anoukvandijk dc STAU Press kit

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1 anoukvandijk dc STAU Press kit Premiere: 11 February 2004 concept and choreography Anouk van Dijk created for and with Nina Wollny Birgit Gunzl Philipp Fricke Yi-chun Liu music Robert van Heumen light Isabel Nielen Koen van Oosterhout Anouk van Dijk dramaturgy Jerry Remkes rehearsal director Nina Wollny technicians Koen Oosterhout Richard Bierhuizen anoukvandijk.nl >

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20 "STAU": Some traffic jams are very tasty - Portland Arts Watc... file:///users/jerryremkes/desktop/loes/archief/voorstellinge... "STAU": Some traffic jams are very tasty Posted by bajohnso March 14, :07AM Chris Roesing/White BirdBirgit Gunzl in "STAU" at Oaks Park Dance Pavilion. Portland Arts Watch has been watching dance with some seriousness of intent since 1977, so when we say that the most thrilling moment in all that dance watching came last night, that covers some significant ground. It came two-thirds of the way through "STAU," the dance that anoukvandijk dc is performing this week at Oaks Park Dance Pavilion, courtesy of White Bird. And by that time, the crowd was shuffling around the large room in its stocking feet trying to figure out where the dancing was going to happen next. Yes, it's one of those kind of dances. Portland Arts Watch was keeping its distance on the edge of the crowd, figuring that gave us better mobility to get to whichever of the four dancers seemed to be most engaged at the moment and better sight lines for the dancers at the other end of the room. Suddenly -- and that adverb applies to a lot of what happens in "STAU" -- the tall, slender Angie Muller was brushing past me. Muller stopped, gathered herself, and sent one long leg sweeping toward me, rising and rising, until her foot cleared my skull by a good margin. Her momentum carried her away into another part of the room, and a woman standing nearby, who had witnessed the whole thing, looked at me. And blinked. It wasn't a near-death sort of experience; it was more "unexpected aesthetic moment at extremely close quarters." And those have a habit of changing your weather. The audience-participation part of "STAU" emphasizes one theme of the dance, at least one I thought I detected (alienation -- the individual alone among many), and then solves the problem at the same time. Even when they are in close proximity, the dancers give the impression of dancing alone. In the opening duet, Philipp Fricke and Birgit Gunzl couldn't be 1) any closer without hugging, and 2) any more distant from each other. They "engage" the audience -- the square in which they dance is small and surrounded by the crowd -- singling someone out for close scrutiny, faces inches away from faces, or slither under someone's chair, or use an audience member's leg as 1 of :46

21 "STAU": Some traffic jams are very tasty - Portland Arts Watc... file:///users/jerryremkes/desktop/loes/archief/voorstellinge... a platform. But we don't really know what they are saying, so we sit mutely, watchful. The space, that square, is eroticized. I don't say this lightly. I've debated it in my mind. I'm willing to consider another possibility. But how else can I take the rhythmic spasms, the sweaty closeness, the languorous full-body stretches, the pelvic "rolls"? And all of that is before Fricke shows up completely naked and balances himself on the tip-toe of one foot. So, erotic, but unconnected eroticism. Which maybe is simply sensuality. So I'm backing off of "eroticized" -- how about "highly charged"? But then, see, I'm remembering what I've seen, and I'm back to "eroticized." Chris Roesing/White Bird"STAU" OK, traffic. "Stau" means traffic jam, choreographer Van Dijk told us before the show began. It also means the dam of a mountain stream and the change from high tide to low tide. All of which factored into the dance, she said. After that opening duet, during which we saw Van Dijk's "countertechnique" in action, a method of balancing one gesture with an equal and opposite reaction the other, which sounds Newtonian but actually produces great amplitude and articulation of body movements, after Fricke and Gunzl had finished, the chairs surrounding the square were broken down and the audience stood around and watched what would happen. Fricke and Gunzl were joined by Muller (remember Muller?) and Nina Wollny, and they started passing through the crowd. They would stop and dance and then meld back into the crowd. You never knew when a spotlight would come on and something interesting would happen. Often, the dancers found themselves plastered against one of the walls, rubbing against it, turning, falling, almost writhing. I decided this was the "dam" portion of the program, though I thought of the dancers, fleetingly, as salmon temporarily blocked at a major obstacle, rather than molecules of water. Pretty soon, we (the audience) are getting to know the dancers pretty well. They are "violating" our personal space, herding us with their crawling, gazing into our eyes, leaning against us. But they have an agenda -- to dance -- and our only agenda is to watch them. Until the end -- when the dancers recruit some of the audience members to plaster themselves 2 of :46

