of great story telling.
It reminded me a lot of David Byrne and Brian Eno’s pioneering My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. But while Byrne and Eno used field recordings and were driven by the rhythms of the voices they sampled, “Cherry Picking Apple Blossom Time” is all about mood. Paul Cebar’s musical vignettes capture character as deftly as Greenberger’s words. They’re generally simple, two or four chord patterns—hardly rising to the level of “song,” but they are richly textured and drenched in soul.
This was one of those one-night-only events that should have had a bigger audience (even though the 300-plus attendence was impressive). Don’t fret. Milwaukee Public Television recorded the concert for a future broadcast. Filmmaker Brad Lichtenstein is producing a documentary about the whole project. And the CD is available from Greenberger’s website, Duplex Planet.
Before a single drumbeat was heard, the Ko-Thi Dance Company’s 40th anniversary celebration o
pened Friday night with three generations on stage, performing a ritual to open the show. And the rest of the evening kept the feeling of a family affair. Current members joined alumni to revisit some of the company’s best work from its first 40 years, and there was never a doubt that there is another 40 years of dance in the future.
Of the four pieces, the first was the rockiest. A mash-up of notable works from the company’s history, it featured characters from several dances on stage at once. As the rest of the program showed, the company is at its best when the choreographic energy is multiplied with several dancers performing in unison. Or when an individual steps into the spotlight to strut his or her stuff. The opening number diluted that energy rather than enhanced it.
It was powerfully felt in Juba and Goombay in the program’s second half. Combining traditions of minstrelsy other dances from the African Diaspora, Juba is one of most interesting dances of Ferne Caulker’s Ko-Thi career. It jumps between style, drawing connections and jarring juxtapositions, and it drips with attitude. Goombay draws on Senegalese traditions, and lets each dancer step up for one spectacular solo turn after another.
There’s also great pleasure in watching the group’s children’s company, Ton Ko-Thi, perform. Not only because they are accomplished and spirited, but because of the way these dances sit on bodies which seem to be all arms and legs. When arms are thrown forward, it’s with such force that you expect to see them fly across the stage. If the energy here is any indication, Ko-Thi has a long and brilliant future ahead.
Kurt Hartwig’s beautiful momento mori, Decaffeinated Tragedy, played two performances at the Moct Bar before venturing off to the Prague Fringe Festival. Part memory play and part cabinet of curiosities, Hartwig’s one-person piece explores his friendship with a woman who suffered from chronic heart problems. But it’s really about his early-life encounter with mortality, experienced at a very personal and visceral level.
Taking a cue from Proust, and interrogating the idea of memory along the way, Hartwig’s recollections involve all the senses. He associates their friendship with his introduction to coffee drinking, so he makes coffee for the audience. He serves a favorite cheesecake recipe, shows us her artwork and photographs, and gently channels her voice when he reads from her diary entries.
What emerges is not just the portrait of a frail and spirited woman whose life was tragically cut short. But also an active mind willing to think outside the normal boundaries of mourning and loss. In Hartwig’s world, the past—even one rife with deep emotions—is always pushing for new ways to express itself: new stories, new metaphors, new associations. It’s not a past that repeats itself, but is ever reimagined to enrich the present.
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