The False and True Are One integrates Liss Fain’s choreography with the text of Lydia Davis, as performed by Jeri Lynn Cohen. With the actor centrally placed, the dancers move within delineated areas of the architecturally structured space, designed by Matthew Antaky, with an immersive sound environment by Dan Wool. The performance juxtaposes and interweaves Liss Fain’s abstract, highly physical and emotionally powerful choreography with the unusual and complex writing of Lydia Davis. The False and True Are One is about different perceptions of the same event/thing—and the images triggered by this.
The performance is structured like a gallery show. The audience walks around and through the set, seeing some aspects of the choreography from close range and other, more distant ones through translucent screens. Whatever route you take in travelling through the set determines the way that you see the dance. The entire performance space can be observed at once by sitting in the theatre seats.
The individualized order in which each audience member sees the dance heightens the ephemeral and arbitrary aspects of thought and perception. Liss Fain’s choreography combines with Jerry Lynn Cohen’s performance of Lydia Davis’ circular writing—her tangential associations that are funny, odd, moving—Matthew Antaky’s architectural set and Dan Wool’s immersive sound score to make a multi-faceted event.
The book Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson, sparked the idea behind the dance—how differently things end than we expect them to. The ending took me by surprise with it’s interweaving of the inevitable and the unpredictable; it was an odd and unsettling combination of flickering happiness and profound disillusionment. And the cadence of the prose—the contrasting use of very long, simply-worded sentences with very concise ones—created an exciting energy. I chose four pieces of music to juxtapose—two percussion pieces by Iannnis Xenakis that have a driving energy, a piece by Marcos Balter that is quietly introspective and incorporates text that evokes anxiety, and a serene and resonant piece of choral music by John Tavener. I kept thinking about how things end; I was intrigued by that because I feel that, in a way, there are two endings to anything—the physical ending at the moment and then, after the passage of time, the questions that arise and the shifting of perspective that occurs. There is no clear-cut ending; there are questions—open-minded and contemplative. And so the dance ends with a question, not a declarative statement.
Speak of Familiar Things is introspective and personal; it is about memories of relationships and of solitude. The title of the dance is taken from the last line of the Wallace Stevens’ poem, Debris of Life and Mind. The poem’s soft thoughtfulness and its’ brilliant colors convey the wistfulness, the appreciation and the vibrancy of what is gone. Underlying the duets and solos in the dance is the immediacy of feeling that accompanies a memory. When I began the piece, I thought that these memories would be quietly introspective. The introspection has become energetic and idiosyncratic, both dark and fleet.
The sound score for Speak of Familiar Things is commissioned from Bay Area composer Dan Wool. Based on our conversations and sections of movement he watched, Dan created samples; these evolved into a score that combines electronic sounds, natural sounds and acoustic instruments. It accentuates the delicacy, the whimsy, the darkness and the energy of the movement.
Out of the Silence grew out of the feeling of complete quiet that surrounds you when you awaken at night and remember a poignant image from a dream.
In the first section of the piece, the movement has an introspective urgency and disquiet, and the music, Atmospheres and String Quartet # 1 by
Gyorgy Ligeti, reflects the unpredictable and sometimes startling metaphors that we conjure. The quiet underpinnings of the unconscious abruptly break away
in the second section—set to Osvaldo Golijov’s Mariel—and a celestial feeling suffuses the dance, with interweaving layers of lush movement.
Unknown Land reflects people caught in a world over which they have only partial control and the resulting personal and interpersonal
tensions that arise when a great upheaval occurs. I choreographed the dance after reading Edward Jones’ book The Known World, with its
multilayered perceptions of slavery, free black people and whites—all of whom existed in a world that was rapidly changing in unpredictable directions.
The music flows between tumult, whimsy and quiet introspection; gentle undercurrents alternate with passages at times quick and witty or harshly assertive.
The dance is comprised of multiple duets, ranging from highly-charged to gentle, which are framed between group sections. In all three sections of
the dance, there is a Greek chorus in the background of the stage—a continuous procession of simple walking accompanied by simple gestures—that acts
as an unheeded observer of the events in the foreground.
Crossing takes the idea of transformation generated by metaphorical and literal journeys and examines it through duets and trios that confront
the joy, hardship, courage, energy and determination necessitated by such an endeavor.
Flood (2007)
Music: Louis Andreissen
Length: 33 minutes
Dancers: 8
Flood, a collaborative work by choreographer Liss Fain, film makers Richard Kizu-Blair and Drew Takahashi and visual designer Matthew Antaky,
embodies the oftentimes incompatible facets of peoples’ lives—the tensions between what one wants to occur and what is in fact occurring.
Set to the last two sections of Louis Andriessen's 1999 opera Writing to Vermeer, the piece centers on a subtext of surface stability and
calm in peoples' lives clashing with growing agitation from political unrest. The opera is about the Dutch Year of Disaster, 1672, when violent
political turmoil culminated in brutal assassinations and the opening of the dykes to flood the countryside, thereby preventing a French invasion.
The juxtaposition of domesticity with social/political unrest is relevant to the current world situation, in which strife and warfare are prevalent;
in the dance this is expressed through both the movement and a full-proscenium video seen through a set that fuses the ominous with the beautiful.
River at the End of the Land (2004)
Music: Hamza El Din
Length: 14 minutes
Dancers: 7
River at the End of the Land, to Hamza El Din's Escalay, was inspired by the Wallace Stevens' poem, Of Mere Being.
This was the last poem he wrote. Through metaphor, he talks about experiencing the world with openness; without preconceived paradigms or
intellectual and analytical overlay. It is a dance about continuity and depth—how ideas and emotions change, flower and persist—that
overflows with a sense of forward movement and joy. River at the End of the Land focuses on a solo figure that is never a part of the group;
who creates an environment of calm yet vibrant energy that imbues the group of dancers with a sense of purpose, much as the metaphor of a
"gold-feathered bird" in Wallace Steven's poem symbolizes the essence of existence. The music, with its' ongoing, Eastern-feeling rhythms,
embodies the nomadic world of the sun-drenched desert.
The Line Between Night and Day (2005)
Length: 14 minutes
Dancers: 7
The music, written while composer was in a prisoner of war camp, vacillates wildly between strident sections and serene, Debussy-like music.
The emotionality and unexpected dynamic shifts in the music conjure images of paradise lost—alternating between the turmoil and anguish of profound loss and gentle,
wistful memories of the past. The dance grew out of the idea of paradise lost—appreciating what you have only when it's gone—and, concomitantly,
understanding what lines one does not cross. The combination of images of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden and the horrific events that overtook
Europe with World War II drove my choice of music and the choreography.
