Look left. Look right. Hold your head still. Don’t move, just look. Now left again.
Pose. Freeze. Another will take over. Shift. Take over from another. Move once. Pose. Freeze.
Stand. Stretch. Move in sync. You are not next to anyone. You will be next to someone. You are next to someone. And then you are alone again.
I do not remember the Harvard-Radcliffe Modern Dance Company’s Fall 2020 show, surreal, as a whole, a coherent narrative, a plot, characters, scenes, a hero’s journey. I remember flashes. Thoughts. Three-and-a-half minutes, and three-and-a-half more. Contradictions resolved, forgotten, remembered.
This is not my failure. This is their victory.
The problem is obvious. A dance company requires a stage. A pandemic requires the stages to be closed. A grid of videos, each containing one dancer, is an easy solution. A green screen is technically harder and more expensive but could create a better illusion of shared space. A rented warehouse, COVID tests, plane tickets, and masks would work for Hollywood but are beyond the reach of a student group. The trade-off is merciless: better solutions require more work, and eventually, that work is too much. There is no perfect option.
surreal does not care. It simply solves a different problem.
The performance consists of watching a video played through Zoom screen share, in an overtly non-participatory experience. A request not to make comments in the Zoom chat is mostly adhered to. An opening shot shows cars driving down a highway, taken from a mobile phone: a nesting of physical and digital isolation boxes. The first moment is a lament for all we have lost. There is no connection here.
Cut to a solitary dancer, who performs the first step in her routine.
Then, cut to another, who performs the second. Another, the third. Although the bodies change, as do the backgrounds, the motion flows seamlessly between them. A tightly-edited first piece, switching rapidly between shots, sets out one of the show’s main theses: a physical stage is not the be-all and end-all of dancing. Other ways of displaying movement can work just as well.
The production truly hits its stride, though, when it begins to play not only with the video as a way of connecting people, but as a way of disconnecting them. One piece uses Zoom backgrounds and costumes to separate dancers across history. Another places up to four dancers at once in separate rectangles on screen, performing identical routines, split apart by space. Another opens with a completely black screen, empty except for an irregularly-shaped cutout showing a video zoomed in on a single eye. As it moves back and forth in time to the music, more cut-outs appear, showing other single body parts, which dance on their own before video of entire dancers takes over. Even then, their bodies do not appear to be acting as single unified wholes, but rather as amalgamations where each part has a mind of its own. The ensuing piece explores the struggles of being uncomfortable in your own body. It is effective in a way that would have been impossible without the ability to show an eyelid, a foot, and a human, all the same size, one after the other.
The choreography is varied throughout, the movements precise and controlled, and the editing blends technical competence with understanding of the intention behind each piece. Beyond the few minor but inevitable technical difficulties of any Zoom call, the weakness of the show is in the way it treats its music. Much of the soundtrack has lyrics, and much of it goes beyond the standard “I wanna hold your hand” school of pop lyric writing – Sylvan Esso’s “Radio,” a searing and very specific critique of the modern music industry, is a highlight – but the show rarely if ever engages with these lyrics. “Radio” is nothing more than a beat to dance to, which is fine, given that this is a dance performance and dancing is what we have come to see, but still disappointing. Another piece splices together brief clips of many different pieces of music to create an original soundtrack, but the result, while never uninteresting or stale, lacks a structure that a single song or set of songs would have had. I am not educated in modern dance, so it may well be that my critiques come from my missing of crucial subtleties, but even in this case, it is telling that HRMDC’s choreographers view the lyrical content of the music as worth considering only subtly.
These faults are not dealbreakers. The conclusion, arguably the most complex piece of the performance, makes up for them on its own. A title card mentions a Zoom room. A few moves, such as framing rectangles with arms, actively suggest this; other parts are less explicit. The performance builds as more and more members come on-screen at once, until a final shot shows the entire company, all at once, each performing in their own section of the screen. The music is joyous, as are the motions, and the viewers are left amazed at the precision that could synchronize so many individual videos and at the spirit that would make the result more than an exercise in slavishly moving to the click of a metronome. On stage, this would be impressive; on Zoom, it is awe-inspiring. It is gleeful organized chaos. Then, a moment of clarity.
The solution becomes obvious. A person requires a social group. A pandemic requires the groups to be broken up. A phone call can feel like shouting into the void. A Zoom room can be nothing more than a way to watch a pre-recorded video. The structures we rely on no longer seem to be there for us.
surreal does not worry. It simply asks us to trust.
The second dancer takes over from one she hasn’t seen, but knows is there, and is taken over from in turn. The company dances in their Zoom bubbles, isolated in the moment but knowing that they will, in the end, be together. Not one of them believes that another will let them down. In the end, we will be there for each other when we are needed. What we build may seem to disappear for a moment, or shatter into fragments, but that is an illusion. It never goes away.
You are not next to anyone. You will be next to someone. You are next to someone.
And don’t you forget it.
Michael Kielstra ’22 (pmkielstra@college.harvard.edu) writes Arts for the Independent.
Photos Courtesy of the Harvard-Radcliffe Modern Dance Company.