Housewife Dances Madonna: Bernard at Seabury 47

You never really know what to expect when you walk into a Seabury 47 show. Unexpected could be New York-based choreographer/dancer Karen Bernard's middle name (I haven't looked at her birth certificate, but I'm assuming her parents weren't that cruel). Therefore, Karen Bernard performing an excerpt from her longer piece "CAUTION/be careful of what you dream" in Seabury 47 last Tuesday night was a perfect fit. Bernard's performance that night falls into what I like to call the 'is this art?' category. Not that I believe Bernard's performance wasn't art (hell, in my book everything is art); I classify it as such because it's the type of performance 'pedestrian' audiences (to misappropriate theaterspeak) leave and then rush home to their dictionaries to look up 'art' to see if what they saw had anything at all to do with it. (You might think it doesn't, but after two years in the InterArts program I can say with some authority that it definitely does have something to do with art, at least in the minds of many people).At this point, I've probably got you wondering what exactly Bernard did that could put her in the 'is this art?' category. But before I can start with what she did, I must first tell you a little about who Bernard is (at least on the surface) that would garner such a reaction from an audience not familiar with her work. Bernard will be the first to tell you that she's not what you'd think of when you think of a dancer. She's in her fifties and doesn't have the typical dancer body. Off the bat that would challenge some people's perception of dance enough to not label it as such. What made Bernard's piece interesting was that she not only didn't hide the fact that she wasn't a 'typical' dancer, she embraced it and made it a major theme running throughout her piece.

As the audience began filling the space, Bernard was already onstage warming up. By being visible from the beginning Bernard was able to familiarize the audience with her presence and prepare them (as if one could really be prepared) for her performance. Bernard looked like a vision of the typical housewife in her blue sweats, not what you would expect if you simply read her wide-spread dance credentials. She began the piece by talking to the audience about the difficulties in finding the best way to start a piece. As she spoke, she wandered the space almost awkwardly, as if she were uncomfortable in front of an audience. At first it was hard to tell if this was the 'real' Bernard speaking to us or a persona, but the question was cleared up (in my mind at least) when she wandered into what she called the perfect spot to start her piece and then snapped into 'performance mode' with the jerk of her head and a switch of the lighting. Bernard is a dancer who looks like a housewife playing a housewife who moves like a dancer moving like a housewife (whew!).

Bernard had commissioned two pieces of music for her performance: one by Los Angeles-based composer Kate O'Neal and the other by Montreal-based composer Annabelle Chvostek. Both pieces of music were based on the work of the cultural icon Madonna. The piece itself focused heavily on the work of Madonna: exploring what it means to be rich and famous like Madonna and contrasting that to the life of a housewife.

Many of Bernard's movements are 'pedestrian' in nature (to reintroduce the word and use it in its proper context). For those who think 'pedestrian' movement is something that could get you hit by a car if you're not careful (which it quite possibly could), just imagine catching your mom dancing along to the Madonna CD you left in the bathroom boom box.

Bernard not only danced like that, in the Q&A session after the piece, she actually told the audience that exact mom-dancing-in-the-bathroom experience was what inspired her to use Madonna in her piece (her being the mom in question). 'That's all well and good,' you might say, 'but I can catch my mom dancing to Madonna any old time. What makes this any different?' This is when it pays to be a trained dancer. Being a non-dancer, I needed a little dancerly guidance (thanks Emily and Jamie!) to pick up on the subtle differences between a housewife dancing around to the top forty of the 80s and performance art. Although her movements were 'pedestrian' on the whole, Bernard made allusions to classical dance styles (jazz hands etc.) that gave away her extensive background in dance. While she repeated the dance segment twice to two different pieces of music, she changed the gesture and articulation of her moments to evoke a very different emotion (at first I didn't even realize she was repeating the same dance). While it might have looked easy to the untrained eye, what Bernard was able to accomplish subtly was something only a well-trained dancer could pull off effectively.

When the performance was over, Bernard held a Q&A session: an awkward thing for a professional artist who is used to performing outside of academia. The relatively small Trinity audience was a far cry from the masses that come to see her perform in New York and the atmosphere felt an odd mix of receptive and resistant to her work. The questions and comments ranged from confusion: 'What should we take away from this piece?' to praise: for stripping away the stereotypes of dancer to prove that anyone can do it (though I feel compelled to add that I don't think anyone could do what Bernard did without the thorough training she's had). I think Bernard sensed the resistance of the audience and deflected it by keeping up the persona she introduced in the beginning of the piece.

When asked what we could take away from this piece, she responded by saying it wasn't up to her to decide what we'd come away with, it was up to us. Though not an easily accessible statement, true nonetheless. The answer to the question 'is it art?' is up to you. And in my book, if any artist can get you thinking about the question at all, they've done their job.