Sorcha Dallas, Glasgow, until October 29th
‘Improvisation Time In The Rehearsal Room’ is a caustic little poem by the late Adrian Mitchell that appeared in the 1981 post-John Lennon assassination edition of New Departures, Michael Horowitz’s torch-bearing organ for the 1960s counter-culture’s literary survivors. In his rhythmically perfect eight lines, Mitchell captures the dangers of too much freedom when an actress calls an up-himself director’s bluff.
As anyone who witnessed veteran dance legend Yvonne Rainer’s by all accounts remarkable performance at the opening of Tramway’s parallel show of Rainer’s films this month will be as aware as Mitchell’s poem that for freedom to work requires discipline, and vice versa.
Mangolte’s photographs of Rainer’s 1970s performance-based work contained within the gallery’s second space captures the insularly exploratory nature of the Me Generation in rest and motion, from the weary repose exhibited on the floorboarded set of Rainer’s ‘Lives of Performers,’ through tug-of-love Happenings to a sequence in which an ensemble squeeze themselves into a large wooden box.
Elsewhere a soloist looks like some silent movie Eve holding an apple aloft while Rainer’s own turns in ‘This is the story about a woman who…’ offer a series of multi-dimensional verite studies that extend the performance’s own sense of intimacy into something even more subjective.
Dominating the first room beyond two deliciously skewed portraits is a looped screening of Mangolte’s impressionistic 1975 debut film, ‘What Maisie Knew.’ Made on out of date stock, and with Rainer and a cast of friends including cherub-faced composer Philip Glass on board, Mangolte’s camera takes a languid child’s eye view on a very grown-up world. This resembles the nouvelle Roman of Marguerite Duras by way of some Chekhovian country house party fuelled by sexual tension and the potential for illicit trysts.
Opening with a toe-to-head pan of one performer’s body, the pages of a Schumann music score are blown by the wind as couples play footsie, doors open and close, and a woman splashes her bath water like a series of little depth charges. At one point, a close-up of slapped-down amorous advances becomes a frantic little pas-de-deux all by itself in this merriest of dances between discipline and freedom.
The List, October 2010
ends
Comments