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CoCo Loupe Limón, Bausch, Streb: Narrative, Montage, Action The works of José Limón, Pina Bausch, and Elizabeth Streb, for the most part, stand worlds apart. All one has to do is look to the list of their heroes, ranging from Doris Humphrey to Kurt Jooss to Evil Knievel, to understand that the differences between each of their artistic philosophies and compositional methodologies run fairly deep. Structurally, their works exist on a spectrum from linear, dramatic narrative to non-linear, fragmented montage to systematic, gravity-defying designs. Moreover, the style and content of their works is so unequivocally unique to each of them that they all have an identifiable technique and/or genre associated with their names. These individual proclivities are inextricably linked to the way that they conceive and build their dances. Among the three, José Limón used the most conventional devices in terms of dance construction. Although he made progressive forays into other areas, his commitment to redefining the male role in modern dance for instance (Reynolds and McCormick 329), he most frequently used two already established methods of structuring dances: character driven narrative and musical composition. Considering the fact that he recognized Isadora Duncan, Harald Kreutzberg, Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman, Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn as his artistic ancestors (Garafola 1), it seems natural that he chose to build his works upon these structures. In relation to Pina Bausch and Elizabeth Streb, these traditional methodologies are the exact facets of his process that keep the chasm between them so wide and deep. Whereas Bauschs works are also expressive of the human condition, they are in no way linear, plot-driven narratives. For this and other reasons, Elizabeth Strebs interests stand in stark contrast to Limóns, but the most obvious is that she, for most of her career, considered music to be a natural nemesis of dance (Streb: Pop Action 2003). The dances that are recognized as his masterpieces and that have become classics of the modern dance canon exemplify Limóns obsession with epic-sized, human intrigue. They also exhibit his talent for crafting distilled dance dramas from multifaceted and complex narratives (Copeland and Cohen 107) and simultaneously provide examples of his close structural relationship to music. His most famous work, The Moors Pavane, set to the "stately music of Purcell" (Reynolds and McCormick 329) recasts Shakespeares story of Othello. The Traitor, choreographed to a score by Gunther Schuller, recounts the betrayal of Jesus Christ by Judas Iscariot. The Emperor Jones, for which Limón commissioned an original score from Heitor Villa Lobos, highlights the tension between native cultures and colonizing nations through plot sequences based on Eugene ONeills play by the same name (Dunbar 66). There Is A Time, uses biblical passages to inspire movement, choreographic order and gesture to depict "simple people expressing religious and communal feeling" (Reynolds and McCormick 331). In this piece, Limón chose to use a combination of composed music, body accompaniment in the form of clapping and/or silence to emphasize the intention and meaning of specific sections (Dunbar 39). The dance that most famously highlights his attachment to music as a choreographic structuring device is A Choreographic Offering. Although nearly all of his works, even the ones developed along narrative storylines, explicitly follow musical scores, this homage to Doris Humphrey, depends entirely on J.S. Bachs composition, A Musical Offering, for its structure, flow, and expressive nature. The movement of the piece is borrowed from Humphreys repertoire and is instilled with Limóns great reverence for his mentor, but structurally, Bachs score heavily influences the entire work. Sarah Stackhouse spoke of Limóns relationship to the score when she wrote, "He had every note in his fiber long before he began work with us on his choreographic offering" (116). Within the macrostructure of linear narrative and music composition, Limón depicted relationships, dialogue, emotions, mood, atmosphere, personalities, and individual character through his applications of spatial design, his sensitive use of gesture and weight, and his impeccable treatment of music scores. Ann Murphy commented on his ability to seamlessly manipulate bodies in space into meaningful configurations when she wrote that "structurally, and on the plane of the individual" Limóns choreography "often formed a series of taut pairings, triangulations and cross pairings." She went on to tie these configurations to the content and meaning in his works by writing, "José implicitly used these geometries to explore the ambiguity of desire and its ethical consequences" (66). Secondly, because many of the stories that Limón told through dance involved basic human conflicts such as love, hate, loyalty, betrayal, desire, control, life and death, tension between characters and internal conflict within individuals called for movement that was adaptable to a broad range of expression. On one hand, Limóns movement vocabulary was packed with compressed power and a horizontal, driving quality. The authors of No Fixed Points Dance in the Twentieth Century, explain the compositional implications of this movement quality and style below:
