On January 21st, Monica Bill Barnes's dance company performed at HCC. Having written a paper on this very dance, I am going to dive straight into the various techniques I saw used, and some of which I may have not mentioned on my paper.
Monica Bill Barnes was very humor-centered, all except for Here We Are which was more on the serious side. The show opened with Mostly Fanfare which opened with a dance across the room which appeared like meerkats. There was plenty of absurdism in not only Here We Are but in the last work as well, Another Parade. Could there be intelligent technique in humor itself? Very much so. There are witty ways in which to express anything, and humor is not an exception.
There was plenty of balance. Using motifs of humor, they were weaved into moves that expressed a great amount of skill. The technique at times felt quite conservative even, with legs often in turnout. They could have even went more conservative if they so wanted to because there was an intelligent mix of humor used as a contrast (though does humor really "contrast" anything? Humor is one of the strange, strange things, that may have the ability to stand by its very self, though looks great still with other things that are "not" humorous). Furthermore, the audience must have picked up that all of the dancers were very much in the present and even conscious of the audience. I always enjoy works that work hard to be "user-friendly" while at the very same time pulling off something unique and sly.
This show reminded me of cakeface from its use of humor though even more refined. These are the types of works I enjoy. Last year, the show that preceded cakeface, Meghann Snow, was an example of falling short in just about everything imaginable for me. The idea was grand, but the follow-through was horrible. This had such potential! It was wasted expressing post-modern technique of the process as the art itself. The dead horse was beaten. In contrast, Monica Bill Barnes had much change of scenery. Monica was able to express postmodern techniques such as breaking of the fourth wall and the aspect of a performance being conscious of itself as a performance, yet kept things exciting. Self-referencing is quite boring by itself, but mixed in with structured or conservative techniques becomes intriguing. It's like chocolate coating a message that may be too boring--or too meaningful for its own good in this dream world where the dreamers love to dream (even if the dream is a nightmare). If the message is gotten, great, but if not, the audience still had fun. Then if a person does "get it", it becomes a double whammy. I very much go by this philosophy on my flash fiction and poetry.
Other techniques observed include amazing moving through space and through turns. The audience loves turns, and they made sure to give these to them. There was great technique in one or more dancers intervening between their own dancers, having them dance a certain way. There was also great "glitch" technique, which reminded me of Butoh. On top of it all, there was also great use of props, body language, facial expression, gesturing, and lighting.
This was an inspiring work, and hopefully I will get to see something of this nature soon again.
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