When we use the word “contemporary” to describe a work of dance we are usually talking about two things. First are the formal elements of movement employed in conveying the meaning; elements that are of the moment and constitute a kind of recognizable global vernacular. Second is the vaguer realm of mood, tone, and sensibility. Does it define something particular about the era in which we live?
Argentinean choreographer Diana Szeinblum’s
Alaska, which opened Thursday at
On the Boards and runs through Sunday, can clearly lay claim to the former properties. When it comes to the latter, however, the piece is as traditional and familiar as that other product of Argentina, the tango.
Alaska begins with a languid, inert man slouched in a chair with a sign around his neck that reads “Estoy Desesperado.” Once the message of internalized anguish is announced we are treated to an hour of dance that takes isolation and arrested emotions as its theme. The slow-burning and sporadically frenzied movement tells of powerlessness in the face of violent forces emerging from within, repressed human urges which are only fleetingly surface to the point where they can impact the lives of others. Often, when a dancer ramps up and gives into such pressures, he or she is met with passive resistance or extreme lassitude from the other. Love, it seems, is still a battlefield.
The dramatic moments in the dance include two men rolling a listless, nearly naked woman back and forth by her legs and arms and a woman who struggles to push her way through the circle created by a man’s arms. Human relationships may be playing themselves out here, but the conflict at the center of the work lies hidden within the center of the self.
Alaska – which may translate to “your own private Idaho” in sunny Argentina – was compelling for durations of time but ultimately grew too slack and lugubrious. The movement would frequently stall, leaving the tension to evaporate from the stage. At one point midway through the piece, a dancer calmly plopped into a chair and asked the audience for a question. The work lost its momentum and never got it back.
But the real problem with
Alaska is its warm embrace of a somewhat retrograde tragic-romantic sorrow. From Goethe’s
Werther to Leonard Cohen and Elliott Smith, this emotive thread has loomed large in our culture. But today it is more at home in the realm of kitsch than contemporary art. Its overriding presence in the work is enhanced by the restrained solipsism of Ulises Conti’s melancholic score. Brooding is an important aspect of life and Szeinblum discreetly seeks to diffuse its hold upon the stage, keeping the work from ever becoming maudlin. But the flatness of mood is never mitigated by the unexpected laugh, the threat of danger, or a layer of irony that shifts us into an alternate state of mind. Even the more sophisticated choreographic nuance and occasional dramatic moment reinforce rather than undermine what feels too familiar. Time to get beyond the crying, Argentina.
