Quartet with Three Gay Men, Really Queer Dance with Harps
June 18, 2008
Dance by Neil Greenberg
Dance Theater Workshop
New York City

If you've never seen a dance by Neil Greenberg, picture a few individuals -- maybe two, maybe eight -- scattered through space, each in the midst of a unique, all-absorbing task. They rarely make physical contact, or eye contact, but somehow they remain parts of a coherent whole, a landscape continuously transforming, though it's hard to locate just where these transformations begin. The studied focus of each dancer, the patterns arrived at seemingly by chance: it may sound Cunningham-esque, which would make sense; Greenberg danced with Merce Cunningham for seven years early in his career. But where Cunningham is known for sleek lines and limpid curves, Greenberg turns this style almost inside out -- at least in the two works on Wednesday night's program -- loosening joints, liquefying the spine, letting knees buckle and eyes wander and limbs dangle, for dances that are, at times, deliberately messy, and always rich with peculiar detail.

I call it peculiar; Greenberg calls it 'queer,' at least in the title of his latest creation, Really Queer Dance with Harps, which pries at the varied meanings, social and aesthetic, of the word. Throughout the work, eight down-to-earth dancers appear immersed in dialogue with their own bodies, by turns inquisitive, indifferent, and discouraged. Several, at different moments, hop relentlessly up and down in a kind of deflated releve -- knees bent, shoulders heavy -- as if waiting indefinitely for something to happen. We catch others crouching deeply in a side lunge, caressing an upward-gazing forehead with the fingers of one hand, as if feeling the contours of the face for the first time. A fascinating live score, played by three harpists stage right (including composer Zeena Parkins) provides the minimalist, unsentimental accompaniment, interspersed with long stretches of silence. A whimsical red curtain, draping halfway across the stage, frames the trio, offset by a more delicate yellow one stage left.

In a recent interview with Time Out New York, Greenberg described his interest in un-censoring movement that's 'been repressed' in a culture where 'gender and sexuality are so inflated.' Really Queer Dance, blurring those boundaries, opens up unconventional avenues of physicality and sharpens our awareness of the fact, too often taken for granted, that there are boundaries to be blurred in the first place. The dancers are often segregated spatially by gender, the women appearing first, the men replacing them gradually as they emerge from the curtainless wings. When the sexes echo other's movement, Greenberg invites us to think about our own gendered interpretations of gesture. For instance, how does a stereotypically 'effeminate' phrase -- like a plodding prance with floppy wrists, or a gentle swerving of the hips -- read differently on male and female bodies? Or how about an aggressive sequence of rhythmic stomping and throwing punches at the air? While the dance, partly by virtue of its title, alludes to such questions, it doesn't bombard us with them, letting us take in abstract events with or without interpretation.

Also on the program was the concise Quartet with Three Gay Men (2006), a fitting prelude to Really Queer Dance. There is something languidly sensuous about this work and the spiraling fluidity of its four men. About halfway through, after several minutes of silence, a distinctively nineties soundtrack kicks in -- RuPaul's Supermodel with a little bit of Parkins mixed in -- telling the dancers to 'work it, girl.' Their collective stream of motion continues right through, undisturbed, as they transition imperceptibly into something just a little jazzier, a little more vogue-like, than what came before. The music sparks another transition, too, from the men's inward focus to the sense that each is performing for someone else, not for the audience or for each other, but for an imagined onlooker. With music and movement layered just right, Greenberg achieves what seems to be his forte, deftly assembling the strata of a dance so that new meaning peaks through when we least expect it.