John Jasperse’s Dry

by Aeron Kopriva

Depth, or the illusion of depth, plays such a key role in John Jasperse’s new work it is almost one of the dancers.

Dry, which premiered this summer at the American Dance Festival, is primarily a movement study on the curved aspect of the body—its slopes and taluses—and its relationship to flat surfaces. Though in order to fully appreciate the formal quality of this relationship, one must look at the deeper reasons behind why these figures would want to move in the first place. “I’m interested in how the impulses for movement,” Jasperse said in an interview after a performance, “Come from inside the individual as well as from outside in the environment.” Jasperse’s dynamic choreography, especially his manipulation of perspective in the sizable Reynolds Theater, dramatize these twin forces in a sleepwalking composition that is not only a transfixing play of surfaces, but also an evocative glimpse into the psychology of dreams.

Entering from behind a stand of receding pylons, each painted a luminous blue, three dancers situate themselves in the center of the stage. Their movements at first appear very round and deliberate as they get comfortable on the boards, rearranging knees and arms, to resemble sleeping figures. Underneath the restful spell of sleep, however, prods an agitated elbow or jerking torso. Clearly they are disturbed by something as several dancers begin to file in along the perimeter of the stage, halting only to suggest with slow gyrations a sexual enchantment over the dreamers.

Jasperse’s work in the past has always dealt candidly with divisions of one kind or another—divisions between self and other, public and private—and how they help define our personal identity. In Dry, he succeeds in using perspective as a choreographic tool to dig deeper into the differences (and similarities) between reality and fantasy. Taking advantage of a large venue, he positions the dancers against the far wall in such a way as to give them the two-dimensionality of a portrait. “I wanted to use my ability to manipulate distance,” Jasperse noted, “in a way that you don’t have to be in the first row to understand.” The result is a stunning façade of poses as the dancers in the background drop on their backs and rotate their legs along the wall in a dialing maneuver.

The implication of such motion is one of widening circumference and control.   These figments (in an outlet-full of green, blue and brown pastels) wield strong influence over the solitary sleepers, who echo the same dialing motion—albeit hesitantly, involuntarily. A struggle ensues over who exactly is in charge, the dreamer or the dream. An angular, percussive score of Kodaly teams up poignantly with the abrupt, distressed movements of each dancer. The conflict is further heightened by the foreshortening effect of Jasperse’s blocking, giving the figures in the background not only the quality of something set back in space, but also time—the quality of something half-remembered in a haze of nostalgia.

The main dancers react with a combination of resistance and submission, until finally the total ensemble falls in unison to form one solitary expression of longing. Three dancers in the background step out impossibly from the backlit shadows to mingle with the sleepers in the center of the stage. A quickening of already stated motifs is witnessed as the sleepers pair off with their doppelgangers. In the episode that follows a current of sexual violence is stemmed by moments of defiant, awkward grace. The floorwork becomes increasingly complex in a wrestling of limbs that may recall to some the macabre lyricism of Romeo’s pas de deux with Juliette’s corpse. Ultimately, the dreamers collapse into the rigor mortis of REM sleep. The background ensemble closes in on three sides.

Though Dry was commissioned by ADF and danced by students there, Jasperse came up with most of the material in New York. But improvisation and the surprises it brings has always been of great value to his work. In his classes he speaks of “a laboratory experience” in which students discover certain compositional ideas. “As we focused on different patterns,” he said, “I became increasingly interested in the dysfunctionalities that developed.” In these incongruities of limbs—strained, unresolved posturing—Jasperse shows a great potential for beauty that is quite free from classical attitudes. In the climactic moments of Dry when the sleepers are handled by the figures of their fantasy in a somnambulant waltz, no matter how much the body submits, there is always an involuntary element in its movement—a “dysfunctionality” or awkwardness that gives a powerful expression of ambivalence.

Dry is a successful evocation of the contradictory impulses desire can inspire in us, as well as a successful study on movement whose impulses similarly come both from within and without. To hear Jasperse describe his own work, however, it is clear he prefers the discourse of a visual artist, emphasizing the latter quality of his choreography. “I wanted to see how much space an object takes up,” he shared, placing a pepper mill in the center of a table to illustrate his point. He is fascinated by the command even the smallest gesture may have on a space. As if under water, any object that occupies the stage in turn displaces those objects around it.

This preference for the language of visual arts has led at least one person, Jiri Kylian of Nederlands Dans Theater, to make the distinction that Jasperse is “not a choreographer but a visual artist working with bodies.” Apart from the fact that choreography literally means just that, drawing with dance, Kylian’s distinction does suggest an orientation not only in Jasperse’s work, but much of avant-garde dance as well. “Like I’ve said before,” Jasperse says, “I think we are all trying to make the same dance.” Still Jasperse has succeeded in giving his signature to dance that challenges conventional notions of what bodies can do.

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Aeron Kopriva is a student of the Latin and Greek classics at Bard College.