Profound dance, poetry collaboration confounds

Saturday's performance of "Bracko" and "Cassandra Float Can," a collaboration between poet Anne Carson, dancer and choreographer Rashaun Mitchell, dancer Marcie Munnerlyn and artist Robert Currie, was in many ways a typical "artsy" event—sparse, intellectual, unconventional and a little baffling. The performance was thought-provoking in a deliberately confusing and highly open-to-interpretation way.

"Collaboration" was the word of the evening, and the emphasis on collaboration was evident throughout the performance. It was even in the title: "…A collaborative performance of movement and text." In her introductory speech, Carson called the event "truly collaborative" and informed the audience that merely being present made them part of this great collaboration.

"Cassandra Float Can" was a multimedia lecture, but not in the usual way. Pictures of architect Gordon Matta-Clark's famous "building cuts" were projected onto a screen. They were also carried around the auditorium by the 10 students involved in the production, a wise artistic choice that not only reached out to the audience, but also exposed the audience to many of the pictures up close in addition to that projected on the screen, which helped establish the continuity and similarity between the images. It took Carson's words, in the form of a particularly rambling lecture, to explain the connection between Matta-Clark's work and the complex web of Greek language, translation, and the story of the Trojan Princess Cassandra in Aeschylus' "Agamemnon." There was never a sudden, dramatic epiphany, nor did Carson elucidate her point neatly in one sentence. Instead, similarities gradually became clear as Carson drew seemingly tenuous connections. Puzzle pieces eventually coming together would be a more apt metaphor than the image of a lightbulb suddenly turning on.

Carson said at the end that her aim was not that of a typical lecturer to work toward a single conclusion, but to "present data, without pushing towards a way of thinking about that data." She quickly admitted that this is an impossibility—her choice of what information to include presented a bias in itself—but added that the very artifice of this stated goal interested her. The discord between goal and reality was just one way that "Cassandra Float Can" sparked questions in the minds of the audience members. In the style of the ancients she studies, Carson prompted questions, thought and "motion" in the audience, rather than doing all the thinking for the audience and imparting one, clear, static idea. In this context, the distraction caused by the students carrying the pictures was positive. Dividing the mind between speech and an image may not sound hard, but it is when the speech and the images seem unconnected and Carson is leading the speech down a winding road, full of unexpected and tangential twists and turns. This dissonance and distraction forced the mind to "move," as Carson says.

The second act, "Bracko" (a Lewis Carroll-style "portmanteau word," as Carson explained, a cross between "brackets" and Sappho), was much more performative, a fitting choice, as it involved Sappho's poetry. Sappho's poetry, like most poetry up until the modern trend of writing for the page with complete disregard for the ear, was meant to be performed. Words took on a new life and energy in this act, as the readers overlapped and paused, alternated and interjected. "Bracket!" they declared loudly and clearly whenever the poem itself had brackets, which are used to indicate where a section of the poem, originally written on frail papyrus, is missing. In this piece, as in her lecture, Carson explored, appreciated and called attention to the empty spaces. Actually verbalizing it—"Bracket!"—allowed it to take up the space it represents, space that was filled by the imagination of the audience and the dancers, whose beautiful lines and sparse choreography, accompanied only by the poem, provoked more questions.

The dancers used rope wrapped around themselves as a prop, which they unravelled as the dance progressed. During the Q-and-A that followed, when Mitchell was asked about the significance he left it open to interpretation, once again forcing the audience members to think for themselves. As Carson posited, the "brackets" were some of the most interesting parts. When the readers were silent, the labored breathing of the dancers took on a life of its own, acquiring an almost musical quality and reminding the audience that dance is not easy; it requires effort—just like pondering, reading and writing poetry.

Anne Carson's "‘Bracko' and ‘Cassandra Float Can:' A collaborative performance of movement and text," though mentally taxing, was an intellectual delight precisely because it challenged the audience to think. The diverse array of subjects and the presentations thereof were enough to hold the audience's interest. This collaboration was a success, adding deeper layers of meaning to everything involved.