Critical Correspondence

MR Festival 2008: “I Don’t Know, It Must Be Theater”: Site-Specific Performance Rampage by Tonya Plank

by Tonya Plank
MR Festival Spring 2008: Somewhere Out There

On Friday night I took part in the mad fun Performance Rampage, a
site-specific performance tour of downtown Manhattan wending from the
Dance Theater Workshop in Chelsea to the Judson Memorial Church in the
Village. The tour was led by Jennifer Miller and partner, dressed in
gauzy white skirts and black top hats and who both rose far above the
crowd by sauntering down the street on stilts. It’s hard to say how
many people there were because I think we picked up more than a few
intrigued onlookers along the way, but at one point the crowd seemed
to number over 100. Ms. Miller and her “children” as she called us,
were quite the spectacle as we made our way overtaking the streets,
blocking traffic and interrupting the meals of sidewalk diners.

The evening began during a performance by Chase Granoff in DTW.
Outside in front of the theater, a man and woman both wearing orange
t-shirts, jeans, and mardi gras feather masks not on their faces but
atop their heads, worked with an unfolded cardboard box on which was
written “Dance Off” or words to that effect. They folded the box
around them, threw it on the ground and lay down on it, stood the
cardboard upright, folded it, and sat down inside peeking out at the
crowd over its edges, and held the box up for random people walking
down the street to see its words. Finally, they abandoned the box and
began rubbing their backsides up and down against the DTW lobby
window, then, lifted their shirts and wiped the smudges they’d made
off the window. Someone brought out a boom box, turned on music, and
the two began gyrating.

As soon as Mr. Granoff’s performance let out and the two dancers
amassed enough of a crowd, the tour began. Ms. Miller called out to us
to follow her and led us toward Eighth Avenue. “What the hell is
that?” I heard an onlooker say. “I don’t know. It must be theater,”
said another. Several of us who heard the exchange burst out laughing.
As we passed the Joyce Theater, where Momix was performing, we all
peered inside. “Okay, now everyone go in and find a seat,” Miller said
jokingly. Momix audience members, standing outside chatting, thought
we were a hoot.

A few blocks down, the first site-specific performance began as
several people (at first I thought they were all men but later saw
some were women) all wearing colorful hooded jackets with the hoods up
over their heads, ran up behind us, pushing past and through us, then
made a human pyramid at a storefront window. They looked inside the
window and made a long buzzing hum. I was so mesmerized by the dancers
I don’t even remember what the establishment was – I think a bank, but
I’m not sure. As we continued through Chelsea, Miller led us in a
chant, “We’re here, we’re queer, and we’re not going shopping!” We
laughed and repeated her slogan for a few minutes. When we passed a
car rental agency, the foreign man inside peered out at us, laughed,
and, thinking we were tourists on some crazy tour of downtown, told us
to enjoy our stay in New York City.

Miller led us on down the street, then back across Eighth Avenue to
the east side. Again, we found ourselves surrounded by the hoods, as
they passed through us and ran to another storefront window. About
five of them stood a couple of feet from the window and five others
stood atop their shoulders reaching out and balancing themselves
against the window with their hands. We were guided to bend down and
pass underneath them. As we did, they resumed their group hum.

We turned the corner at Bleecker Street and were led to the south side
where we took turns peeking into a back alley to see a woman in the
back wearing a flowing greenish / yellowish garment kind of fluttering
about. I couldn’t see very well since she was far away and there were
many people trying to look, but she looked almost like a brightly lit
firefly. On the sidewalk in front of the alley two women lightly beat
with spoons ceramic bowls filled with rocks and water making a kind of
ethereal chiming sound that well complimented the Tinkerbell-ish
dancer. Miller walked around whispering to us, “They’re just making a
bonfire, they’re just having a bonfire. We should leave them alone.
Come along, now, come along.”

