Dancing on the fine spine of legacy

Every performance has an origin story—and Dancing has one too.

Once upon a time, the renowned American dance artist Deborah Hay gave a workshop in Norway. In the studio, she saw three people dancing: Ingrid Haakstad, Geir Hytten, and Gry Kipperberg. She thought to herself: What if … these dancers became a trio?

Ingrid, Geir, and Gry walk on stage. They stand fairly close to the first row of seats. We watch their backs, their silhouettes, the fabric and texture of their somewhat casual-chic clothes wavering in the theatre lights. Funny footwear, I think to myself, as my eyes fall on Gry’s elegant white leather slip-ons and Ingrid’s see-through plastic ballerinas. I think about the costumes—and how I normally never think much about costumes. In that way, I am very postmodern. Postmodern dance: loved and hated by many! I think of some of my colleagues who would definitely roll their eyes at the sight of dancers on stage dressed as if they were on their way to rehearsal, the supermarket, or the gym (We are so passed the fetishisation of the everyday!). But this trio of dancers has decided to walk a fine line in terms of costume—between postmodern legacy and contemporary retrospection. Later in Dancing, I think of this fine line as a spine; a fine spine on which these dancers, the piece, and the trio project balances.

The solo

Deborah Hay is definitely worth a historical introduction. As the program puts it, she is, after all, «iconic»: Judson Church, experimental postmodern dance, 1960s New York… Or, if that feels too abstract, imagine a kind of dancing that rebelled against the forms of its time by embracing everyday movement, chance operations, and authenticity. A process of stripping dance down—away from narrative, virtuosity, and hierarchy—a choreography for the strange poetry of the everyday.

That’s history talking. Her influence may be better noticed in the stories of today’s dancers and, in fact, I have such a story myself. 

I first heard about Hay’s «Solo Performance Commissioning Project» around 2010. And after that, I’d hear about it more than once. Someone would mention someone else who «did the solo,» or saw someone doing it, or was considering doing it themselves. And they’d say: Maybe you should do it too!

People spoke of the project, and of Hay, with reverence. How life-altering it was, the work itself, but also to work with her. There was an emphasis on practice—dancing as practice. There was a score, given by Hay, which you had to practice every day, for months, before you performed it for an audience. You didn’t rehearse individual parts, you only practiced the whole thing, from beginning to end, every single time. It was about the doing, not the mastering of a nice-looking solo. People explained that in order to participate, you had to raise the money yourself—and crucially, that the money shouldn’t be your own. At least that’s how I remember it.

It sounded appealing. It also sounded borderline cultish. But hey, that’s how it goes in art.

And then there were those sentences that circulated. Hay’s words, passed on by colleagues and teachers—dancers who had done «the solo,» or who had also heard about it secondhand. These phrases, often in the form of questions, seemed to hold a certain kind of power. At the sound of them, they made immediate sense. 

And so, these sentences stayed with me. They did something to me—I, who never met or worked with Deborah Hay—and I still think about them regularly. In fact, one came back to me just this week. In the studio, while dancing, I said to myself: turn your fucking head. 

And then what happened is what always happens: turn, shift … something else.

Score and piece

Throughout Dancing, I notice how Ingrid, Geir, and Gry have practiced this shifting of perspective and have done so by tapping into their senses, an aspect central in Hay’s work. Their eyes look around in space—as if they are setting a tone. A tone that amplifies the senses—our senses! An invitation, perhaps an allowance, to sense.

I try to imagine what the score could sound like. Maybe something about letting the space fall into your eyes, your ears, your whole face. Or maybe the other way around. 

Like with all her work, Hay wrote a score for Dancing—trio number four in the Hay Trio Project. A year ago, Ingrid, Geir, and Gry visited Hay in Austin, where they rehearsed and fine-tuned the score. All three have learned this score by heart, and have – undoubtedly – practiced it by doing it, many, many times.

I am also told there are mantras. Which makes the whole thing sound a little secretive. Though I assume they might be similar to the sentences I remember, passed on through others. Sentences,or fragments of sentences, that lie deep in my dance conscious, ready for me to grab whenever needed. Like: «What if every single cell of my body…» or «What if where you are is what you need?»

It’s very hard to write about dancing, the ing-ing of dance.

I try to imagine how Ingrid, Geir, and Gry each carry the same score in their heads (and maybe also in their, as Hay puts it, «more than 300-plus trillion cells»), and how they must each be on their own trip, while also needing to attend to their shared dance. A dance that cannot be reproduced, at least in principle, because it can only be practiced, again and again. At times, the movement feels like a highly energetic conversation between three entities. Limbs like sentences and words thrown into the air, caught by another, continued, completed or just cut off.

