by Leigh Witchel
Could there be a more difficult subject to choreograph on than Alzheimer’s disease? It’s not one that conjures movement. In many ways, it’s the opposite. Yet the disease requires discussion and awareness and Stefanie Nelson created a program with a dance, “A, My Name Is . . .” and a panel discussion after.
Also part of the performance were three short films from the Living With Alzheimer’s Film Project: two documentaries and one poignant animation, “Undone” by Hayley Morris. Morris’ metaphor for memory loss was an old man on a dark, rough sea, fishing from a small boat. Periodically the man reeled in memories that mutated or dissipated. Encroaching tangles of rope like seafoam threatened to engulf him, making a buzzing noise like a threatening hive.
What metaphors would Nelson use? She began her dance with a row of red apples pushed in a line towards the seats. Three blue inflatable chairs sat bloated at the corners. Cameron McKinney ascended a ladder and dropped an apple with a cry.
Three women in simple black outfits raced onstage from the audience, searching. Christine Bonansea walked to a mike that snaked down. She started to aspirate sounds: vowels and infantile noises that turned into “Hello.”
Bonansea is short and wiry, a bantam dancer of seemingly limitless energy. She raced side to side, jogging and sparring. Then she started identifying things. “This is an apple. This is the sky. This is an audience.” It seemed part reassurance, part mental notes as a bulwark against forgetting. “This is time. This is my time. Today is my birthday.”
Nelson created long, free-form movement phrases. Becca Loevy walked onstage, pigeon-toed and reaching laboriously. Emily Tellier joined her. When all three women started dancing, they encroached on one another yet managed to avoid collision.
McKinney took a crate of apples and tossed them across the stage. Bonansea tried to gather them into her lap. With McKinney’s unhelpful help, they kept spilling over. He cut into a beautiful solo, whirling down to the floor and up again with attack and control.
A question and answer projected on a screen at the back: “Where are we going?” “We have already left.” And then photos of a decomposing apple.
Bonansea continued: “This is a green apple.” It was red. She rolled and tumbled. She quoted Magritte: “This is not a pipe.” “Ceci n’est pas une pipe.” Bonansea’s French accent and the sentence structure of her script hinted that the in-joke was coming. It made sense, but didn’t loop back to the evening’s themes.
With nervous energy, Bonansea gave everyone in the front row an apple before bringing a single fruit to a table and SMASHING it. “TODAY IS MY BIRTHDAY!”
Several more dancers (for substantial parts, strangely uncredited) came on to perform solos, thrashing and whirling. The full cast massed at the front, swaying faster and faster. Bonansea bowled at the crowd with apples, knocking people down like pins. With a final handful of apples she knocked them all down. McKinney set up a small easel on a table with a picture of an apple. He rolled into a solo to finish the dance as a rain of apples was projected overhead.
One of the best things about “Undone” was that animation was the only way it could say what it had to say. The medium and the message were one.
You couldn’t say that about “A, My Name Is . . .” All of its elements, the projections, the script, the acting, dealt directly with memory loss. Except one: the choreography proper. The racing, the tumbling, the conflicts, looked like any one of many contemporary quartets. The dances in “A, My Name Is . . .” could have been about memory loss, but they also could have been about relationships, or a bad day apple picking. The choreography didn’t feel specific. It relied on the film and text to do that. Should the piece have been a film or a play?
But then, choreography doesn’t have to be about anything specific. Unless you say it is.
copyright © 2019 by Leigh Witchel
“A, My Name Is . . .” – Stefanie Nelson Dancegroup
Aaron Davis Hall, New York, NY
January 23, 2019
Cover: Christine Bonansea in “A, My Name Is . . .” Photo © Gaia Squarci.
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