by Leigh Witchel
Sometimes, asking for an equal slice of the pie actually means you want to cut the pieces. The Works & Process show “Design Dialogues with ISAW’s ‘The Ancient World and the Ballets Russes’” had two purposes: A connection with the exhibition at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, but also an encore opportunity to commission designers Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung to create costumes and assemble a show around them.
Bartelme’s background was in dance, Jung’s was in visual art with a degree from Berkeley in Molecular and Cell Biology; the two formed Reid & Harriet Design in 2011. Their work is ubiquitous in New York; in the past month they’ve dressed the 100 Cunningham solos at BAM, two premieres at New York City Ballet and this. In the pre-performance talk moderated by curator Linda Murray, Jung mentioned her disappointment in the non-equal playing field for designers. But she and Bartelme are looking to run the show.
The exhibition combines artifacts from antiquity with sketches and designs from the Ballet Russes to trace the inspirations and influences. The Institute approached Works & Process, which in turn approached Bartelme and Jung. They approached two choreographers, Christopher Williams and Netta Yerushalmy, to create works using their designs. Bartelme had danced with Williams and dressed Yerushalmy in other people’s work. He picked Williams because of his fascination with historical subjects. Williams was the one who selected the music, ”Daphnis et Chloé” by Ravel.
Williams is a polymath known for his own striking designs, including puppetry. He offered ideas, which Jung and Bartelme “disengaged” from, (that’s art-speak for actively rejected), insisting instead on the choreographers seeing the costumes at the dress rehearsal. From jump, this concept wasn’t bringing out the best in anyone.
Williams’ section began with a frieze in half-darkness. To the score’s vocalise, intruders scurried across the stage. The promise of Sara Mearns as Chloe offered hope for something special. Three nymphs (Bartelme was one) wore flesh-colored unitards with tulle across the front, gathered and affixed like cording. The design, both simple yet fussy, looked like Noguchi outtakes bought on final sale at TJ Maxx. Williams’ choreography for his “Daphnis & Chloé” was very One Grecian Urn for the nymphs and more earthy for the pirates.
Mearns appeared in soft slippers, the others were barefoot. She ran about, looking frightened and acting acting acting, but grabbed a staff from one of the pirates to defend herself. The lights went blood red and she danced a solo that started classically in tendu front. Mearns wafted about, importuning and bending. The gestures – a hand wiped across the forehead, the wrists crossed as if tied – not only recalled Ashton’s “Daphnis” but also “Sylvia” – Yet Another Grecian Urn. With all the tropes of ballets about antiquity, Williams could have done more to emphasize – or break – that connection.
In the talk after, Murray remarked that the pirates were the “most glamorous pirates I’ve ever seen, The Pirates of San Tropez.” The designers explained that the pants were inspired by Korean undergarments with added fringe, over those the three women and two men wore a pale linen-colored top shaped like a serape. After a music change, three satyrs crawled from the pit wearing leggings made from your aunt’s fuzzy bathmats. The bleeding chunk excerpt ended with an abrupt blackout.
Of course Mearns sold everything. She doesn’t need big steps; she can make an extension and a backbend luscious. But Williams didn’t ask for a lot from her. In the talk, Williams said he appreciated the design process because “it cracked open my shell.” But it also dulled his voice. Williams depends on gesamtkunstwerk – a word he used to describe his process, and his designs augment his choreography. He’s not just a step maker; he relies on his visual ideas to carry a chunk of the theatrical burden, and most likely the extravagance of his own designs would have offset the restraint of the choreography. This collaboration looked white-on-white.
Yerushalmy’s excerpt “like lithos” had the deconstructionist’s curse of trusting nothing. “How can I subvert the unitard?” she asked during the talk. She mentioned that she saw the score as another costume, and the story, as well as the exhibit’s artifacts as a backdrop. They were in the mix, but scattered among other things.
Using the same musical excerpts, her dances were the anatomization of a frieze. There were still One Grecian Urn poses, but Yerushalmy’s were less decorative, and more obsessive. Her four dancers joined hands, hunching over and stamping, like something out of “The Seventh Seal.” Marc Crousillat hopped lamely one leg as the lights dimmed.
The snippets and quotes were the foreground. Crousillat came forward with his mouth in a wide open grimace like a Greek mask. Bartelme, next to him, jumped with his legs under him like the Chosen Maiden in the “The Rite of Spring.” “Rite” was everywhere. Yerushalmy, whose recent “Paramodernities” researched modern masterworks including “Rite,” hadn’t gotten it out of her system.
If Yerushalmy were suspicious of unitards, she didn’t trust Ravel either. A light like a searchlight blared on and she abruptly lifted the needle on the recording. In the ambient silence, two dancers galloped around the audience; you could hear their labored breathing.
The costumes for “lithos” were dark and cloak-like, giving an almost monastic look to the dancers. Towards the end of the excerpt, Bartelme slipped the black overgarment down to Amos Machanic Jr’s waist and retied the sleeves as a belt. It felt like an obligatory runway reveal on “Drag Race.”
While the others vibrated at the back, leaping and shivering, Jung came onstage, picking up the discarded black shifts. She was joined by Bartelme, who helped her lay them out up steps into the audience. The sound recording was cut off right before a final crescendo.
Yerushalmy’s deconstruction of Daphnis, like most deconstruction, was bracing from the short-term shock, but when that’s all you do, it’s a shtick, and desensitizing. The next, and the following, and the following subversion seem incrementally less subversive. It was lovely when something constructive happened, such as when Brittany Engel-Adams went off right past the stage area and swung into a high attitude to spin to the floor.
And at the end, we were faced with the premise that this was all inspired by the costume designs. Bartleme and Jung’s costumes were perfectly serviceable, but what did they design that should have been the point of a show? This wasn’t Pablo Picasso for “Parade,” or Rei Kawakubo for “Scenario,” or Marcel Dzama for Justin Peck’s “The Most Incredible Thing,” or Michael Clark’s collaboration with Stevie Stewart for “Mmm…,” his version of “The Rite of Spring” or Kurt Seligman, or Pavel Tchelitchev, or even Williams’ own designs for his “The Golden Legend” or any of a long list of designs that actually took center stage by changing the shape of the body. Even considering that clothing in the ancient world was simple in construction, think of what Noguchi was able to accomplish. Why ask for top billing to make unitards and the occasional shmatte? Step it up and steal the show or dump your pretension and support the dance.
copyright © 2019 by Leigh Witchel
“Design Dialogues with ISAW’s ‘The Ancient World and the Ballets Russes’” – Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung
Works & Process
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY
April 29, 2019
Cover: Sara Mearns in “Daphnis & Chloé.” Photo © Eryc Perez de Tagle.
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