January 23, 2008

FORCE MAJEURE: Alexandre Roccoli, "The Unbecoming Solo"

Essay by Ryan Tracy
Photos by Chris Woltmann

Alexandre Roccoli created "The Unbecoming Solo" as part of Chez Bushwick's "Force Majeure" program, which is designed to foster international dialogue in dance and performance by offering residencies to artists from around the world. These residencies, which will be fulfilled from September 2007 through May 2008, will culminate if free public presentations of the work created by the artists-in-residence. Alexandre Roccoli's performance was presented September 27-30 at Chez Bushwick as part of the French Institute Alliance Francaise "Crossing The Line" festival in the fall of 2007.

Intro

It would be completely fair to call "The Unbecoming Solo" investigative art, that is, say, beyond the de facto manner in which most art investigates something either aesthetic or subjective. During his three-month residency as part of Chez Bushwick's "Force Majeure," Alexandre Roccoli went out and interviewed a handful of New York-based creative personalities; a mix of choreographers and others involved in the arts. His interviews, captured on video and in sound, became the foundation for "The Unbecoming Solo," which was presented as a two part event-a video installation and a live performance-at Chez Bushwick.

Image

The title immediately suggests something inchoate. Is "unbecoming" to mean something that is aesthetically unflattering? Or is it, rather, a suggestion of stifled materialization? After watching the video interviews prior to the live performance-which included Miguel Gutierrez, Jeremy Wade, Ann Liv Young, Ryan Kelly and "green" developer, Derek Denckla-there is a definite sense that the latter meaning is where the heart of this work lies. All of the conversations are focused on discussing the creative and economic processes of working as an artist.

Ryan Kelly goes into candid detail about how a truly collaborative process requires a certain amount of "yielding" on the part of the director. Ann Liv Young, in her laconic Southern drawl, expresses annoyance at having to have payed people she felt didn't do good work. Miguel Gutierrez candidly wonders how the Center for Performance Research (CPR) will benefit the dance community at large. And Derek Denckla suggests that CPR is based off the model of the Baryshnikov Arts Center, a venue that is now struggling to maintain a strong foothold.

These are only sound bites of the interviews, which range in duration from 5 minutes to an hour. But they provide an uncensored image of what concerns New York's dance community.The fact that Roccoli himself is not pictured in any of the videos-you just hear his voice softly prompting the video subjects through the casual interviews-already intimates that he, as the artists, has yet to become. A note in the program reads, "...the dancer invents himself through a dialogue with the gestures of others and a sustained exchange with an artistic and cultural community." In this way, Roccoli lays the foundation for what is to become in the live performance. These-the interviews and the information collected by them-are the resources he will use to invent, or, materialize performance.

Solo

In a studio one floor below Chez Bushwick, a large projection screen is set up behind a square of white marley. A limited audience was tucked into just a few rows of seating. In wonderful Chez Bushwick tradition, several sat on cushions on the floor.

Roccoli enters in semi-darkness through a door to the left. Wearing a white jacket, white t-shirt, and white pants, he makes his way to sit at a console downstage (and off to the side) where a sound system is set up. The lights dim, and a single red light glows in front of him.

From here, Roccoli begins to play audio from some of the interviews he collected. The first interview, a female, European filmmaker, speaks about coming to New York and what it means to her to work here. This lasts some time, still in darkness, and the words commingle in your mind with the sound and image remnants that linger from the video installation. Then the interview changes. Now it was a man's voice; of some other nationality; of some other vocation.

As the lights come up, Roccoli takes to the dance floor, now without the jacket. His t-shirt is thin and the iconic, rotund, headless body of Mickey Mouse is printed at the top of the shirt, right up against the collar. The ultimate image of American popular culture-"the mouse"-doesn't necessarily locate us. It rather brings to mind a series of cultural frictions that the ubiquitous distribution of American iconography has garnered around the world: from political derision to economic voracity; form dispersed American tourists to incoming immigrant populations; from the vulgarity of the mass produced object, to the singularity of performance. Roccoli's head emerging from Mickey Mouse's neck might suggest a disconnection, a dissociation from economy and body.

Roccoli's movement style is fluid and generally abstract. A smooth control underlies each movement, and his rhythms slip in and out of sync with speech rhythms of the interviews, and later, with some pop songs that emerge in the sound score; a club song; a Patti Smith cover of "Smells Like Teen Spirit."

What is most surprising about the movement material is the sense of rigorous thematic development present in what could appear to be an improvisational work. But Roccoli repeats specific movements and entire phrases at different angles and in new ways, ways that are subtly or blatantly changed. There is an intelligence to the composition that maintains an articulated sense of development without falling into conspicuous formalism.

His thumbs, cocked, become a recurrent gesture. Undulating hip movements come around again and again. He rolls onto the floor, then props up his rigid body with one arm, like a lever. Then the fingers of his free arm reach up to his chest and pinch his nipple, which acts as a release button, and the body collapses. But there are more abstract movements than not; frozen poses, slow shifts of the spine, jumps, rolls, all sustain an ambiguity and freedom of from theatricality.

Roccoli also explicitly addresses the body in three dimensions. This is particularly captivating when, after he has spent several moments performing close to the screen, the rectangular presence of which flattens the performance to an astonishing degree, he suddenly aims his direction at a diagonal and moves obliquely away from the screen's surface. Your mind's orientation warps, and the body becomes fleshed out once again.

The audio conversations continue to shift and eventually come to overlap. These are the meat of the soundtrack. The words and ideas mix noncommital with the performance. They inform, but they by no means determine. A few times, Roccoli begins lip synching to the conversations, allowing the linguistic faculty of the body to be engaged as much as the limbs and torso. But again, his commitment to a literal representation of the score remains at will.

In the program, Roccoli asks "why most of the European choreographers of my generation are not inclined nowadays to come to New York City?" At the end of the performance, you feel that no single answer has been given; nothing has come, or become. Instead, you have a collection of new information-from the interviews, from Roccoli's freely associative movement, from the fact that he is here, in New York City, creating this work and turning the camera on New York's creative community-that allows you to come to your own conclusions, should that even be a desire. Instead, like Roccoli, perhaps we should launch our own investigations.

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