Next, we were led to a railing bordering a ramp at the emergency
entrance of St. Vincent’s Hospital. There we encountered my favorite
dance performance of the night, as we watched an artist who I think
was Luciana Achugar use the ramp and railing as a kind of cave in
which to go spelunking. Wearing lacey white thong underwear covered by
diaphanous black nylons, a jacket, and matching thick white knee-high
leg warmers and ski mask, she used a flashlight to explore the ramp as
she crawled about the railing. Suddenly, she bravely jumped off the
railing and onto the bottom of the ramp, then, using the flashlight to
see, crawled along the floor, creeping, catlike all the way toward the
ER entrance door. Once at the door, she stood up slowly, and peered
through the glass to the inside of the hospital. She clutched the
metal frame trying hard to look inside, trying almost to will herself
magically through the door. “She loves that monkey,” someone observed,
and I then saw she had what appeared to be a stuffed animal hanging
around her neck. She began to caress the toy animal’s fur, like a
child, and she rubbed along the glass door. For me it evoked a child
who perhaps had witnessed a tragedy involving a family member or
friend on the other side of those doors, trying desperately to make
play out of the situation. Suddenly, she turned around, hearing us,
and almost panther-like sprinted across the street to a street divider
where some unused blue police barricades sat. She jumped atop the
barricades and perched herself, cat-like, upon them, looking out at
everyone around her with a playful wariness. Since her butt was up in
the air and she was wearing a lacey thong – something that wouldn’t
have been the least bit outrageous inside, say, DTW but certainly
turned heads on the corner of 12th Street and Greenwich Avenue, people
in passing cars hooted and whistled and one called out, “Girlfriend,
what are you on?” It was hysterical.

Miller indicated Achugar’s performance was over and led us down
Greenwich Ave. As we passed by a crowded restaurant with a sidewalk
café, Miller told us to all give ourselves a round of applause as the
diners all looked at us, bewildered. When we passed a Japanese
restaurant surrounded by scaffolding, Miller and her partner smacked
their hands repeatedly on the structure overhead, chanting. The poor
Japanese proprietors came running outside to see what was going on.
They looked pretty confused and a bit scared. As soon as we passed,
they warily went back inside.

Throughout the whole journey, Miller would at times stand in the
middle of the street, in front of a cab, blocking traffic and would do
a little dance on her stilts. It was hilarious watching the often
immigrant cab driver’s reaction. “What kind of insane city have I
moved to?” his facial expressions read. Soon, cars behind him not
knowing why he’d stopped would begin to honk, which most of us found
equally hilarious, though I guess from the perspective of the cabbies
losing money sitting stationary in their cars, in might not have been.
At times while we were stopped at an endless-seeming traffic light,
Miller and partner would take out flutes and play us a little song.

As soon as we got to the corner of Greenwich, Christopher, and Sixth,
we again encountered the hooded people, some of whom stood on the
intersection’s meridian, some on the corner opposite Greenwich, all
standing shock still chanting, then bending down to the ground, and
finally breaking into dance. They took off their hoods and we were now
able to see their faces. Our journey was nearly over and they smiled
at us, as if in congratulations. On the corner we also met up with a
man who had a small dog standing straight up, balancing his hind legs
in the man’s palms. At first, I thought the dog was some kind of
puppet, but when Miller introduced man and dog, I realized the dog was
real, and was trained to stand up for long periods of time. I don’t
know if the man and his dog were part of the show or if he’d just kind
of seen us and approached, introducing himself to our leader on the
spot.

Continuing on down West 4th, we encountered a marching band, Rude
Mechanical Orchestra, accompanied by baton-twirler-like dancers
without the batons. They led us into Judson Memorial Church, on the
south side of Washington Square. On our way in, each of us in turn was
grabbed by one of the festival’s curators who, holding onto our upper
arms, turned us around and around and around in a circle, so by the
end we were so dizzy we had no idea where we were going. I followed
the rest of the crowd to the back, where we came to a dead end.
”Wait,” someone in the know said. “We’re supposed to be in the gym, I
think.” That’s back that way,” said another. We turned ourselves
around and walked down the hall to a large room bearing a basketball
court. The band and dancers soon caught up with us and beer was
served. The band played, the dancers performed – some of it
choreographed some of it not, and we were invited to join in. The
whole evening had a kind of parallel universe, Alice in Wonderland
air; I felt in the end as if I’d been on a wild ride.