As a great admirer and unapologetic fan of Jacob’s Pillow,
I yearn to return each summer because the setting, no less than the
dance
performed and discussed, is a tranquility I know in no other art form.
And so,
when my wife and I arrived
I continue to marvel at Ella Baff’s
commitment
to programme so much art and to match the programming to the audience
that
sustains it all. She and her colleagues must build and sustain an
audience that
will buy tickets and, much more, will contribute with extreme
generosity to ensure
the future of the Pillow’s long and justifiably proud history.
Over the past few seasons, the programming
has been a rich balance of the classical (familiar, friendly, hummable)
and the
closer-to-the-edge (I don’t get it, What was that, I thought dancers
danced and
actors talked). Indeed, that juggling act continues this season, but
the week
just past had two companies that tested audiences more than perhaps
they were
ready for. Groupe
Emile Dubois was in the Ted Shawn Theatre while David
Rousseve/REALITY played in the
Doris Duke.
Groupe Emile Dubois is a company of dancers
that spans a wide age range and an equally diverse set of technical
skills.
They do not flaunt their technique, though several of the company
appear more
formally trained than others. There is an abstraction in the staging
and
choreography that defies categorization, but this in no way reduces the
experience. Jean-Claude
Gallotta, the artistic director and choreographer of Des
Gens qui Dansent, works to avoid
labeling his corps as dance or theatre and the result is a bold mixture
of
both. The work is emotionally distant and, finally, a tough idea to
grasp.
David Rousseve/REALITY is harder to connect
with. The work is rather bloated, repetitive and, through its text
(delivered
by Rousseve himself) bordering on the sophomoric. Themes and topics are
all
potent, but there is little we haven’t heard before and often. And the
dancers,
all of whom have energy aplenty and passion to spare (in this they are
more
engaging than the Dubois ensemble), return to similar patterns and
styles
without helping us to see them as varied as they most certainly are.
The piece
feels very much like a work-in-progress, which it may be, but the whole
is,
finally, deeply unsatisfying.
While the former appeared to leave the
audience rather cold and removed – all the while managing to show us a
company’s new work (it was the U.S. premiere) with a vision entirely
its own,
the latter company struck a more visceral chord. The twenty or thirty
patrons
who streamed out as Rousseve’s 100-minute piece crawled by showed both
displeasure and rudeness of a degree I haven’t witnessed before
first-hand. The
first two or three fleeing couples disturbed me because the only way
out is by
crossing in front of the performers and, by extension, the rest of us
who were
seated. And just as yawning or coughing can generate a chain reaction,
so this
get-me-out-of-here attitude encouraged similar behaviour for he next
hour. I
would have found it more honest, albeit jarring and even chilling, for
audience
members to say something as they scrammed – “I have had enough” or
“This
isn’t dancing” or even “How could you do this to me." But no. The noisy
departures were just noisy and unspoken.
An evening at the Pillow is always special
and always something I look forward to. The audiences, however, test my
patience when they begin leaving as soon as the final bows begin – and
this
many Pillow fans seem to do even when they have had a wonderful time –
rushing off into the parking lot as though they needed to get free of
the place
where they so clearly have enjoyed spending their time and their money.
It’s a
curious situation – and no it is not restricted to Jacobs Pillow –
but the extent to which the Rousseve audience expressed such strong
displeasure
was shocking and embarrassing. It must also have been a strong message
to the
people who do their very best to bring all of along to experience the
new and
untried. To them, my thanks.