Paul Taylor might seem like an odd way to get into a discussion of avant-garde dance. But once upon a time, he was at its forefront. In the documentary “Dancemaker,” there’s a still image from Mr. Taylor’s 1957 “Duet,” in which, for four minutes, he did nothing more than stand behind a woman seated on the floor with her skirt draped over her legs. This work and others in “Seven New Dances” made history — as did Louis Horst’s review in the magazine Dance Observer: four inches of blank space.
“Well,” Mr. Taylor says in the film, “you try things.”
But Mr. Taylor’s studies of gesture, pedestrian movement and stillness add up to more than just a gimmick or, as Mr. Horst insinuated, a blank — void of meaning and intelligence. Experimental corners of the dance world are still obsessed with that historic program. Wouldn’t it be thrilling if Paul Taylor’s American Modern Dance revived those early works?
That will probably never happen. Instead, for the group’s coming season, we’ll be treated to a pair of what are likely to be easy-does-it dances by Doug Elkins and Larry Keigwin.
Stephen Thompson in “Culture, Administration & Trembling.” Credit Meg Lavender/Fierce Festival
Most large institutions rely on the status quo, the safe and the sometimes dull. That’s why it’s so important to seek out dance that exists on the margins. Risk is crucial for an art form; so is failure. They’re necessary for growth. And following a choreographer is an investment. You don’t watch just one Quentin Tarantino movie, you watch them all. Similarly, choreography is a progression: one long piece shown over years.
Each January, the spirit of “trying things” is celebrated and alive in the contemporary dance world. Festivals like Coil 2016, organized by Performance Space 122, and American Realness, put together by Ben Pryor and held mainly at Abrons Arts Center on the Lower East Side, begin early in the month. Both are presented in conjunction with the Association of Performing Arts Presenters showcase, in which artists show works in excerpt or complete form for theater directors and programmers from the United States and abroad. Much surrounding the association showcase is disheartening, including its meat-market approach. But what’s especially disappointing is the way many productions are presented as excerpts. Dance — both to make and observe — takes time.
These days, following contemporary dance is a little like digging for treasure in a junkyard. What I’m always looking for are choreographers who are not pushing boundaries blindly but investigating the myriad possibilities of modern dance and the body and how to situate both in popular culture. I keep up the search because of those moments during a performance when, suddenly, my spine straightens: I’m in the presence of an artist and not an impersonator. Performance-ready is not the point, and new is never quite new. Imagination and a sense of theater matter enormously. I would rather see struggle, a dance full of tension and questions, than another generic, spirit-free, derivative work.
How do dances even get made these days? Since I started covering it in 1995, contemporary dance has deteriorated — not the work, which will always ebb and flow, but its structure and support system, museums aside. And while it’s nice (or is it?) that the visual art world is interested in presenting dance, the involvement by museums, from the Whitney to the Museum of Modern Art, has resulted in artists trying to validate their ideas more through words than movement. The heart of a dance cannot exist as just a museum catalog. It’s easier to talk your way around a dance than to make one.
While there are exceptions, the company model, in which a choreographer works with a steady group of dancers and puts on a show once a year at the Joyce Theater, has waned for most daring dance makers for reasons that I think are both artistic and financial. Now many choreographers hire dancers according to the project at hand. It’s not new — Twyla Tharp has done it for a long time — but it has become the norm. The impossible economic climate of New York (yes, rent) makes it hard to imagine a return to the spunk and spirit of the 1960s and ’70s. Now, it seems, choreographers and dancers spend more time teaching Pilates than working in the studio or training, and that has seeped onto the stage, where technique has dwindled.
Is this why simple, repetitive phrases have become so ubiquitous, since mastering a variety of intricate steps is harder than just repeating a few? The alternative, in which a dancer tries to attain the kind of presence that emanates from the inside out, is profound in the skilled bodies of dancers like Molly Lieber and Melanie Maar. It may look easy, but there’s nothing simple about such subtle work. Do it halfheartedly, and it’s nothing.
Over the years, American Realness — which will branch out this spring with a tour of France — has been uneven, but there have been memorable performances, including two by Europeans: Marten Spangberg’s “La Substance, but in English,” performed over four and a half hours at MoMA PS1, and Ivo Dimchev’s “FEST,” a brilliantly satirical look at the performance-festival circuit. This season, there are plenty of artists in which to invest some time: Jillian Peña, who works in video, will continue her fixation with unison movement and choreographic kaleidoscopes in the premiere of “Panopticon,” a meeting point of mirrors, film and movement. And the earthy, experimental choreographer and improvisor Yvonne Meier, one of the most important members of the East Village dance scene of the ’90s, presents her new prop-heavy “Durch Nacht und Nebel.”
In “Culture, Administration & Trembling,” another ’90s dance fixture, Jennifer Lacey, returns to New York from Paris to team up with the choreographer Antonija Livingstone and others for a series rooted in “time-based sculptures.” What does a dancer’s discipline look like? “Excavation Site: Martha Graham U.S.A.,” a one-off presentation by the Austrian choreographer Michael Kliën, features performers — past, present, future — from the Martha Graham Dance Company as they explore their relationship to that modern master. In late January, Ann Liv Young, the brash and wise performance artist, takes on Sophocles in “Elektra.”
The point is to embrace unpredictability. But here’s a safer bet: If you missed David Neumann’s “I Understand Everything Better” last April, there’s another opportunity to delve into this choreographer’s deeply personal look at death and dying. Mr. Neumann has been hiding behind his virtuosic performance skill for the past few years. In “I Understand,” he peeled back those layers; he showed himself. Do I support that? Always.
