In 1975 I bought a copy of Samuel R Delany’s novel Dhalgren. I read it repeatedly, often beginning anew before finishing. During this time, I slept on the floor in a motel style apartment in the cowboy community of Newhall, CA (near the ranch of silent film star William S. Hart).
At this time, I did not choreograph, I only danced. At that time, I often said I had nothing to
say and that I only wanted to dance. I owned two things other than my dance clothes – my dog- eared copy of Dhalgren, and an old quilt that I imagined had been made by an old black slave woman.
Later I began to sleep in my office at the Dance School of Cal Arts, with my quilt and
Dhalgren, which I read nightly. I found an old radio and began to listen to it at night mostly
a public radio station. There were no windows in my office.
The apocalyptic setting of Dhalgren fascinated me. Its urban ghetto settings reminded me of all the black neighborhoods I grew-up knowing. I was titillated by the homo- hetero bisexuality of the characters. The 3-way love affair seemed perfect to me. I loved that the protagonist in the novel, The Kid, had amnesia. I often wished I did.
The gang members in the novel that shielded themselves in holographic images of insects,
excited me. I became obsessed with the fictitious and ubiquitous weapon, the ‘brass orchid’, that the gang members carried. In my blacked-out office late at night, like the characters in the novel, I began to dial through the channels on my found radio searching for information on the outside world.Patti Smith, with her visceral yells seemed like the perfect musician for this world, as did Giorgio Moroder and his synthe-disco sounds.
One day I realized I had something I wanted to say. I was no longer just a dancer. I made a dance called ‘Brass Orchid’ to the music of Patti Smith. The title was not only the name of a weapon from Dhalgren but also the title of the novel that The Kid was writing in the novel, which might also be the novel that I had been reading.
People said it was a punk ballet. But to me it was intended to be the entertainment
experienced by the people who went to this club in Dhalgren. I got an invitation to be an artist in residence at UC Santa Cruz. I took my copy of Dhalgren and my quilt with me. I created a dance about the gang in the fictitious city of Bellona from Dhalgren with music by Giorgio Moroder Though I was not in a blacked-out office while in Santa Cruz I often was in a marijuana haze.
Later I returned to Cal Art and to my windowless office. One night while channeling through my found radio, I heard the Android Sisters. Was I hallucinating I thought?... They were character from a radio drama called “The Adventures of Ruby, the Galactic Gumshoe” written by Thomas Lopez I pondered, what would popular-dancing look like in a post- apocalyptic world like Dhalgren.
I decided I would create a “how-to” instructional manual of dances for a post-holocaust
world, “P-H-P- post-holocaust pop or popular dancing after the bomb: a Primer”. I began to create the piece based on that imagining, the popular sounds to be danced to were by The Android Sisters.
I did not finish the piece then … but filed the idea away
I did a ‘geographic’ and went to Minneapolis. I said I left LA because I hated it. I had no money.
I got an offer to do “little entertainments” on weekends at First Avenue, the club in Minneapolis made famous by Prince in the movie Purple Rain Perhaps I could do The Ruby dances? I thought.
The first weekend I performed, the lights came up and I stood there on stage … I imagined I was in Bellona, the city where Dhalgren is set, and I was in the club from the novel, dancing for the crowd to my favorite music, The Android Sisters. 40 years later, I am in Seattle, 2020. Covid-19, The Lockdown… I create an interactive virtual space where visitors interact with our future selves as they cope with the results of a climate disaster. In this future, surviving humans have gathered in communities called “shucks”. This glimpse into the future and the stories of surviving humans, how they have adapted to the new reality, and their interpretation of the impact and events of a pre-climate disaster, consume me.
I create dance rituals that future humans have developed due to the deification of Greta
Thunberg and the appearance in the shucks of a mysterious Black woman called “She Who
Sees”. I make ritual dances that venerate these two. There are two major rituals, She Who Sees and Greta, performed across all shucks in this future time.
The music for “She Who Sees” ritual is simple, rhythmic, bewitching, enthralling. The sound is produced by slapping various body parts and with the breath, rhythmic inhales, and exhales. The aural universe for the ‘Greta’ ritual is nightmarish, full of apocalyptic sounds - fearful screechings and scrapings, electronic hums and pops. The sounds of the built world collapsing, icebergs calving and falling into the sea. The voice of Greta Thunberg admonishing, the beating sounds of torrential rain, crackling of wildfires, pleadings, and prayers. All that we know ending…
Abruptly, I find myself in Vienna it is the year 2225. I have moved through time again.
