by Leigh Witchel
The words projected on the wall as you entered the downstairs theater at La MaMa: “What is it to show a dance in 2022?” However much less concerned you might be with that question, it’s good to see Neil Greenberg making a dance in 2022.
Greenberg’s “Betsy” was a trio-plus – Greenberg was a substantial but not constant presence in it – that delved into his back catalog of more than three decades, works such as 1987’s “MacGuffin,” “Not-About-AIDS-Dance” from 1994, and “The Disco Project” from the following year, while avoiding becoming a Greatest Hits rehash. “MacGuffin” was his first piece done at La MaMa; he referred to “Betsy” as his “first COVID era piece.” Having sat for a year seeing dance in theaters large and small, masked and unmasked, on two continents, that seems a bit behind the curve, but that’s getting cranky.
The work, a little shy of an hour, was done on a dance floor set up in the middle of the theater space, with a row or two of seating on all sides. The production collaborators Greenberg assembled were top-notch. James Lo and Zeena Parkins collaborated on a thought-provoking score, David Quinn made simple, effective costumes with one great gimmick that was aided by Michael Stiller’s ingenious lighting.
Greenberg, who was doing stepping as a warm up before the show began, was in a simple white sleeveless T-shirt and shorts, a callback to the costumes in “Not-About-AIDS-Dance.” He did a staggering phrase, also a callback to that dance, except it was elevated literally by incorporating the step. That Greenberg looked and danced as he did at age 63 was seriously impressive.
Three other dancers were in the main dancing area, all in simple variations of a white top and shorts. They all did different, but related bouncing motions. Greenberg develops his movement phrases from improvisation that gets videotaped. Once he provided most of that movement, now it’s more often done by his dancers.
He has always seemed most concerned with the resonances of movement. Movements rarely cut off or stopped abruptly, they tended to reverberate into an escalated step or petered out. Steps were often pushed by repetition to a point of flailing, as if seeing what the physical parameters of the movement were.
Like Balanchine’s aesthetic was rooted in the late 1920s, Greenberg lives in the 1970s; at least here. He even has a pornstache right now. The references were everywhere. The wah wah effect on guitar in Lo and Parkins’ score sounded like the opening of “Shaft.”
The trio looked at one another and moved into unison. Suddenly, Stiller’s lighting changed Quinn’s costumes to be bright yellow as well as the dancers’ nails, which had been painted with white polish.
Before the dance began and for a few minutes into it, Greenberg used text projections, a device he’s used often. These were relatively brief, about two to three minute’s worth, and kept going until they turned off discreetly. They talked about his history with this dance and La MaMa, and also told an off-color joke about an atheist and a blowjob, before asking, “Too soon?” Of course not.
There was also introspection about dance now in the age of social justice, and a lot of neurotic questioning. “What is inescapably a context of this work. COVID? The segregation within the dance world?” Greenberg wondered if he should make this work about realizing that some of the jokes he told were racist, and whether he should name the piece “Not-About-White-Supremacy-Dance.”
Here’s the difference: When Greenberg made “Not-About-AIDS-Dance” his brother had died of AIDS. So had eight friends. He was HIV-positive before retroviruses, and facing the possibility of death. Any self-absorption had scorchingly compelling justification. Greenberg wondering about white supremacy doesn’t carry that urgency. It’s like “It Gets Better.” That was was a conversation that needed to be had, but many who felt compelled to make confessional videos were confusing what was important to them with what was helpful to those actually suffering.
The dance continued as the music sawed. The trio moved to the ground to do phrases on their backs, and Greenberg went into the main space. Everyone moved their arms with a clenched hand up, side and down. It was almost a disco move; another veiled 70s reference.
The choreography moved to just two dancers doing almost-aerobics before the music trailed off. All the dancers wound up in a diagonal, then headed to the corners, smiling and posing. They talked, but in a soft volume that only the audience close enough could hear.
More 70s. The cast did hip pops and finger points: Saturday Night Fever deconstructed. Paul Hamilton name checked stereotypical avatars of the time: Richard Roundtree, Yul Brynner. Greenberg went to a different section of the audience and posed, smiling in profile.
