HQ Review: chew + spit’s “say la V”
chew & spit’s stated aim was to be a residency for St. Louis based artists which would prioritize process over product. The collaboration resulted in a dance piece called say la V, which incorporated movement, text, music, and sound. say la V was performed in-the-round at Hope United Church and produced by Space Station Dance Residency, a hub for experimental performance work in St. Louis. chew & spit was conceived and directed by Marlee Doniff.
On the night of the performance, eight performers in brightly colored tights and oversized white shirts were scattered around the dimly lit room, casually sitting on the floor or on the sides of the stage. After introductory remarks from Marlee, a dancer wandered to the center of the stage and sat. As upbeat electronic music played from the back of the room, she methodically moved through various poses on her knees. Coming to her feet she began a half-hearted jazz routine with a stoic expression: quick syncopated steps side to side with arms outstretched, a hip jut up and down, a head roll. The music dissipated into ambient sound of everyday life (perhaps children at play?) and she jumped straight up and down from two feet repeatedly, arms limp and swinging by her sides. More dancers emerged to join the repetitive jumping before a game of Go Fish started in the middle of the stage. The audience became quite engaged in this game – giggling when a player asked for the same card again and again and audibly rejoicing when she finally got what she was looking for.
A speaker stood at the podium looming above the stage reading stream-of-conscious prose aloud. Certain phrases stood out: “coping with crises through ridiculousness” “I googled what a plum tastes like instead of just taking a bite of the one in my hand.” “We shall not cave under the pressure to be interesting.” The text centered around coping with uncertainty, searching for connection, and questioning how to navigate one's place in the world as dancers moved together in unison, clambered onto shoulders, and began another round of Go Fish. The cards were eventually thrown around the stage. A dancer pushed a large broom across the floor, cleaning up the scattered cards and in a particularly humorous moment a dancer is inadvertently swept up, pushed several feet across the floor before managing to disentangle herself from the broom. Rather than a feeling of dangerous disorder, these antics were endearing and even, at times, cathartic.
A particularly delightful section came after Marlee turned on a small radio. She scanned the channels before landing on a station playing Jessie’s Girl. Three dancers with swimming goggles over their eyes struck poses before slowly melting to the floor. From the ground they began to dance – their movements clear, unified, and rhythmic. When the song ended and a cacophony of advertisements and local news blared from the radio the performers continued dancing, unphased. They moved methodically to the sound of lottery numbers, updates on severe winter weather, and ads for dietary supplements. The absurdity of the moment, and its sheer duration was made bearable by the performers deft movements, utter commitment to the bit, and deadpan expressions. It was great fun to watch.
Go Fish was played a third and final time as another stream of prose was read aloud. In the end the game was stopped abruptly by the reader as eight dancers, plus one musician, collided together on stage in a contact-melee, crawling through each other, arms and limbs flying. Marlee popped her head up asking the dancers: “Is this a trope? Is this working?” Then turned to the audience and asked us to close our eyes. There was hesitation and nervous giggles. She insisted. We complied. Finally instructed to reopen them, we saw the performers in an outward-facing circle taking a bow.
Marlee spoke to me briefly after the performance about her research into the “choreography of the mundane.” A phrase describing the way in which unadorned everyday movements may, when recreated with care and attention, transcend their original purpose or significance and provide an artist the opportunity to recreate a lived reality, challenging the fragile boundary separating life from art. This approach to creation is evident in say la V. What could have been understood as ironic or heavy-handed nostalgia (watching several games of Go Fish played on stage for example) are instead imbued with sincerity, immediacy, and a realism that becomes an anchor for the rest of the work.
“Dance is meant to be witnessed,” seems an obvious enough statement and is one Marlee herself said in the introduction of their work. But in fact there is a compelling tension in dance making when it comes to the value placed on process and on product. Dance has been, traditionally, made in private, exclusive rooms, with work shown to the world in a state as near to perfection as possible. Performance artists for many years have looked for ways to undermine these available options. Asking: how do we meld process and product? Do we emphasize performance or practice? Knowing the generative potential of rehearsal processes and the enlightenment available in a performance state, Marlee and her collaborators have sought to illuminate the fertile intersections of these phases of dance making. The process of working with their collaborators involved free writing exercises, practicing Authentic Movement (a self-directed improvisational practice designed to bridge the gap between consciousness and the body), and group collage sessions.
In our conversation, Marlee spoke of performance as an extreme form of feedback. She sought, in this project, to emphasize low stakes to the culminating performance by building in structures and systems which lent themselves to mistakes. Leaning on imperfection, releasing pressure from performers, celebrating mundane embodiment of everyday life, and encouraging a radical presence, even when dancing for an audience, held potential for these collaborators to turn some of the veneer of performance inside-out. These methods can serve to unlock a new experience for viewers – pulling back a curtain to reveal all the gears at work.