Text by Monica LaBelle
Videos captured and embedded by Kathryn Born
The Museum of Contemporary Art unveiled its upcoming stage season Wednesday, presenting a mélange of performances from theater to dance to film. Those expecting much programming of the straight-up performance art variety might be disappointed. But fear not! The programming of the season is still young, and Director of Performance Programs Peter Taub acknowledged that, as in previous seasons, additional artists will be scheduled throughout the season.
MCA administrators emphasized the interdisciplinary nature of the upcoming season as part
of Pritzker Director Madeleine Grynsztejn's vision. In her second year at the MCA, she is in the process of presenting an institution that blurs boundaries among artistic disciplines, audience and artist. This is a difficult proposition, but a necessary one as the MCA distinguishes itself from the attention-hogging behemoth that is the Art Institute of Chicago's newly opened Modern Wing. After all, how can boundaries among disciplines be truly blurred when audiences are accustomed to either sitting in a theater to experience art (performance) or stand, walk and view galleries (exhibition)?
A few upcoming works address this directly, such as "Jeremy Deller: It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq." Here, alternating groups of war veterans, scholars, Iraqi nationals and journalists will reside in the galleries and engage in discussion about the war with museum goers. Now, THAT blurs boundaries on several levels: between audiences and artists, between performance and exhibition, between process and product. It's intriguing to see just how this discussion will be set up within the galleries--will the conversations be heard by those who have come to see other works during its October 10 to November 15 run?
Other than this uber-mash-up of boundary-crossings, the performance schedule offers what appears to be a sampling of cross-pollinations: a little inter-generational work here, a little pan-racial-background-collaboration there. It's up to interpretation as to what is being crossed or mixed. At first glance there is no coherent theme. But why should there be? Especially when an audience of art history and comparative literature aficionados can draw their own themes. If anything, a preview of the upcoming stage season comes back to this: nothing is truly original, each idea is molded from previous ideas and collaboration happens both among artists and over time.
Here's what coming up, with an indicator of where the performance primarily lies within the dance/film/music/play matrix. Of course, since some of these are so utterly cross-disciplinary, the category is up for dispute.
October 1, 3-4, 2009
DANCE
Nora Chipaumire with Thomas Mapfumo and The Blacks Unlimited: lions will roar, swans will fly, angels will wrestle heaven, rains will break: gukurahundi
A dancer/choreographer and musician/poet counter the common conception of Africa as a war-torn and exotic place.
October 10-11, 2009
FILM
Califone: All My Friends are Funeral Singers
The folk-fusion band Califone perform their upcoming album All My Friends are Funeral Singers to the front man's first feature film (whose snippets resemble a White Stripes video)
October 15-17, 2009
DANCE/FIlM/MUSIC
Lucinda Childs: DANCE
Ah, the seventies. Here po-mo-dance queen Lucinda Childs' choreography meets artist Sol LeWitt's black-and-white film meets composer Philip Glass's music on the 30th anniversary of this masterminds' meld.
October 21-November 1, 2009
PLAY/FILM
The Hypocrites: Frankenstein
A retelling of Mary Shelly's classic novel places the audience onstage with the actors and film (I smell boundary-crossing). The resulting performance, according to preview literature from the MCA, should read like a contemporary literary monster.
November 5, 7-8, 2009
DANCE
Anna Halprin/Anne Collod & Guests: parades & changes, replays
Anna Halprin's Parades and Changes was banned for nudity when it premiered in New York in 1965. French choreographer Anne Collod re-creates this work by Halprin, a Winnetka native.
Editor's Note (Kathryn): This one just came in
Performance 3 from Kathryn Born on Vimeo.
Please do not associate Monica's fine work with my smartass video. I'm sorry, Monica, I couldn't help it, I saw the preview for (Untitled) last night http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzPzOvKTp2w and thought it was so funny.
And I know someone is going to post a comment saying I'm a disgrace, but seriously, if we're not fully embracing the stereotype of performance art, then we're at greater risk of becoming the stereotype of performance art.
Aw, man! Here I am, thinking the MCA has added something that defies definition as Dance, Music, or Theatre, then I find out it
Hi Gretchen, I agree. I was surprised at the lack of "performance art". As taboo as is to call it as such, they could focus on more approachable, watchable, long-form performance art for the stage. Or a variety of short performance art pieces by a number of artists? If they had the will, they could cross the line, and not worry things will be "too weird for the main stage"
Like this http://www.dcatheater.org/shows/show/new_blood_iii/