“Hoochie in the front and koochie in the back,” said Alexandra Tatarsky from the audience. She followed with strict instructions on how to be an active viewer for Trajal Harrell’s “Caen Amour” at The Kitchen (Sept. 18-19). Harrell is an African-American choreographer who lives and works mostly in Europe, who sets out to bring people together and who brings life to some historical understandings, although deconstructed, into his art-making. This time his attention is on the erotic hoochie koochie dance popularized by the Syrian dancer Little Egypt at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. And because experience is the key in a Harrell work, audiences are a part of what happens.
“The audience is 50 percent of my work…” he has said. “I have to be in the room and experience with the people.” So when the audience enters, there he is riffing on a funky mix of music (his soundtrack) on the “lawn” of the house-like structure that is the stage. He greets everyone with a smile as they pass by, and before they make their way around the structure to their seats. Stricter directions are given to make sure the audience does its part.
When everyone is finally seated, Harrell eventually leaves the stage, and with Tatarsky as the guide, European performers Thibault Lac, Perle Palombe and Ondrej Vidlar take over, wheeling oversized suitcases and other large storage containers to the back of the structure. Later, we see why. While the others disappear to the back, Tatarsky and Harrell hand out single-spaced sheets with his “Choreographer’s Notes,” (two long paragraphs, and a repeat of the directions for the active viewer). The audience is given time to read it completely. With a blanket wrapped over his shoulders, Harrell makes his way to the audience until the end.
Harrell has said sometimes it’s “easier for things to move than people.” But here, nearly everyone moved in and out of their seats to experience both shows, two separate, yet fully engaging sets designed by Jean-Stephan Kiss. Rapt in the unexpected, from the hoochie view (the front), Lac and Vidlar kept the momentum with their fashion show runway, dressing, undressing and redressing each time we see them, whereas Palombe appeared once in a while.
Palombe was mostly in the back, characteristically naked, doing the koochie dance as if no one is watching, against a wall covered with cereal boxes, paper towels, books, clothes and moveable spotlights, and which doubled as the changing area. To get from the hoochie to the koochie, or vice versa, Lac and Vidlar offered a sensuous mix of vogueing, tipping (pretending to walk in heels, but barefoot), vaudeville and burlesque and, like Palombe, showed some skin, too. And although it was hard to take in both shows at the same time, the energy of both running concurrently was enough to feed the imagination. Harrell is big on imagination and in this look back to the time of Little Egypt, and early dance pioneers through Caen Amour, he draws attention to the practice of objectifying the female in dance and dares others to see through his lens.
The choreography is by Harrell, costumes are by Harrell and the dramaturgy is by Sara Jansen. “Caen Amour” is presented as part of French Institute Alliance Française’s Crossing the Line Festival. The festival continues until Oct. 13. For more information,
visit www.crossingthelinefestival.org.