Not Just Jazz: Dancing with Body, Soul and Mind
Dance! The word points to something so vibrant, it is tepid when merely said but not exclaimed. Dance is the eruption of the body into movement that surges from the wellspring of the soul. This is Douglas Nierras' genius, a genius he has cultivated and shared through the Powerdance Company for decades.
On December 28 and 29 of 2005, Nierras promised something different. Not Just Jazz, a different way of doing dance, in both form and content. The most apparent difference was in form: This concert was crafted entirely out of the intricate magic of Black Light Theatre. Black lights are UV lamps that do not illuminate things directly, but selectively cause flourescent colours to glow. Through a clever manipulation of costumes and accessories, the dancers were able to deceive the eye with grace heightened by illusion, defy gravity with invisible hands, vanish into the darkness only to re-emerge from thin air. The effect has no better word for it but magic.
Form and its eruption into movement are celebrated in Dance. The new, phosphorescent skin of dance was as spectacular as promised. But masked by the aesthetic genius of a dance choreographer, invisible behind the play of body and soul, is the field of the mind. It may strike one as odd to think about a dance. But after watching this Powerdance concert, after the oohs and ahhs over the animated spectacle have settled down, the questions inescapably linger. For this concert was Not Just Jazz, its uniqueness in form was matched by a subtle uniqueness in content.
All of Powerdance's pieces rouse the soul, with a palette of fanciful amusement, awe, and even grief. But it is the opening and the closing pieces that roused the mind to somber thought. The dance concert opens with a piece they call Requiem. On first glance, it is merely a piece about the life and death of Jesus. But in its depth, it is a piece about time.
If time is the stage wherein movement plays out into dance, how is one to dance about time itself? Requiem takes the familiar story of Jesus Christ, but begins with the end: Mary mourning her son, His broken body draped in her arms as in Michelangelo's Pieta. It is a morbid beginning for a Christmas concert (one that serendipitously ties with the ending of the last Powerdance concert held at AFP theatre). But what begins with the end steps back to the scene of Jesus' crowning with thorns, then all the way back to the nativity, until it ends with the Beginning: Jesus Christ, born in His humble splendor, the austerity of His manger the velvet behind the glow of the angel heralding his glory.
The most apparent movement roused by this piece is felt from the soul -- the splendor of nativity that rises from the grit of Golgotha. But a perplexity arises and is felt as a subtle itch in the recesses of the mind. What happens when a story in time is played backward, zigzagging in a manner that rebels from the chronological sequence of events? The life of Jesus staged from Death to Birth has the peculiar affect of making one keenly aware of that which they disposed of -- the naturally flowing rhythm of existence, the very stage of movement. Requiem brings us face to face with Time.
After this intellectually and emotionally stunning piece, Powerdance rested our minds and delighted the audience with several pieces. Latin duo evoked roars of laughter from the audience, as two lovers literally melded into one. Another piece, an awesome combat between masked dancers, pitted the grace of flight against the sheer defiance of walking on walls.
The last piece, however, was a return to the fields of Mind. On the stage of Time, many plays play themselves out. There are the comedies of faux combat and love amidst the froth and glitz of champagne and stars. But it is Tragedy that is loathed king of theatre, its depth pungent but powerfully true. Underneath all tragedies -- Antigone, Romeo and Juliet, Dr. Faustus -- there is only one drama, one fundamental tragedy that is waged between two players: the passion of birth and the pangs of death in this drama we call Life.
Having brought us face to face with the stage of Time through the Requiem piece, Powerdance brings to life the fundamental drama of that very stage, in its most primordial form -- a piece they aptly named Anima which means "soul, or the principle of life." It begins with a cloth stained red, the color of the warmth that surges through our bodies. This cloth comes to life, through the magic of black theatre. The cloth soars into the air and sallies to and fro as our lives, tossed about between winds of circumstance and the impetus of the will. It is from this cloth -- growing, moving, dancing -- that Eve (played by Melanie Motus) is born. Birth is a splendid time, a splendor Eve revels in with the intimate expression of dance, tickled by curiosity and amused animation. But time rolls quickly in the eyes of Douglas Nierras, and this curiosity dies and is replaced by the sullenness of ennui and boredom. Alive is wonderful, but alone -- that is a death in itself.
Yet vitality surges on as Eve is drawn by the coming of another player on this stage. A cloth, that soars and sallies, frees her from her loneliness. This cloth melds with her side, and from her rib, another is born: Adam (played by Danny Marshall). The birth of Adam heralds the genesis of a couple, a "we," a togetherness with a life of its own. This is life in its most free and passionate form, life in love.
Yet the stage of time is foul and unfriendly, and love too must bow to change. Adam, tossed by time, transforms. His skin stained green reflects a change within, a change in his rhythm. His synchrony with the graceful rhythm of Eve's sensual Jazz is lost, replaced by the diachronic flamboyance of a hip-hop bounce. Once more, Eve mourns, for a divorce in rhythm is a divorce in time. And a chasm in time is more unbridgeable than any mountain or valley. Adam is lost.
Yet time relents, and the Adam of her skin, red as the sensuality of their shared dance, returns. Love brims with its bliss. Their dance is deeper, more intricately intertwined, the impetus of their passion spurred by the knowledge of loss. They dance as if to seek forever. But time is a stage for finitude. And in the end, Adam is swallowed by the darkness. The curtain falls as Eve lies weeping.
Time, Birth, Death, Finite Existence -- beneath the flurry and fashion of ecstatic movement is the rumble of the mind and the soul. The genius of Douglas Nierras is not merely flamboyant, it is innovative and insightful. And once again, Powerdance delivers. To those who appreciate art with both their hearts and their minds, it is time to hope for a re-staging.
