I was so moved by Southern
Discomfort, performed and created by Aimee Rials and Trebien Pollard at
Dixon Place June 4th 2017, that days later I am still being
nourished by my reflections. The work was impactful, not only in the content
expressed, but also because of the aesthetic ingenuity employed by both
artists.
Aimee and Trebien are both remarkably seductive performers,
but not in the way we usually consider that word. They are seductive because
they are completely self-possessed. Whole and complete in and of themselves,
they invite the audience to join them on very personal journeys. As viewers, we
are willing and able to be carried along with them because the weight of their
performative presence makes it easy to trust them. As an audience member, I
often feel that I am being sold something, but in this performance, I felt
honored to be witness to the profound sense of generosity, that flowed from
every turn of Aimee Rials and Trebien Pollard’s wrists.
Rials is a remarkable mover. She conducts energy through her
body in a way that is both grounded and fantastically fluid. Her movement
vocabulary demonstrates deep movement research, as powerful in its subtlety as
it is in its considered use of attack. Her solo, Modifi(her), was deeply moving, both because of the strength of her
performance and because of its refined compositional craftsmanship. She used repetition effectively, as the
repetitive movement allowed the audience to experience the emotional evolution
within the work. Repetition also created a trancelike quality that enabled the
dance to exist in the space between memory and presence. The space between the
longing, regret, desire, and hope that we felt in the past and that which we
feel in the present, blur. The body is always caught between past and present,
scars and postures being tangible manifestations of memory, yet every breath is
potentially attuned to the now. Rials milks this temporal indeterminacy as the
dance orbits a single chair, beautifully designed by Emanuelle Schaer, a symbol
of all of the, “should haves,” and, “could haves,” that haunt us. Rials dances
circular memories, familiar to many of us. She embodies roles both accomplished
and resented, as well as those that we cold not fulfill; yet we are still bound
to as they define our defiance. In the final section, her liberation from this
web of reflection is wildly open hearted. She gives back to the audience all
that she has gained in her processing, facing us unapologetically, radiant, and
whole.
It is also important to mention that Rials offers the
audience a gender expression rarely seen in New York dance. Most theatrical gender
play consists of the juxtaposition of culturally defined extremes. Drag, in its
many iterations, plays on the gender based social expectation and subversion of
dress, make-up, posture, hair, etc.... Drag creates an expansive space to
define gender through beating against the edges of the binary spectrum. The
flashiness of this tug of war makes for excellent theater. However, the quiet,
yet fierce embodiment of androgyny I saw in Rials, is much less common on
stage. It speaks truth to power in a
very different way than drag does. It does not use cultural codes to flip
audience expectation, but rather exists as a whole alternative, an expression
of completeness that is not ruled by indoctrination, but by a hard won honoring
of the individual self. It threatens the
status quo, not by revealing and manipulating the game, but by decidedly
refusing to play. On a personal note, it was incredibly validating for me to
watch Rials in performance because in my life I am relatively androgynous, but
in my dance career I have mostly been asked to perform (for both male and
female choreographers) as a hyper-femme, and hence dishonest, version of
myself.
Trebien Pollard’s work is a wonderful pairing with Rials.
The works are equally powerful, yet they utilized very different means of
aesthetic expression. As a dancer, Pollard’s satiny movement quality is
unparalleled. His whole body moves in a way that is simultaneously deeply
considered and at the same time open to the wild pulls of his vast heart. Like
water deep in the ocean, Pollard moves in response to unseen currents, made visible
through an on-going commitment to multifaceted articulation. As an artist Pollard is interested in visual
density, effectively incorporating a set, projections, and multiple costume
changes into his solo performance of Seeing the Unspeakable/An Eye on Struggle
(work in progress).
His costume design incorporates numerous layers of black
cloth that play with varied gender expressions, but perhaps more importantly,
extend the movement of his body. The shifts in costume transform him from
terrifying creature, to rooted tree, to wise yet questioning human, to swirling
vortex. In coordination with original spoken poetry, a relentless projected
slide show of gut-wrenching visuals by artists such as Kara Walker and Barkley
Hendricks as well as photos of Ruby Bridges on the steps of her formerly all
white elementary school, and a cloth set that lists the names of some of the
POC who died at the hands of police in just the last few years, the performance
presses the audience right up against the history of racism in America that
conditions and affects us all.
It is a heart breaking, overwhelming reality, well expressed
through Pollard’s use of different media. It is so easy to feel helpless in the
oversaturation of human rights violations that constantly threaten POC in
contemporary culture. As a light in this darkness, Pollard’s work was a balm,
which did not sugar coat a thing, but did remind us that life, in all its
complexity, does go on, and that we are all in this together. Pollard’s strong
voice allowed the audience to experience a wide range of emotions; anger and
disgust, but also the respect for community, history, and progress, and the
potential ecstasy of spiritual beauty that transcends cultural and religious
views. His spoken poetry is as captivating as his movement quality, evoking a
multiplicity of meanings that leaves the audience’s mind swirling with possibility.
It is through this vivid ambiguity that we are able to thread together the personal
and the political, the past and the present, and to entertain the possibility
of hope.
I look forward to seeing future work by both of these
artists, and I thank them with all of my heart for their courage and their
work.
