by Leigh Witchel
What gives a work an identity – what makes it Black, or for that matter French, Jewish or anything?
Kyle Marshall has danced for several companies, including stints with Doug Elkins and Trisha Brown. You can see the influence of both in his work. His new pieces, three dances made last year that have now transitioned from virtual space to the stage, were both a testament to what he’s learned in his career, and what he’s refracted through his own life and experience.
“STELLAR,” which began life as a film, had a station for a DJ, Dial Winfield, at the back. Three dancers, Bree Breeden, Ariana Speight and Marshall, loped on in uncertain steps with falls backwards and forwards. They wore loose shirts and pants by Malcolm-x Betts, brightly painted like street art. Marshall posed, the two women clambered slowly round him. Winfield rang bells and played a soft trumpet note. The distorted horn recalled the sound score for Merce Cunningham’s “Ground Level Overlay.” This had a similar in-a-cistern quality, and the dancers moved as if underwater.
The dance was formally structured, and simply composed. The cast came together in the center for basic movements: walking, skipping, jumping and running. The trio moved into a line; the tempo changed and their steps changed to triplets as they stamped, then clapped. The two women exited; Marshall remained onstage. Winfield played kitten-on-the-keyboard music and louder fuzz as the lights went out.
The dancers reentered for a second section in static. Speight crawled in near the wings to go out again, Breeden slowly walked across the stage, Marshall entered hopping in cautiously on one leg. Lighting designer Amanda K. Ringger started using black light so paint spatters on the costumes became visible.
The music got louder; the dancers walked round one another pulling away as they circled, finally lying off to end the piece.
Marshall describes “STELLAR” as being inspired by “Afrofuturism, the echoes of Jazz, and the stars within us.” There was a dystopian quality to it as well, of a future that could show up with different hidden outcomes depending on the light.
The traveler at the back of the stage was opened for Marshall’s solo, “I & I,” which was made with a grant for exploring Caribbean dance. He prepared the stage by setting up two chairs and covering them in fabric, one in bright red, the other in reflective gold, and left a piece of shredded blue fabric at the front.
Sitting down seemed to mark the formal beginning of the solo. He gestured as if beckoning someone, and walked to the sound of water, unshackling his wrists slowly, delicately rolling and waving his hands.
The music was a collage with plenty of reggae. Marshall’s movement style is fluid, and owes to the folks he’s danced with. Steps blurred into the next. He started to vibrate his hips. His shimmying turned to spinning, first in place, then round the space.
He picked up and wadded the blue fabric into a ball. The lights dimmed and he lay down, using the fabric as a pillow, but woke up with a start and sat back in gold-covered chair. The music started to throb, he posed and pointed like John Travolta in “Saturday Night Fever” (when he took off his shirt, he even had a wifebeater underneath) as the lights changed color like a discotheque.
Marshall put his body on display, tossing his shirt off stage, vibrating his hips and limbs. He used the red fabric first as a cape, then a sarong, walking decoratively. After touching the ground, and smelling his fingers, he put his head back on the wadded pillow as if it were a dream, and unwrapped himself from the sarong by tossing in sleep.
Marshall folded up the cloth and tossed it aside as he jogged to reggae, then faster. He became a Running Man, making several laps around the stage before breaking into jumps and dancing. Snatches of “Exodus” by Bob Marley & The Wailers played. Marshall faced us and took the gold fabric. He started doing a Joyce Trisler-Isadora Duncan spin, then wrapped the fabric into a gold toga. The lights went down, and he motioned first for silence, then to follow him. Marley repeated “So we gonna walk” before abruptly falling silent.
For the last, largest work, “Rise,” another musician/DJ, Cal Fish, came in and set up downstage right, wearing a similar costume to the dancers, a white skintight top with loose pants that shaded to yellow.
Marshall started out lying down, and did a contraction to rise. The music was ethereal, high electric beats, and Fish also played flute. Marshall stayed close to the floor; the others entered, Speight, Breeden and another slightly-built man, José Lapaz-Rodriguez.
Marshall seemed to choreograph to the fall of the body, with weight heading in one direction until it either fell off or rebounded. Speight danced a loose solo as Lapaz-Rodriguez watched; this transitioned to Marshall and Breeden as the music throbbed.
Like the other works, “Rise” was an abstract composition, well-made in the style of many other downtown New York works. The dancers walked in a tight circle, their arms floating up high like wings in the atmospheric haze. They gathered at the back, each coming forward in a different effortful step that suggested either being battered or defensive.
The cyclorama kept changing color as the music returned a thumping beat and the dancing moved to an ecstatic unison. The motion became constant, almost a line dance in a heavenly discotheque.
The work began to look less post-modern: to jogging dance phrases, Marshall built up a structure with material that was vernacular at its roots. Lapaz-Rodriguez danced to a groove that sounded like gospel house: a little echo of Ronald Brown’s “Grace.” The group resumed, arms raised, dancing in a line. By the end there was an insistent groove. Finally, each put their arms to their hearts, briefly took a knee, got up and bowed. After our applause, they danced off.
The original inspiration for “Rise” was to be a follow up to “A.D.,” a work Marshall made about Christianity in 2019. “Rise” morphed into something lighter, but still influenced by the joy of dancing, club music and the Black church.
Years ago, we used the word “sensibility” to describe the amorphous cultural soup that got brewed into an artist’s point of view. “Identity” seems to be more common now, as if intimating these things are more fixed than fluid, and as fundamental as breathing. Some of it obviously is – Marshall uses concepts and references in his work that are intrinsic to being Black.
Also years ago, a conversation with a great ballet dancer led to him saying that whatever he danced, whether by a ballet or modern choreographer, would be classical when he danced it because it was filtered through his body and that was inherently how he moved.
In the same way, Marshall’s work is Black at its roots because he is Black: perhaps more evidence that identity is a prism that everything we make is refracted through, and everything that passes through us, even the things we share in common, takes on aspects of it.
copyright © 2022 by Leigh Witchel
Kyle Marshall Choreography
Chelsea Factory, New York, NY
April 9, 2022, matinee
Cover: Kyle Marshall in “I & I.” Photo credit © Pauline St. Denis.
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