58 Group
Farley and Pfiffner’s Imprint (2001) shows both the possibilities and drawbacks of collaboration, contemplating directly the battle for primacy between sound and motion. After an initial moment with musicians and dancers frozen together at center stage, Pfiffner’s score begins with percussion, to which the dancers (six women and two men) respond directly and largely individually. Their walks and hesitations, lunges and pauses highlight the intersection between stillness and sound or stillness and motion. The movement owes debts to yoga and gymnastics (a cheerleader pyramid provides visual counterpoint to an a cappella passage), while the piece evolves from the atomized individual to the dynamic collective. One group strides forward boldly in ranks like conquering explorers but pulls up short, suggesting the fear shown explicitly in another group’s knocking knees. Then the musicians advance on the dancers, who respond as one with a series of challenging unison turns and leaps from full-length on the floor. The music itself–a single riff elaborated by each instrument in turn–seems ideal for dance: its simplicity supports the choreographer’s formal statement while permitting us to concentrate on the dancing. But blending into the background is not a goal often sought by composers. Does Imprint show it’s Dance 1 and Music 0?
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Her own gifts are similarly hamstrung. In Flamingo (2000), Farley seems constrained by the notion that dancing has to be serious. This cluttered piece features upbeat music and dancers in showgirl costumes but also self-conscious poses, lurking men in overcoats, and a falsetto solo. All this irony may stem from the fear that popular dance is a low taste, redeemed only by knowingness. That’s the trap of being avant-garde: you have to make excuses if you want to have fun.