Like much of Hay’s work, a stream of playfulness guides us through the piece. Moments of virtuosity are broken by funny walks, gestural details, a grimace that shakes our perception. Humming is used to leave the stage, to trace the space we don’t see. Somewhere in the middle, a story is told, beginning with: «I thought everything was about to explode». Towards the end, sudden bursts of voice rupture the calm, breaking with how I had read the dancers—or at least the staged personalities I thought I understood. Throughout all of this, there is a soft pulsing light: fading in, fading out. Then total darkness.

I think about how movements relate to other movements. About the trio as form: vulnerable, easily tipped off balance, yet also solid. As Hay puts it, maybe even «magical».I think about dance as both the labor of serious commitment and the delight of silly, superficial joy.

I think about searching and knowing.

I think about dance, and dance-ing.

I try to think less.

Some might say that if it weren’t for Deborah Hay’s name, this piece would look like just another dance improvisation between three people. I see what they mean, but I don’t agree.

At one point during Dancing, I wrote in my notebook:

Maybe this is not a piece?

Maybe I should stop watching this as a piece?

Maybe I should stop watching pieces as pieces altogether?

Take it to the grave

Lately, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the idea of legacy in dance. What does it mean? What do we do with it?

A few weeks ago, Fase, by another iconic choreographer, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, was the centerpiece at the inaugural edition of Body of Work, a dance heritage festival in Belgium. And to be honest, I’m not sure how I feel about this approach to dance heritage—especially since Fase has been repeatedly promoted as dance history and heritage ever since I graduated, which is now twenty years ago.

I’m not convinced that choreography needs to be preserved, especially when it’s nowhere close to being lost. How many versions of Fase do we need (or does Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker need) to be reassured of her legacy? Can we become Fased out by yet another re-staging of Fase—a choreography and movement vocabulary that most dancers already carry traces of in our bodies?

Maybe it’s this clinging to a version of a piece, a version of history, that rubs me the wrong way. A version in which there’s no real space to address the recent call-outs about De Keersmaeker’s toxic working methods and mismanagement. Or maybe it’s simply a refusal to face the inevitable destiny of dance: that it will, eventually, disseminate, disintegrate, and disappear.

Apparently Mats Ek—one of Sweden’s choreographic legends—recently said they could take his work to the grave. If he truly means it, I have to admit the idea feels kind of liberating.

Hay authored the choreography as part of a larger Trio Project. The project draws from a score—perhaps multiple scores—that have been used in her earlier solo works. There’s a sense of passing on, a kind of generosity toward time and new dancers like Ingrid, Geir, and Gry who never worked with Hay before. In that sense, Hay seems to want the work to continue, to be passed on, although there is also an openness towards giving away control. A kind of authorship that, especially in Dancing, is not absolute.

Furthermore, significant agency is given to the Norwegian trio. But, they also carry enormous responsibility for the production: they secured the funding, found co-producers, organized the entire process, and arranged a venue to present the work.

To me, Dancing feels like an important example of a thinking around what artistic exchange between generations can look like. It obviously doesn’t have to look like repertoire. It’s almost a relief to know that Hay didn’t supervise the final stages of the process, that she wasn’t there to steer the end result. It’s a kind of legacy that let’s itself go, at least a little.

It’s also a kind of legacy that has an economic, practical dimension. In Austin, Texas, let alone the rest of the U.S., we see the other end of the spectrum when it comes to dance heritage. Though Hay is considered one of the pioneers of American postmodern dance, public support for her work is almost non-existent. Frankly put, Hay needs a European, still publicly-funded, arts context to continue working. To survive.

Universe

I enjoyed watching Dancing. It made me want to dance. It made me feel like I was witnessing Hay’s work—not just as a historical artifact, but as something still very much alive and embodied. In that sense, it was inspiring. Ingrid, Geir, and Gry did a beautiful job working with her legacy. At times, I may have felt they were a little too careful—but perhaps caution comes from respect, and maybe that’s okay.

In the program text, Hay is quoted as saying: «My dances no longer have questions. The dramaturgy arises from each artist’s unique perspective on how their perception of the universe serves their practice of the dance.»

It’s a compelling idea, but it also makes me think about the aesthetic of Dancing. I wonder: would it be allowed, in Hay’s universe, to move completely differently? As in, not so postmodern dance like? Is it fair to say that this piece reflects the dancers’ unique perspective on Hay’s universe, more than a universe beyond?

Because like any dance, this one is also not politically neutral. And in the passing on of legacy, there are so many worldly questions and challenges that cannot be avoided. I understand that Hay, she of all people, no longer has questions. But considering the current state of the world, that’s also kind of terrifying.