As dance regains its foothold in the performing arts this summer – little by little, with determination and the best of intentions – putting on a show has a different weight to it. How exactly does the show have to go on? Who is responsible and who gets the credit? If the last year and a half has taught us anything, it’s to pay attention to those on the edge, to recalibrate who and what is important. Art and artists, for sure. But it takes more than an artist to make art a reality.
You Are Here, a sculpture and sound installation commissioned by Lincoln Center at Hearst Plaza, contains audio portraits of the composer and sound artist Justin Hicks. The piece reveals the pandemic experiences of artists as well as people who work behind the scenes, including Lila Lomax, who works at Lincoln Center Security – and sings while at work – Cassie Mey, who works in the dance department of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and Valarie Wong, a nurse at the New York Presbyterian Hospital. The backdrop is also adorned with fabric sculptures by the stage designer Mimi Lien, whose headless shapes, a structural mix of fabric and dried and fresh flowers, sprout across the square like avant-garde scarecrows.
On Saturday night, it turns into a live performance where some of these New Yorkers become part of the piece and express personal ruminations about their pandemic experience, along with dancers from Gallim, a company led by Andrea Miller. She directs “You Are Here” with Lynsey Peisinger, which also contains choreography and a concept by Miller.
Layered and lengthy, it’s an attempt to look into the past while celebrating the possibility of the future. Water is important. Much of it takes place in the Paul Milstein Pool, which stretches across the square.
The pool is a tempting place for choreographers. Who doesn’t want to splash around in the water? But the problem for the viewer is that it is much more exciting to be in the water than to watch others in it. Throughout the performance, the choreography places dancers – who wear Oana Botez’s snug, shimmering sequin shorts and tops, a clever allusion to fish scales – into their depths. But whether they penetrate one another, fall backwards or of course hit its surface, a certain monotony arises.
Sometimes this overloaded staging seems more like a podcast with interwoven dances than a poetic exploration of the here and now. Moments were more memorable than the whole when Jermaine Greaves, founder of Black Disabled Lives Matter who works for accessibility at Lincoln Center, spoke lovingly about his mother teaching him resilience and spinning in his wheelchair in a dance of joy.
Susan Thomasson, a dancer who works with Lincoln Center Education, spoke live and in a voice-over about “soft but prickly grass, slick metal, still with the afternoon heat and a light breeze on my cheek”, noting as she approached the edge of a grassy hill, touched a railing and opened her arms like wings. Then, when she talked about the migration of wild geese, she turned into herself with undeniable ardor, took high steps and repeated her loud honking before sliding herself into the water. (She had Moira Rose’s trust.)
In between the dancers slipped into the water again and again – they stretched out their arms and turned their upper bodies while they immersed themselves in expressive choreographies; occasionally one swept the square, both the sidewalk and the water, holding a white cloth like a cloak in one hand, as if to clear the square. The work ended on a high note, with a scene with ballroom icon Egyptt LaBeija and a loud dance – really a pool party – to Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna to Dance With Somebody”.
The most impressive achievement, however, came from Valarie Wong, a nurse in an intensive care unit at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, who spoke of being consumed by fear and anxiety.
As she told her story – it also included how she would prepare patients to die while “trying to send them away with dignity” – she walked around three sides of the square and cut into the water for the fourth. “I’m more present now than ever,” she said. “I used to always look to the future. But the gift is the gift. “
In “You Are Here”, Wong, who specializes in the heart – both medically and, as it turned out, in other areas – led us into a room that was as contemplative as it was exploratory. In a way, this was the truest ending that got you thinking.
“You Are Here” continues until July 30th at Hearst Plaza.