I discover the whole city, in fact the whole Western world, is engaged in a yearlong celebration of the 400 Anniversary of the birth of Strauss, The Waltz King.
It has been 25 years since the turn of the last century. Like this period during the turn from the 19th into the 20th Century, I feel the spirit of fin de siècle, ennui, cynicism, pessimism. And see decadence - an indifference to human life and the suffering of other. Many of the social problems of the 21st Century (millions of unsheltered and displaced people) while
mitigated persist, as does wealth disparity and the calcification of the strata of society. But
cures for major diseases, cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s have been found. For that I am
grateful, so I dance, and dance, and dance…
I dance to waltz infused music generated by AI that I play on my personal electronic device. The music moves between the extremes of lush sounds, that conjure up a world of 4 centuries ago, to driving tribal rhythms and beats, to soothing drones. Sometimes, I am joined by others in silent raves, each of us with our headphones isolated in our own personal universes of contradictions, dread of imminent calamity, hope, despair and ultimately redemption and salvation. The collective memories of past catastrophes still there. After the Second Great Climate Disaster of 2125, music and dance have been woven into the fabric of Viennese societal behavior in ways previously unimaginable. Inspired by the people of Bali who in the past hung windchimes on the branches of trees the sounds of which would cause them to arrest whatever they were doing and dance. They were enchanted. Now there are wind chimes attached to tree-like structures dispersed throughout the city especially in the Innere Stadt which chime as soft, gentle, artificial breezes randomly blow across them.
The Second Great Climate Disaster has compelled Viennese society to rethink its values,
creating the 9 Tenants for Living based on the symbolic meanings of wind chimes and their sounds:
1. Transcendence (Connecting to a higher state of consciousness)
2. Balance (Achieving harmony in life)
3. Tranquility (Fostering inner peace and calm)
4. Clarity (Clear thoughts and focus)
5. Efficiency (Efficient actions and decision-making)
6. Joy (Experiencing happiness and joy in life)
7. Wisdom (Reflecting knowledge gained through life experiences)
8. Kindness (Spreading compassion and positivity)
9. Growth (Encouraging personal and spiritual development)
When heard, most people, like the Balinese of the past time, stop and dance to the
enchanting sounds of the chimes.
On Restoration Day, commemorating the restoration of earth’s environment and climate
patterns, the return to living in the old cities, like Vienna and New York and others; the
restoration of cultural practices abandoned from the “before time” people perform the ritual dances of the “shuck era”. The gentle inhales and exhales, simple clapping and slapping of the body of She Who Sees dances, as well as the harsh cautionary Greta dance rites.
There are still performances by professional dance companies. They perform not only
historical dances from the Western canon from various centuries (Giselle, Swan Lake,
Concerto Barocco, Revelations, to name a few), but also dance works that represent world
cultures like the Dunhuang dance of China, dances from India, and West Africa, pieces that
draw from non-Western non-European cultures.
A major shift for dance companies has been towards the large-scale “choral dances”, much like the early 21st century works of Crystal Pite and others from that time, where the
individual is subsumed by the group, the collective. Joy is communal as is despair. In these
works, the contradictions and the pull of compliance and the assertion of self is felt. The
music for these piece moves from large washes of sound to sonic sparseness. Almost as if the choice is between everything or nothing, conformity or ostracization.
These dance spectaculars also amplify the enormous advances made in theatrical technology. Live music flawlessly, simultaneously, instantaneously combines with AI generated timbres to produce sound not possible in the natural world. Sounds of ethereal beauty, enchanting other worldliness, or apocalyptic hell. The technology of holography has advanced where it is almost impossible to discern a holoperson from flesh and blood. IT/S/TTIR or Interactive Touch/Smell/Taste Tech Image Response makes it possible for holo-people and humans to create artistic collaborations in dance and music never imagined. Intricate vocal works of harmonic and rhythmic complexity, and range, are created and performed.
On the evening of October 25, 2225, tens of thousands of people are gathered along the Ringstrasse. At exactly 21:00 the soft stains of a Strauss waltz are heard. The sound is doubled then double again, and again, again... The sound surrounds and penetrates me.
The antiphony majestic.
There are waltzing couples of holo-people hovering above and among crowd. The orchestra stops but the sound is picked up by a chorus of holo-choristers and their human counterparts at ground level singing specially composed music for the commemoration, that echo the Strauss in otherworldly octaves and timbers. They sing gloriously. The sounds and images wash over me, and we are one. I succumb to beauty. I feel peace