Owen Prum sidled behind Hamilton; another move with overtones of the discotheque. The music resumed with a 70s chord out of Barry White or Isaac Hayes but went into low synthesized strings, fuzzy and distorted.
As with most of Greenberg’s work, a duet for Prum and Opal Ingle was actually a double solo. The bulk of what they did, jogging and scampering or racing round, existed independently in the same space. The loose building blocks are the kind of movement Greenberg has made most of his career.
In the score, snippets, shorter than those in “Name That Tune,” of the “Chinese Dance” from “The Nutcracker” could be heard. Ingle danced a solo; the background was a repeating snippet of the opening of the “Arabian Dance.” The “Spanish Dance” made it in as well, and Hamilton and Ingle did sinuous moves to phrases doctored with harp notes.
Occasionally a dancer would sit on one of the seats at the end of a row, which had been marked as reserved. The seats were both practical and disconcerting rest spots that removed any distance from the audience and the dancers.
The cast vanished to the perimeter of the room and put on tight gold lamé skullcaps with long gold fringe at the back, yet another disco reference. They moved into a fast staggering quartet.
Greenberg’s work is allusive enough that some things will part your hair, while others will land right on target. Those things will be different for each viewer. Somewhere mixed way down in the score you could hear the opening of the “Chinese Dance” again. Then finally after all the repeats of the opening, the score introduced the close of it as the dancers all slowly got on the floor. The kinesthetic memory of that dance to the repeated fragments, which I had danced many times even in a brief ballet career, was strong enough that I started to mentally mark the steps in my seat. Right down to the finger pointing and bow at the end. Which was Greenberg’s point. Touché.
Ballet, particularly the national dances of the 19th century repertory, is deeply rooted in stereotypes and marinated in the viewpoints of the time. Tchaikovsky also produced a brilliantly orchestrated miniature that wouldn’t have had a visceral impact if it weren’t so well composed. Even the few chords played had an anticipatory magic, waiting for the woodwinds to whirl into action. Perhaps we can figure out how to accept both realities.
The score moved to castanet and harp, and the dancers took off their headgear. Each of the trio had a solo. Prum suddenly went skyward in a turning jump that was simple but with lovely ballon. He came to the ground with his arms tensed like a bowman. Ingle danced a solo to harp with pulling and rotating arms. The music rumbled into kettledrums and harp for Hamilton’s solo. He posed like Norma Desmond, framing his face, did finicky steps, then galloped in tight stiff jumps.
The dance moved into a trio that moved into a simple step-touch combination reminiscent of “The Disco Project.” That briefly morphed into a line dance. Hamilton jogged and spun, the other two joined in and everyone slowly headed to the ground. The two then got up, and Hamilton spasmed on the floor, as if in shock or pain. The others, aloof, looked off into the distance. It was a point both subtle and obvious. Hamilton stopped, started to get up, then the whole cast looked at us to let us know the piece was done.
Let’s go back to the original question. What is it to show a dance in 2022?
Has the definition of a dance changed? Have the ingredients? At the core, shouldn’t it be the same? And at its core, it was for Greenberg. His process was the same; he built a dance exactly as he always has, except on different bodies. And, as he has for more than three decades, Greenberg makes dances with the assurance of a master carpenter. He just obsessed even more than usual about what it meant to him. We get to decide whether we want to obsess along with him. Like Christopher Batenhorst in “The Disco Project,” when he demurred from being quoted in the projections, “Christopher wanted his dancing to speak for itself.”
Dance without meaning is, well . . . Peter Martins. But worrying about meaning isn’t the first step in making a dance. As another wise soul in the community, Arnie Apostol, said years ago. “Make a piece. If it sucks, make the next one better. And if that one sucks, make it shorter. That’s all.”
copyright ©2022 by Leigh Witchel
“Betsy” – Neil Greenberg
The Downstairs at La MaMa, New York, NY
November 14, 2022
Cover: Opal Ingle in “Betsy.” Photo credit © Frank Mullaney.
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