Transparent Hinges
Art and politics are frequent bedfellows. The most obvious of political dances tend to advocate specific agendas. Liz Lerman’s company of senior citizens promotes respect for the elderly. Most folk dance ensembles advocate ethnic pride and respect for tradition. Sometimes a dance’s politics are as controversial as motherhood and apple pie, and then art is usually the dominant partner.
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When the politics are controversial, they dominate. A typical strategy, particularly among gay and lesbian artists, is to “subvert the dominant paradigm,” showing a subculture in the broad caricature that mainstream culture supposedly imposes on it. Pedro Alejandro’s gay striptease, Gaze, during last summer’s Movable Beast festival comes to mind. Bill T. Jones’s Last Supper at Uncle Tom’s Cabin/The Promised Land is more complex: politics is dominant, but it’s a strange politics that successively denies liberalism, feminism, black nationalism, and black religion; that piece was the wild scream of a bereaved man, denying God and nation. You could say that it advocated AIDS awareness, but that would be like saying a hurricane brings a little rain.
Transparent Hinges alternates predictable images of oppression at Angel Island with sections of flag-waving militancy. In the Angel Island choreography, arms tend to be thrown wide open, then thrown back over the head in shame; there are lots of crouches and torturous back bends. These sections have the most dancing, but Chen’s choreography is rather mechanical, with symmetrical floor patterns and little movement invention or sense of wonder. The militant sections have masses of dancers moving in unison to rhythmic percussion, as if marching. A handsome young man waves a large yellow flag. Although the flag’s meaning is clear–Asian power–I kept imagining the young man in a Mao cap and jacket waving a flag with a red star, because he so closely resembled the socialist realist cliche.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): Transparent Hinges photo by Carol Rosegg.
