JAN ERKERT & DANCERS
It’s possible to see modern dance as a women’s ghetto–and modern dancers as the starving little sisters in a community that’s undernourished anyway–in a country that ghettoizes all art, not just dance. That’s why it’s so heartening when modern dancers, and especially women, get some recognition. At the annual Ruth Page awards for Chicago dance last September, two women–modern dancers–walked away with the two most coveted awards: Jan Erkert for best choreography and Mary Johnston-Coursey for best dancer.
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Johnston-Coursey specializes in off-balance movement–or more accurately, in the constant fluctuations of balance and imbalance. The source for that may be her own body. She never stands flat-footed–her feet are always curling under her like furtive little animals planning their next move. She rarely even stands still; characteristically she sways, even if it’s almost imperceptibly, as if her body were turning over kinetic possibilities and coming to some corporeal decision. Somehow Johnston-Coursey has passed on to her dancers (Rebecca Keene Forde, Eva Miller, and Cara Schwindt) that same itchy, unpredictable vitality; I’ve never seen Forde, for example, dance with such a quiver and flutter before.
The Dreaming Time is also new, a trio that seems to belie what I’ve said about Johnston-Coursey’s preoccupation with quick, off-balance movement: it’s defined by long-held poses and the look the dancers have, particularly at the beginning, of pushing through some viscous stuff. But the suspensions that dominate this dance are just moments of balance sustained; the choreographer has merely changed the emphasis, not her point of view. And Johnston-Coursey is savvy enough to provide contrasts, both from one moment to the next and among the three dancers at any given moment. One woman may focus up, another down; one seem to look inward, another out; a dancer may quickly rotate a wrist then flick it back, like a grace note to the slow, somber stepping.
Of course distinguishing the sexes absolutely would be dangerous; Erkert wisely chooses to play with sexual stereotypes without genuinely owning or inhabiting them. She begins by talking about how she felt as a 13-year-old girl walking past a crowd of 16-year-old boys working on a car (cars are a motif): she felt inadequate. Her breasts were too small, her legs too short, her hair too limp–and her feelings reinforce the stereotype of men’s power, their ability to define women. But then she tells stories that expose men’s ignorance and vulnerability–not putting them down but revealing their humanity. Meanwhile the women play a game of musical chairs, moving from one man’s lap to another, arching back seductively to peer at us nearly upside down, cleavage exposed. But by the time Erkert is saying of men “They had no idea,” she’s reached McStraw’s lap–so what you see is a man in a suit holding a woman in a suit.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Bernt Lewy.
