by Leigh Witchel
“The Day” was a dream in slow motion. Created in two parts, the germ of the material is a piece, “world to come,” for cellist Maya Beiser by composer David Lang, started right before 9/11. In 2016, the two added a prequel, “The Day,” and Beiser asked dancer Wendy Whelan and choreographer Lucinda Childs to complete her vision of it.
Beiser entered the stage wearing a long, white pantsuit designed by Karen Young , and moved up a ramp to the back. She sat with her instrument in the aqueous half-light created by Natasha Katz. Across the stage, Whelan sat on a stool, wearing white shorts and a long tube of muslin. Throughout the dance she used simple props. The first was a ribbon held taut.
Projected on the cyclorama were black and white images by Joshua Higgason: the two women in a cavernous empty room with banks of windows, like an empty dance studio. On film Beiser and Whelan spoke. “I remember the day . . .” The narrative, consisting of that sentence, again and again, followed by with multiple endings, was crowd-sourced from the Internet by Lang. It became a list, but one that added up to a slow awakening: “I remember the day I decided to become a composer. I remember the day I decided to move there for good.”
Whelan traded the ribbon for a strap like one might find in physical therapy, which she used to hold her legs in arabesque. Her movement was simple and restrained, then she dropped herself in the tube, and got another prop: a draped ball and white sheet that looked like the puppet of a ghost.
The voice-over sentences went in alphabetical order:
“I decided . . .”
“I finally . . .”
“I first . . .”
Whelan picked up two rods as her next prop, and moved slowly using them.
“I found out . . .”
She braced the rods on the ground and pivoted round.
“I gave . . .”
“I got . . .”
Invisible hands at the wings returned props to Whelan, first the tube and the ribbon. Whelan moved stiffly, keeping the ribbon taut.
“I heard . . . about his passing.” The things that were heard seemed to all be tragic.
Whelan pulled in twin ropes from offstage and on the screen her actions were echoed by two disembodied hands and rope. She used the torsion from the ropes to travel to the ground, then released them, coiled up the rope, and retrieved the ball and sheet from the wings. She used it as a cape.
The next interior in the projections was the cathedral-like interior of the rebuilt Fulton Street station. The narrative continued at “I took . . .” as Whelan left the stage.
Beiser changed outfits and wore a black tank and pants as the story wound to the end of the alphabet.
“I wrote . . . my letter of resignation.”
Beiser left the stage in darkness, followed by Whelan, to rumbling sounds, like explosions of a battle far away.
Both returned in black. Most other changes were imperceptible modulations. Beiser played a droning chord, Whelan did small academic steps: chassé, pose, b-plus, pas de bourrée. She moved in rapid steps back, recoiling as if she had dropped something.
Long mournful notes played on a recording, which gave Beiser a short break. The stage brightened to the blue hour at the break of day. Whelan’s steps sped up but remained smooth: bending, reaching, then more simple ballet: post-post-modern Isadora Duncan. “The Day” was more constrained than Whelan’s earlier projects, but it was still as much of a marathon. Then she moved as if on a tightrope. The music and prose had a clear path, but there was very little structure to Childs’ steps.
Beiser turned away from us. A long, narrow gauze dropped down, that Whelan brought up the ramp while the projection behind echoed falling draperies.
She pulled down the drapes and neatly caught the falling ends, laid it down carefully like a carpet, then rolled slowly down the ramp in it. On the film, the drapes fell one by one and there was one last note played before the blackout.
It would have been easy to interpret the gauze as a shroud, but it was less like the end of life and more the end of a long day. Not a shroud, but bed sheets at night.
The most interesting aspect of “The Day,” even with the men involved, was the feminine energy of the collaboration. It’s easy to think of Whelan’s post-New York City Ballet appearances as one-woman shows. But Beiser was the driving force behind this and she and Whelan shared the stage equally. “The Day” was a journey from the past to the present, not one of triumph, but discovery.
The dream-like quality, repetition and pace of “The Day” came with a cost – the show didn’t have the excitement of previous shows that Whelan’s been associated with, “Restless Creature” from 2015 or 2017’s “Some of a Thousand Words.” Childs’ steps were rigorously simple, but also, as is often the case with her, one step from bald. It was a relatively short “Day,” but it felt long.
copyright © 2019 by Leigh Witchel
“The Day” – Maya Beiser, Wendy Whelan, Lucinda Childs, David Lang
The Joyce Theater, New York, NY
October 22, 2019
Cover: Maya Beiser and Wendy Whelan in “The Day.” Photo © Nils Schlebusch.
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