Conversely, Betty Jones, one of Limóns founding company members, described his ability to access small nuances and subtleties in order to capture extremely detailed qualities of movement and character when she wrote:
Lastly, Limóns connection to musical rhythms, textures, color and dynamics allowed him to attach meaning to motion. He was "enthralled by the idea of translating into dance the profound harmony of great painting and music in which he found affirmation of mans sanity" (Reynolds and McCormick 329). Therefore, he adopted characteristics from the music and applied them to human personalities, situations, or moods onstage. Again, Betty Jones comments on Limóns work and explains how he used different rhythms to illustrate opposite ideas when she writes, "The juxtaposition of the two rhythms is dynamic, giving great contrast and emphasizing the difference in attitude of the two dancers" (Dunbar 39). Sarah Stackhouse comes to the following conclusions about Limóns use of music:
When considering Limóns most famous pieces, it is possible to connect him to the next subject of this paper, Pina Bausch, via the expressionism that is common to them both. Although their methodologies differ to the extremes, (i.e., Limóns linear, narrative structures and Bauschs non-linear montages), their works seem to have something in common on the level of the body and its ability to express human consciousness. Both display their individual needs to investigate the underpinnings of human frailty through the exhibition of socially constructed inequalities. Limón consistently pitted the immigrant, peon or "other" man against the colonial, aristocratic majority while Bausch continues to place men and women at odds in her dreamlike collages of beauty, abuse and gender-based struggles. However, this is a philosophical commonality. Portrayals of tensions and conflicts may keep Limón and Bausch on the similar playing field of the political, but when one probes their underlying choreographic strategies, it becomes evident that the two have never truly played the same game. To illustrate this point, Bauschs works seem to come from nowhere and go no specific place. There is no discernible story to follow, no heroic, lead characters, and definitely no consistent or choreographed movement sequences that are directly related to musical structure. In fact, Bauschs works tend to contain a plethora of loosely related sections, timelines, character groupings, images and sound collages. Ann Daly, in a review of the German choreographers work, wrote that her pieces, "composed, as they often are, of the performers reenacted memories, fantasies, and dreams, there is something charged behind the actions, something felt but not quite visible, that compels us" (29). This talent for depicting compelling situations of reality through experience led to the development of what is now called dance theatre or Tanztheatre, which means "theatre of experience" (Reynolds and McCormick 638). Bausch stepped outside of her history with Ausdruckstanz or "dance of expression" (Carter 20) and concentrated on actually living certain situations of human experience in performance rather than abstracting them and acting them out on stage. This wholly different artistic vision inevitably altered the structural supports by which her works were held together. Form, content, style and meaning all came into question under Bauschs quietly rebellious influence. Her unique compositional approach consists of two structural preferences: non-linear, non-narrative, multiperspectival frameworks (Desmond 103) and the use of montage. Besides helping to define the boundaries and flow of her works, these compositional tools also provide Bausch with a perfect vehicle in which to experiment with what seems to be her deepest obsession: the ever-present and poignant conflict between men and women. This subject, with all of its trappings (sex, inequality, commitment, abuse, love, hate, superiority, inferiority, fashion, beauty, desire, rejection, and control), has been presented in Bauschs works for years and has become her most visited and identifiable contextual construct. Because she continually reuses these choreographic devices and thematic materials, they have been used by critics, scholars and audiences to define in general, dance theatre and in particular, the "Bauschian" aesthetic. In reference to basic structural frameworks, Bausch rejected conventional use of dramaturgy and instead chose "incompletion, fragmentation, disruption and interruption" (Daly 32) as "operative structural devices in large mixed-media collages" (Reynolds and McCormick 638). For example, in Café Müeller, Bausch emphasizes her disinterest in developing character or following a linearly constructed sequence of events by allowing several non-related performers to coexist in a common, theatrical space. They all seem to have a relationship to the space but temporally and circumstantially, they never truly acknowledge each other or share a mutual experience. They repeat their patterns continually with little