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Rules
of Engagement: Dancers and A Horse
By Dawn Lille
 |
ART
TIMES December, 2005
Horses and dance?
Why not? Equestrian ballets, which were derived from medieval tournaments
and involved hundreds of horses and riders moving in elaborate formations,
date back to the early Renaissance. The horses and their riders/dancers
in the Ringling Bros. Circus, and the Zingaro Company of Spain also come
to mind, as well as George Balanchine’s choreography for fifty elephants
and fifty beautiful girls.
But,
as JoAnna Mendl Shaw, Artistic Director of The Equus Projects, rushes
to point out, all of these require human control over an animal. These animals were rigidly controlled
by people. Rules of Engagement, an interdisciplinary and interspecies performance she recently presented
at the Claremont Riding
Academy, is about the interaction of horse and dancer, each trying to
understand and feed off the other in an atmosphere of trust. Her artistic
collaborator here was Janet Biggs, a visual artist who works in painting,
sculpture and multiple channel installations. The company consists of
three dancers, an equestrian and a horse, Navajo Medicine Man (Navi),
an eighteen-year-old appaloosa gelding.
The
riding area of the stable was the site-specific venue for this production.
The audience, sitting in bleachers on one side, saw two large screens
set at slight diagonals to each other and big enough so that they effectively
blocked anything behind them. The dancing took place in front of and between
the screens; Navi, with his rider Blair Greismayer, walked endlessly in
circles and ovals, sometimes going between the screens and dangerously
near the moving dancers. The
first thing the audience saw was the double image of a horse walking.
This then focused just on the legs and melded into a horse running in
place on a treadmill, but facing itself via the two screens. Suddenly
there was an awareness of the three dancers. One, MaryAlice White, moved
in what resembled satyr-like upper body gestures. Then Blake Pearson and
Gina Paolillo started to travel slowly and simply into each other’s space.
When Navi appeared they acknowledge him in movement and included him in
their continued exploration.
Broken
down, the overall production had three elements: the horse and his partner/rider,
the dancers and the video. The first two developed an ongoing movement
conversation, with the rider allowing her horse as much freedom as possible.
The last included additional images of deer, an owl, an eagle, icebergs,
waterfalls and bodies under water. As the one hour work progressed the
dancers and Navi interacted more and more, the videos seemed to make the
viewer switch gears and enter another thought process, and the dance gestures
and designs became more complicated spatially, dynamically and rhythmically.
The score by Steve White was supportive without being overwhelming
and the lighting by Philip Sandstrom was amazing, given the space. The
piece, which is ultimately about issues of domination and sexuality, has
a history and philosophy behind it.
Shaw
started this work in 1997 when she was commissioned by Mt. Holyoke College
to make a piece for the Five College Dance Department. Upon discovering
they had an amazing equestrian program, she decided to put the two together.
A former competitive skier, she considers herself an athlete as much as
a dancer and regards dancers as consummate athletes. She ended up creating
a trilogy at Holyoke that used ten horses and fifty humans. What amazed
her was the realization that the horses followed the dancers. She wanted
to continue this work and found three riders and three dances. They gave
their first concert in 1999 and spent several summers in residence in
Vermont, where she created a full evening work for the Flynn Center for
the Performing Arts.
The
process of training both the dancers and the horses, although more the
dancers, has been a long one that is still evolving. They have spent countless
hours improvising. Horses are herd animals and the dancers learned to
work as if they were another horse, shaping the space between bodies.
The animals do this instinctively and they also remember the choreography.
So in order to keep the process ongoing, especially in performance, the
dancers must work to be constantly interesting to their animal partners.
This is where improvisation becomes almost a necessity.
There
were two wonderful examples of it in Rules, both horse/human duets.
In one Gina Paolillo was talking in Italian while she and Navi moved together,
using their body contact to propel them through space. In the other Blake
Pearson and Navi were head to head, with the dancer causing the horse
to retreat at one point. Shaw says that horses do not understand spoken
commands, only physical ones. Hence Gina’s section was about the quality
of her body next to Navi’s and Blake’s was ultimately about the strength
level of his touch.
The
dancers have spent several weeks at a time working ten hours a day with
cowboy Pat Parelli and his wife Linda at their ranches in Colorado and
Florida. Here they have learned partnership training and how to relate
to a horse.
When
asked about the qualities she looks for in dancers and horses, Shaw says
her dancers must be grounded and possess an understanding of weight and
space. They need hamstring strength and a sense of the pelvis. This work
requires a strong technique and a lack of ego. The horses must be loved
and cared for. She cannot work with a frightened or abused animal. A horse
listens physically, engages all the senses and operates in three-dimensional
space. The dancer must learn to do the same. The final result requires
a level of respect and humility based on time and knowledge.
Rules
of Engagement explored risk taking, power, relationships and the ability
to be violent on both the human and the animal level, as implied by the
video of the eagle. The horse, however, is not a violent creature and
does not initiate violence.
Shaw
says the old hierarchy between choreographer and dancers is minimized
when working with a choreographer, a dancer, a rider and a horse. This
was a collaboration of many, a process and an inquiry. It cannot be judged
in comparison with other dance works. But it can certainly stimulate thought
and pose questions about human behavior and the possibilities inherent
in an art form.