MR Festival 2008: catch 30
by Barry Hoggard
MR Festival Spring 2008: Somewhere Out There
As someone who likes to see the latest in dance (and dance / theater),
I love events like “catch 30” (www.catchseries.org) that let me see an
evening composed of many different artists. Last night’s
performances, curated by Jeff Larson and Andrew Dinwiddie and
described as “rough and ready performance and video” featured 10
performances by artists from the Brooklyn and Minneapolis dance
scenes.
Without a doubt, the highlight for me was Elliot Durko Lynch’s
(http://www.mnartists.org/artistHome.do?rid=19186) performance of an
excerpt of an evening-length work in progress titled “The New York
Historic Artists Lofts and Residencies + Hotel.” When it started he
invoked the name of Spalding Gray, and as he was sitting at a desk
with a projection behind him and a copy of his book, I thought it
might be a low-key homage, but I was happily quite wrong. We were
treated to a seemingly spontaneous and brilliant riff of drawings,
cutouts, models, and miscellaneous objects (projected behind him from
a camera on a swing arm desk lamp) about Minneapolis, gentrification,
and chain stores. As things got more and more mad, he added another
camera and projected still shots taken of the audience and stage, plus
incorporated a modified audio “transcript” of an encounter with a
clerk at a Target store. We also saw moving images of Google maps of
the New York area, specifically a kind of “handing off the tradition”
route map. It showed a line from PS122, home to many earlier
innovative dance experiments, to our location in Bushwick at Starr
Space. It’s true that the dance community which would have once been
located in lower Manhattan seems to all live in Brooklyn now.
Closer to the end, he made a “showing the pink” gesture with a real
McDonald’s hamburger (opening the top bun to display the pickles and
sauce), stuffed it into his mouth, then danced and ran around the
stage ranting about everything being for sale as he slapped $100K
signs around the walls, plus projected similar signs he had pasted
onto buildings and institutions in lower Manhattan including PS122 and
Theater for the New City.
Kristin Van Loon of the duo Hijack! (who performed at the beginning of
the show) spent much of the performance standing at the side of the
stage with large headphones covering her ears. He finally gave her a
portable mike and she attempted to recite (I assume) what she could
hear on her headphones, a confused jumble of words about real estate
development, parking requirements, and gentrification.
The program handout said “Elliott may never perform in New York City
again” but I certainly hope that isn’t true. Someone needs to bring
him back soon.