variation regardless of what else is happening around them. A steady, disjointed flow of action occurs simultaneously in the foreground and background. This ambiguous atmosphere is punctuated with what appears to be random entrances and exits and uncomfortable, often violent, interactions of characters. This technique of skewing content through manipulating time and sequence has become a stylistic landmark of Bauschs work as well. Through the bombardment of perpetually shifting imagery, her work almost always decentralizes the observers focus and thus thwarts any attempt to "coolly" (Carter 20) examine the content therein. The unexpected progression of the work keeps the observer engaged by confusing expectations and forcing him/her to become involved. Thus, the observer participates in the experience by becoming frustrated, tense and helpless. Bauschs desire, which translates directly into the uneasy texture, bitter flavor and rough feel of her pieces, is to expose the human dilemma in crude, realistic terms so that the audience members can come to grips with their individual situations (Desmond 106). Her style from this perspective has double-coded, emancipatory overtones. She simultaneously frees both the audience and the artform "from the constraints of literature," unburdens both of their "fairytale illusions" and points them "toward[s] reality" (Carter 45). Bauschs use of montage continues her interest in uprooting conventional approaches to making art. Reynolds and McCormick describe the contents of her collages by writing that she "incorporated cinematic borrowings, mime, spoken texts, bizarre vocal effects and occasional slapstick, interwoven with repetition and cumulative phrasing reminiscent of American postmodernism" (639). Furthermore, by combining pedestrian movement and clothing with vernacular dance, abstract movement and highly expressive gesture, Bausch creates multiple entry points into the work for the performers as well as the audience members. The visual, kinesthetic, associative and metaphorical components of her pieces fold and layer upon themselves to such an extent that it is impossible to define and recognize one, coherent and unified message. Norbert Servos writes, "Instead of every detail being absolutely interpretable, the dominant features of the pieces are a multidimensionality and complex simultaneity of actions that offer a wide panorama of phenomena" (Carter 40). One of the most intriguing features of Bauschs montages is her use of real, everyday objects or substances in the transformation of her performance spaces. In Arien, the performers dance and skid through water that is pooled on the stage. In Rite of Spring, almost a foot of soil serves as the stomping ground for the ritualistic dance. In other pieces "grass, bushes, large cacti, fields of carnations, sand-dunes and so forth" (Bremser 27) create lush "scenery that looks so real that its obviously fake" (Daly 32). This blatant strategy of "playing conspicuously with the open secret of theatrical illusion" (32) further distorts the way that action occurs in relation to space and time. By blurring the border between "natural versus artificial; reality versus theater" (Desmond 106), these natural elements help to create "surreally unnatural environments" (106). It is interesting to note that this revolutionary structural device has also become one of Pina Bauschs most well known stylistic signatures. On the subject of signature styles, the third choreographer in this discussion, Elizabeth Streb, has created a personal style of making and doing movement. She calls her technique "pop-action" (Streb: Pop Action 2003) because rather than articulate the limbs by way of muscle moving bone, she has developed a movement style based on the whole muscle belly contracting or "popping" at once to produce split second propulsion. It represents her complete and total obsession with singular movement ideas based on a combination of physics, anatomy, apparatus, strength, stamina and sheer guts. If there were a connection between the dances of Elizabeth Streb, José Limón and Pina Bausch, it would have to be severed at the point at which the body initiates muscle contraction. Unlike Limón and Bausch, Streb has no use for the "dancerly" (Bremser 201) expression of the body. She also "hated music ("too bossy") and rejected narrative. Her focus was on the abstract properties of pure movement time, space, and the body" (Daly 137). To this end, Streb structures her dances in ways that allow her to find solutions to movement problems or ideas. Because her movement interests are deeply associated with the speed and velocity of downhill skiing and motorcycle riding, she tends to conceive of nearly impossible feats of physicality. She researches the idea, sketches possible ways to accomplish it, and then has her dancers try it. The titles of her pieces, Fall Line, Up, Little Ease, Wall, Bounce, Surface, Free Flight, and Rise just to name a few, are indicative of her investigations. Almost all of her ideas are so extreme that in order to be accomplished they require trampolines, trusses, piping, scaffolding, portable walls and rigged harnesses. Once her dancers perform the movement or action to her satisfaction, Streb begins to