Socially Loaded Art

Last Thursday, we were stuck. When the weather decided to renege on its promise of spring by dropping nearly nine inches of snow, we found ourselves stuck in our rooms making microwave Easy Mac in favor of trying to slip and fall our way to Mather for dinner. While we sat in our rooms praying school to be cancelled the next morning, a small group of us managed to un-stick ourselves from the warming glow of the television set and ventured off campus. We ventured all the way to the Charter Oak Cultural Center to attend the arts event that night which featured a reading by Trinity visiting faculty Margaret Randall, the premiere of Starting Over, a performance piece by the Judy Dworin Performance Ensemble. Also opening was the exhibit "Visions of a New World" dedicated to the late Maureen McElhone featuring her art along with the art of her mother, Judy McElhone, her sister, Kara, and her students from the Hartford Magnet Middle School and Parkville Community School.

While the premiere of Starting Over was the focal point of the evening, the reading by Margaret Randall and the "Visions of a New World" were perfect compliments to the ideas brought forth in the performance piece. Randall read a "heavily revised" version of the essay she contributed to the collection To Mend the World: Women Reflect on 9/11.

In her piece, she described the varied abroad experiences as an American and how she felt hesitant to admit her American heritage to inquiring foreigners. She examined the American phenomenon of the altruistic individual in contrast with the selfish American collective.

At the end of her essay, she pointed to the political ignorance of the American public as the root of such incongruous behavior. Randall also read three poems that had been inspired by the recent world events.

After Randall's reading, the audience was directed to go to the gallery portion of the Charter Oak Cultural Center to view the exhibit "Visions of A New World." The children of the Hartford Magnet Middle School and the Parkville Community School who participated in this exhibit were asked to create their vision of the new world through their artwork.

The room was full of colorful portrayals of hands holding the world, multicultural children holding hands, and paths of good and evil asking the viewer to choose which way to travel. After a tour of the gallery and some refreshments, the audience was invited back upstairs to view the premiere of Starting Over.

Starting Over is a piece about how we can get from the state of stuck-age that we're in now to move forward to fulfill those children's visions of a new world. It is a response and reaction to the events of September 11th, but it is more than just a reaction to one specific event in world history; its message flows into our lives today as we face the eminent threat of war.

The piece begins with the dancers turning on the large television hanging as a backdrop to the stage. The television plays a show called "Adam and Eve for a Day," a take-off on the 50s television show "A Queen for a Day." Each couple announces why they would make the best Adam and Eve, citing agendas from animal rights to homosexuality to multiculturalism. The audience of the show is then encouraged to clap the loudest for the couple they think would make the best Adam and Eve. Sadly for the contestants, the applause meter breaks and they can't tell who has won.

The focus of the piece then switches to the dancers who had been watching the television. They enact the childhood game of "Stuck in the Mud," the rules of which are explained in a voice over by seven year-old Alyssa Ciera Serrambana. This game and its repeated actions become the vocabulary of the piece and many of the moves are repeated later in the piece to evoke the imagery of being stuck -- a literal reality in the game. The tone of the piece has a comic, child-like energy that is instantly engaging for the audience.

As the piece progresses, the story of one man's move to New York City and the joy and excitement that the change brings is told through text and movement by Michael Burke. As joyful as this initial telling of his big move is, it soon switches its mood as the performers reenact their personal remembrances of how the events of September 11 changed their lives. Their stories are told in a montage of voice-overs and movement.

The personal nature of these retellings works to engage the audience in the ideas the piece is working through. Although the shift from playful childhood games to dealing with the aftermath of September 11 is a sudden one, it works because it manages to capture the sudden, shocking nature of September 11 itself.

The most powerful aspect of this piece is it's successful exploration many of the different kinds of reactions people had to the events of Sept. 11th. In one part of the piece, a voice-over queries: "Who's to blame?" As the dancers turn on each other in a dance of aggressive and suspicious movements.

In another part of the piece, Burke tells the story of leaving his apartment after Sept. 11th and seeing people washing the windshields of cars parked on the street that were covered with dust and debris from the towers.

At first he thought it was funny how everyone showed up to wash their car windows at the same time, but he quickly realized it was actually a group of people going down the street washing everyone's car windows. While he narrates this story, the dancers behind Burke raise and lower their arms in a simple wiping motion.

As he ends the story by saying he joined the group of the car washers, Burke steps back into the group of dancers and falls into step with their simple wiping movements. This moment is especially stirring because of its simplicity in both movement and text - as the audience watches the wipers we feel the beauty of that moment as if we had witnessed it ourselves in a way, through this performance we have.