Solomons Says: Fall and Recover
Posted April 6, 2011 at 3:09 pm
By Gus Solomons Jr., Solomon Says
When we think of Dublin, about the last thing that springs to mind is, African torture victims. And when you think of a dance by and about those victims, you’re not likely to say, “Wow, I really want to see that!” But John Scott’s Irish Modern Dance Theatre’s “Fall and Recover” at La MaMa’s Ellen Stewart Theatre (March 25-April 9) shatters dire expectations and allays fears. Subject matter, which in the wrong hands could turn maudlin, here becomes wonderfully uplifting.
The dozen performers, dressed in loose white clothes, are young and old, black and white; what binds them is their survival of torture in their native countries. “Fall and Recover” – a term invented by modern dance pioneer Doris Humphrey, referring to the dynamic moment between verticality and horizontal stasis – grew out of therapeutic workshops Scott led for clients at the Centre for Care for Survivors of Torture (CCST) in Dublin.
The cast created the movement under the guidance of Scott and his two assistants Philip Connaughton and Aisling Doyle, professional dancers from his company, who also perform in the piece. Virtually everything explored in the workshop has found its way into the piece from basic warm-up and conditioning exercises to indigenous songs, chants, and dance moves from many of the nine countries, from which the participants originally came.
At the start, unspooled rolls of paper cover the floor, and a man and woman (Haile Takabo and Faranak Medhi Golhini) stand upstage center against a wooden wall. Two women, one white, one black, enter and sit on folding chairs, downstage left. The African woman, Kiribu (who can’t reveal her last name to protect remaining family in Africa), speaks and sings in her native tongue, as the other woman, called Nina, an eastern European refugee, mimics her gestures silently. Other performers filter into the space carrying markers and draw pictures on the paper floor.
In the first of many dynamic highpoints, achieved with the simplest of means, the performers create a blizzard of paper, violently tearing it up and tossing it into the air, until the stage is littered with past memories; dignified Nigerian Solomon Ijigade sings calmly, ignoring the flurry around him, as if in meditation. Then, as others clear away the paper, six people move slowly across the stage, with their arms gesturing in unison.
Lisa Shu from Cameroon, who’s not a trained dancer, tilts and leans as if she’s falling, out of control, in a poignant solo, braced by the wall. Takabo, a carpenter from Eritrea, bounces, stiff-legged, with dignity in an elegant solo and later leads off a phrase – squat, roll to lying prone, push back to kneeling, and rising to stand – it repeats, as the others join in, scattered through the space. The cumulative persistence gains emotional resonance.
Eamon Fox’s lighting constantly reshapes the space. When the performers line up and revolve slowly like a pinwheel, they drift in and out of the sculptural side light, which enhances the visual complexity of the simple action. A strip of light catches a line-up of people sliding down the rear wall till all, except Oiplea are sitting beside her, tipping from side to side in a cascade of mutual interdependence.
Emotions in the hour-long piece range from quiet determination to outright exuberance. High-schooler Mufutau Kehinde Yusuf (nicknamed “Junior”), a refugee from Nigeria, springs to astonishing height in the air – NBA take note – in a jumping marathon with several different partners, including his young, female counterpart, Patience Namehe. The pair embodies the energy and optimism of youth.
Back to back, partners alternately take each other’s weight, evincing the trust they’d regained through the workshop process that produced the piece. The full cast forms a wide circle that slowly contracts into a tight clump with everyone yearning their fingers to the sky – a tight-knit community, empowered by each other’s spirit. In the subsequent finale, the searing image left behind, as the dancers escape the stage, represents at once the tragedy of the past and hope for the future. “Fall and Recover” is an utterly redemptive work of art.