choreograph sequences of the action and permutations of it into full-scale pieces. Because she is interested in a singular idea, the movement material is created as a result of function and effort rather than abstracted, expressive dance movement. The expression of the dance is inherent in the execution of the action and the pieces tend to consist of repetitive executions of a particular action at different angles, by different numbers of dancers, and in varying degrees of unison or counterpoint, depending on the nature of the stunt. Streb pushes the choreographic limits of her seemingly simple ideas with intricate designs in space that result in surface-to-air near misses that require precision on the part of the choreographer and the performer. Obviously, meticulous planning goes into every decision for artistic and safety reasons alike. Ann Daly writes about Elizabeth Strebs ability to make such refined works of art in the following passage:
If Streb is making a dance that involves the body impacting a surface or obstacle, as in Wall and Surface, the choreographic content and structure will be determined by how many different ways the body could come into contact with the obstacle. She will continue to increase the difficulty or complexity of the dance by adding repetitions, bodies, and/or another obstacle to the task. Fundamentally, it is the action that drives the structure and content of the piece. Daly again provides commentary on Strebs work when she writes, "They're all about taking the body to its limits, literally: to the wall, over the edge, hanging in midair" (132). While performing Strebs works, the members of Ringside, her dance company, adopt a regimented style of moving from one place to another. When they are not flying through the air, landing face down from a thirty-foot fall, or doing back punch flips off of a wall, they are hurrying to their next launch position. In their bright blue spandex unitards, they travel through space by either scurrying in crouched, compact shapes or running upright, scaling ramps or going around mats with their arms held tightly to their sides. When turning corners they take a precise 90-degree turn and when waiting for the next cue, they squat on one knee with their focus concentrated on the action. There is always the loud accompaniment of their voices as well because they constantly cue each other verbally with shouted words like "Ready?, "Go!," "Stop," and "Turn!". All of these characteristics contribute to the overall look and style of the works because all of the transitions, preparations, and landings are exposed to the audience. The clean, crisp, angular, rigorous and meticulously arranged dances appear to be well-oiled machines that have all of their parts working in a finely-tuned, synchronized fashion. Another aspect of her work that contributes to her compositional content and style is that she insists that the actions of the pieces be performed with the exact amount of effort and time that it takes to accomplish the task, no more and no less. Streb refers to this approach and its product as "honest, in that it cannot be marked or faked, and must be performed with full commitment, for otherwise the dancer could get hurt" (Bremser 201). This philosophy and practice provides an immediate and explosive energy to her works as well. The fact that it is impossible to act or pretend or dramatize the movement adds a true feeling of authenticity to the work and provides an extra kinetic thrust for the audience. Streb puts it plainly when she says, "We are transgressive action maniacs and have no other choice than to do the move right now this second" (Daly 141). In conclusion, it is clearly evident from the way they conceive basic movement material to the way they build entire works, these three choreographers, José Limón, Pina Bausch and Elizabeth Streb, vary to the extremes. However, even though they are all distinctly different, each brought and/or still brings a level of passion and vision to the field of dance that was, and still is, refreshingly revolutionary. Their contributions to the study, discourse and practice of movement and composition have been both original and radical. They have all, in their own ways, laid sections of groundwork for the creation and development of new concepts in dance and its construction.
Works Cited Bremser, Martha, ed. 50 Contemporary Choreographers. London and New York: Routledge, 1999. Carter, Alexandra, ed. The Routledge Dance Studies Reader. London and New York: Routledge, 1998. Copeland, Roger and Marshall Cohen. What Is Dance?. New York: Oxford UP, 1983. Daly, Ann. Critical Gestures Writings on Dance and Culture. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 2002. Desmond, Jane C., ed. Meaning in Motion: New Cultural Studies of Dance. Durham and London: Duke UP, 1997. Dunbar, June, ed. Jose Limón. New York and London: Routledge, 2000. Garafola, Lynn, ed. José Limón: An Unfinished Memoir. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1998?. Reynolds, Nancy and Malcolm McCormick. No Fixed Points in Space: Dance in the Twentieth Century. New Haven and London: Yale UP, 2003. Streb: Pop Action. Michael Blackwood Productions, 2003.
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