22 "STAU": Some traffic jams are very tasty - Portland Arts Watc... file:///users/jerryremkes/desktop/loes/archief/voorstellinge... against the wall, fall on the ground, and then continue the plastering. See? The antidote to the alienation. Which raises the question: Who was really in the alienated condition? The dancers depicting alienation? Or the audience that arrives? Because the dancers "really" aren't that alienated. They know what's going on, at least for the next hour or so. Not exactly, maybe, but mostly. We are the ones who need help understanding our condition and then doing something about it. Which gets us back to "traffic." In traffic we are alone in our cars, frustrated by our lack of freedom. But as sealed up as we are, we are also very close to other human beings, themselves encased in metal and frustration. Close physically, almost as close as Gunzl and Fricke were in their opening duet, but not touching, not communicating anything but similar frustration, similar lack of freedom, similar enclosure. Before Muller's foot flashed above my head, the dancers had already won me over. The performance challenge they face is difficult, establishing an atmosphere within which the audience both "gets" the alienation and is comfortable enough to participate, mill around, become part of things. My group seemed to need quite a bit of coaxing. Van Dyke keeps them moving, too, working hard, contracting more than a Martha Graham dancer, running this way and that. In this dance, the emphasis was on power, strength, endurance. But there was enough variety to see how Van Dyke's system might work in a more conventional, proscenium arrangement. "STAU" is unconventional. As it unfolds this week (performances run through March 20), please feel free to leave your thoughts, questions, interpretations, corrections. I'll continue to think about it, too. I might even try to see it again, just to see how it changes from night to night. Here's a YouTube of "Borrowed Landscapes" (2008) choreographed by Van Dyke and featuring many of the same dancers. NOTE: Here's a link to the excellent review by Catherine Thomas. She saw a different performance, with different dancers disrobing and doing the duets. 3 of :46

23 Dance review: In White Bird's 'Stau,' troupe and audience inte... file:///users/jerryremkes/desktop/loes/archief/voorstellinge... Dance review: In White Bird's 'Stau,' troupe and audience interact to fine result Posted by dwelker March 13, :15PM Bird"Stau," part of White Bird's "Uncaged" series Chris Roesing, White There's a marvelous serendipity to the title of Dutch choreographer Anouk van Dijk's "Stau" -- it means traffic jam in German -- and its setting, the Dance Pavilion of the historic Oaks Amusement Park, part of White Bird's "Uncaged" series at unconventional venues about town. The gridlock starts well before the dance begins. The audience is ushered through the empty midway, past the silent sentinels of the classic Ferris wheel and the hulking Big Pink slide, and into the long corridor of the pavilion, where crowd traffic control reaches its peak: Spectators are required to remove their shoes and check belongings prior to being allowed into the performance space. Anouk van Dijk's "Stau" When: 7 and 9:30 Friday-Saturday, March 13-14; 8 p.m. Sunday, March 15; 8 p.m. Wednesday, March 18; 7 and 9:30 p.m. Thursday-Friday, March Where: Oaks Amusement Park, Historic Dance Pavilion, 7805 S.E. Oaks Park Way Tickets: $16-$26, , ext. 201, or 1 of :46

24 Dance review: In White Bird's 'Stau,' troupe and audience inte... file:///users/jerryremkes/desktop/loes/archief/voorstellinge... As it turns out, crowd control is integral to this 60-minute work, set in two parts and steering or invading its audience at every turn. The audience's intimate ringside seat in the first half surrounds a tiny stage, where dancers Angie Muller and Nina Wollny stand inches apart, grazing each other's bodies in slow, rubbery undulations, twitching and shuddering, then flinging their limbs in wide windmill spins, tilting so extremely off-axis that the risk of falling into a spectator's lap seems imminent. The pair make good on that threat in increments, first with splayed hands literally in the faces of audience members in the front row, then choosing individual victims. Wollny frantically writhes and whiplashes with one hand on a spectator's knee, then gently undulates up another onlooker's leg to rest her head. Muller flops on the floor like a caught fish in its death throes, while Wollny inchworms her body under seats and risers. For all the surprise and frenzy, the movement doesn't always rivet; at times, the dancers look like they're merely horsing around. Two sections stand out for their gravity and intimacy: Muller walking onto the stage nude and balancing on one leg; and the partners facing each other in a slow sinking-and-stretching duet, their gorgeous lyricism made dissonant by a slight hiccup in movement, echoing the evocative cicadalike drone of Robert van Heumen's electronic score. The dance abruptly shifts as the audience members are rousted out of their seats, which are whisked away, and the stage becomes the vast ballroom space, girded by walls on which the dancers -- now joined by Phillip Fricke and Birgit Gunzl -- twitch and crawl. The score is louder and more insistent, and the crowd's movement, ostensibly freeform, is still at the mercy of the immediate action, pooling and turning to follow the dancers' trajectories, creating its own amorphous patterns in the space. It's amazing what congestion four dancers, with a fifth partner in lighting, can create in a wide-open space. The audience is effectively herded by spotlights -- the action's over here; now here; you are the action -- and then thrust into blackness, where disembodied voices whiz by, whispering cryptic snippets of confessional dialogue. It's meant to be disorienting, and it is. These dancers move fast, and their ability to melt into the crowd means that a single spectator can suddenly find herself tag-teamed by all four, boxed into a dancerly version of a group hug, nuzzled or clutched in the spotlight. By the time Muller disrobes again and wanders through the crowd to resume her balanced pose in an alcove, you're inured to her nudity. There's simply so much going on in all corners of the space. As "Stau" ends, a big portion of the audience is dancing against one wall, and even the hum of "It's a Small World (After All)," easily cloying in another context, carries echoes of the funhouseat-night outside the performances walls. Categories: Dance Reviews, Performance Top Stories Comments Footer 2 of :46

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