Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2012 16:47:26 -0400 (EDT)
From: Michael Black
To: letters@ montrealgazette.com
Cc: aallnutt@ montrealgazette.com
Subject: Dance at the Fringe Festival, once again
Come on, after a few years of little or no word about the Fringe Festival by VIctor Swoboda, he's back and again opens with a dismissal of dance at the Fringe.
WHere is all this contempt for dance at the Fringe? I don't see it, but I do see it coming from the Gazette. The article goes on to mention some shows, but then nothing about them, just talk of venues and quotes about the state of dance at the Fringe. Anyone who actually found interesting dance at the Fringe would be able to recite some of it. (The contempt is there in the Gazette's "Summer in the City" guide, where nobody even bothered to edit the bit about dance at the Fringe, since it lists troupes and venues from last year.)
I must remind people that in 1995 there were two pieces at the Fringe that had aleady been performed at Tangente. One year Jolene Balie performed a piece done by Margie Gillis, it seemed familiar and then I looked at the program. And Margie Gillis herself put in appearance in the audience for that show. Melanie Demers has appeared in someone else's work.
The Fringe is a "festival of discovery" because I got tired of the sneer from some critics. Not negative reviews of specific shows, but dismissive articles about the festival itself. There was no willingness to give a discount for shows operating on a small budget or other restrictions, no willingness to give a discount for the sake of seeing more variety.
By nature, the Fringe has to be about discovery, since it's not juried, that step is left to the audience.
But then discovery became "look and explore for yourself, don't wait for the 'experts' to tell you what to see". Cheap ticket prices (though less so now as the maximum ticket price rises to 10.00 and the 2.00 service charge, and fewer troupes willing to charge less than the maximum price) means the audience has less to lose on a "bad" show, especially when most Fringe shows are relatively short. One can see a show and decide about it, but one can also discover a new type of show, such as dance but there was once what amounted to a primer on musical theatre, to see things that are out of the mainstream but become part of the mix at the Fringe.
The fringe with short shows, low ticket prices and mostly informal venues should be a great place to take children to see dance, an easy introduction, when so much of the vocabulary on stage is similar to their own very active lives.
But discovery also means to look at things and to be an active participant, rather than just passively listening to the critics and then passively watching the show. Viewing art should be an active role, the art should be stimulous for something, whether to comment on the show or go off and create your own art. One blogger a few years got all excited after seeing 20 Fringe shows, writing that it got her excited about the crafts she did.
Good or bad, a reaction is far better than none at all. I've told artists the worst situation is little or no audience, since it's not clear if it's the show or the promotion. Far better to have a filled house the first night, and everyone hate it, than to have a trickle of people through the run.
Yes, one can go to the Fringe and discover bad shows. At least some of that is because the young artists don't yet have a world view to be interesting, so no matter how good they are, they don't start with an interesting premise. I'll gove a discount to a show that has special interest to me, some fringe topic, because I want to see that sort of thing rather than a sleek show where the topic doesn't interest me.
But one can discover all kinds of things, even if they see bad shows. See more shows in a week for the price of a ticket at a formal venue, and then let them clash together in your mind. See Japanese dance juxtaposed with North American, or even a livelier US piece to compare to local dance. I once tried to convey a difference I noticed between those two, and the US choreographer said "dark' in reference to local dance. I'm not sure I'd use that word, but I could see the point. See a group fuze modern dance with something else, and be aware of what's going on, whether you like the results or not. Discover that filmed dance actually can be interesting. One show had a dancer dancing live with a filmed version of herself. Another show more recently did amazing things with film, not a recording of dance but a piece where the camera becomes part of the movement, the editing becomes part of the dance. See Indian dance, which for the modern dance world is over there in some school auditorium, yet at the Fringe it's as mainstream as anything. Sometimes at the Fringe it's traditional, sometimes it's a fusion. Same with bellydancing, we've seen it before, it's here this year, and watching it I think of how much it relies on hand and the eyes, just like Indian dance. And then wonder why modern dance often acts like the audience isn't there.
Go to a burlesque show and discover that the stripping was fairly by rote, but the hula hoop and circus acts were interesting, then the final stripper really reacts to the music (and the band in turn really reacts to the dancing) Discover that the only reason you liked that piece is the music and then think about how music does affect dance.
One time an out of town dance critic told me after a show "I wanted to like it, but there was an error..." The problem is, the audience isn't the same as the critic. They aren't nitpicking over details, indeed they may not notice them. They don't get to see as much dance as a critic (which is yet another good reason to see dance at the Fringe, accumulate enough dance so you can see differences and commonality). But sadly, not enough people are out to explore, which is why we need the Fringe, to break that barrier.
And so long as people rely on experts to tell them what's good, then it's not fair to art for a critic to be dismissive for reasons that don't seem clear. If I discover things about dance by seeing a lot of cheap or free shows, that's still a discovery. I learn from the experience, not from someone telling me what I should be seeing. So maybe all this means is that I didn't pay any attention before I started going to dance shows, and then I started to go to cheap shows to see more variety. And thus everything I've seen in 25 years is discovery, learning from every single tiny piece.
Let's get it straight. Art doesn't happen at Place des Arts, it's performed there. Art happens when an artist sees something, and reacts, a process very easy to see in the comedians at the Fringe Festival, where their show isn't that different from their promotion, a need to interact with the public to get material. Then it's a slow process of turning that idea into art, sometimes longer if they are just starting out. They try things that don't work, they make false tries, they seek feedback. They make mistakes and practice in public, needing an audience to get good, then finally get to a higher level.
That is part of the artistic process, if you ignore it, you are ignoring how art is made.
Michael Black