Mills Dancer attacks Pornography ??

David Lynch's movie "Blue Velvet" opens with a tranquil and beautiful scene. A man is attending to his lawn and flowers, in front of his lovely, white picket fence home. Suddenly, the man falls to the ground, with what looks like a heart attack. Within seconds, insects are rushing up from underneath the beautiful grass and are crawling all over him, even into his ear. They're eating him. No mistake here - underneath the beauty lies horror!

And in a strange way, on my recent visit to that gorgeous campus of Mills College in the Oakland hills, I relived that Lynch scene. The grass and Victorian buildings were there - the surface beauty - but horror resided underneath in a package of dance/theater delivered by 2011 MFA student Ashley Trottier and
her dancers of dismay.

And as Mr Lynch misleads us right away with his cheerful title, Ms Trottier does the same with her title, Good Morning. From the very first musical notes and steps, there is no good morning - nothing even remotely close to it. She instead leads us down a path that is both disturbing and wonderful at the same time. And although later she explained to me that Good Morning is her attempt to "...try to understand my relationship to pornography as a woman/participant in society in 2011..." I somehow feel it is a direct attack on pornography. Ms Trottier accomplishes this with what is really not so much a dance, as a series of action scenes from a stage play or silent movie that are tied together with dancing.

The opening has young ladies stationary and moving only their arms and hands - gestures framing their faces with movements that are at times a little feminine and yet quite harsh. Their makeup and lipstick are grossly thick - signs of overly exaggerated sexuality. Their eyes completely circled in black powder - making them look more like feral creatures or woman with big black eyes. Their bodies look young, but their faces look old - just as we might see in the porn industry.

Even their costumes are a little off kilter. Although meant to play down their sexuality, they in fact do the opposite. They shape the body and accentuate the female form and look of ancient times - soft tunic in appearance, almost like classy bathing suits. I can imagine Helen of Troy wearing this costume. The color is of dark gray/silver, two colors which often look very attractive on women. Only the long, red stripe, up and down the back of the costumes jars the senses. These costumes looked perfect and help contribute to the feeling that something is amiss here.

The opening starts off with the first of many disturbing scenes with workers, men and women, neatly dressed in black and who look like banquet caterers, or bouncers, moving about the stage. These caterers pick up our dancers, from behind, in bear hug like grips around the dancers thighs and carry and deposit the dancers to new spots on the stage - all the while the dancers continue their modified form of dancing with their arms. As if we're seeing dancers moved about as statues - as things.

During another uncomfortable scene we see the dancers form a backwards triangle ensemble. The dancers are crouched low to the floor, knees and thighs bent, staring straight ahead, while they rock and sway left to right and back again. They look primitive, yet very strong in their young bodies. Another scene which is not really dance, but instead the women perform a duty, a mind numbing job. At different moments, one of them even falls down, only to get back up and rejoin the ranks of the employed.

The dancers stop swaying and come to attention and then run the back of their hands across their lipstick, completely smearing the red across their faces and wide open mouths. They look ghastly, disturbing and frightening. Only later was it explained to me, by a former Mills Theater graduate, that the smearing of lipstick can sometimes signify rape. Here it has that very look and feel.

In another scene we see the dancers all bunched together running backwards at half speed, with outstretched forward pointed arms and mouths wide open, with looks of both glee and horror on their faces. It's another silent movie image. Why aren't they going forward? Perhaps their actions, their very lives are taking them backwards. They're pleading for help!

The end is a "beauty pageant" run amok. All the dancers, while surrounding a lone female-winner, are spitting/spraying water all over her and slowly walking away. One of the caterers returns with a bouquet of flowers, handing them to her. While sopping wet and dripping, the winner stands, smiles and accepts her award, giving off a warped image of a new home coming queen or a ballerina on stage after completing her performance. Perhaps even a Miss America accepting her newly won crown. An ending that's funny and disturbing.

Good Morning, encased with it's tension filled, movie-like music, is one of the best dance/theater pieces I've seen in a long time. Some of its scene enactments capture the horror of it's subject matter more visually and artistically than most movie makers would dare hope to accomplish.

So with Ms Trottier, it may not be such a good morning after all.




POSTSCRIPT I:
I've seen dance choreographers incorporate David Lynch type scenes within their dances, but never as a whole dance, like Good Morning. Ms Trottier's dance, like movies such as Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive and Sunset Blvd, is a reminder that we live in California, but under all its beauty, there lives a disturbing underbelly.

POSTSCRIPT II:
I spoke with Ms Trottier at Mills College after the MFA show as I wanted to clarify one aspect of the piece with her. "Why more theater action than dance?" Her answer brought a smile inside me as it was the most perfect one. (Paraphrase) "I start out intending to choreograph dance movements, Jim. But thru the process I end up with this. And I have to be true to what's inside me."

POSTSCRIPT III:
At Mills, I kept Ms Trottier a little too long in conversation. She shooed me off with the wave of her hands and the words, "I have to get back stage Jim. Now go write!" At that moment, for me, things felt reversed again. I felt like a student being scuttled away by the teacher. Except the student was much older and the teacher very young !

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