Thoughts
Posted July 31st, 2011
Posted July 31st, 2011
Posted July 31st, 2011
Posted July 31st, 2011
Posted July 31st, 2011
Posted July 31st, 2011
one flew off
Posted July 31st, 2011
Posted July 31st, 2011
Posted July 31st, 2011
PUBLISHED in FLAGSTAFF LIVE! on October 28, 2010
Posted February 2nd, 2011“In The Frame” by John ‘JT’ Tannous
I recently attended “Animal Etiquette,” a performance by Human Nature Dance Theatre that provides a glimpse into the nature and behavior of animals through the filter of human understanding. When Human Nature uses the word “animal” in their title, they mean to include humans, in the way that we understand animal nature and try to control it. And perhaps in the way that it controls us.
Cast member Francis Martineau opens the performance reading from a poem by W.H. Auden entitled, “Address to the Beasts,” that gives us an impression of the themes Human Nature will explore. Hinting at human behavior, the piece speaks to animals:
“Endowed from birth with good manners you wag no snobbish elbows, don’t leer,
don’t look down your nostrils nor poke them into another creature’s business.
Your own habitations are cosy and private, not pretentious temples.
Of course, you have to take lives to keep your own, but never kill for applause.”
From the first dance vignette, it’s clear to me that Human Nature is asking me to consider the larger picture of human and animal behavior, how it has brought us to this point as a species, and where it’s leading us. The five dancers in “Animal Etiquette” play and dance like animals, and at other times like their human masters. I find myself a little jealous watching this. They are playing wildly on stage, in ways that are beautiful, raw, and sometimes childlike. I want to play like that!
That desire for animal “play” touches upon the thrust of the performance, our perception of animal behavior. We look at animals and project onto them our own humanity without seeing them as they are. We keep pets and imagine them with human thoughts and feelings, and give voice to this to feel closer to them.This is portrayed in a particularly stark segment within “Animal Etiquette.” Dancers Brianna Rogers and Mizu Desierto enter the stage, moving with cat-like grace and looking up with perked ears at the audience. Suddenly, after I had become accustomed to this show wherein the dancers did not speak (only Martineau as narrator has spoken), these two cats, in unison, call out in high-pitched voices: “We like mousing! We like birds! You don’t like us? You don’t like my cooking? We don’t want space! We want the moooooon!” The moment shocks me awake with a jolt. It seemed so out of character for the performance up to that point, almost cartoonish.
These cartooned cats are a direct impression of how we view animals when we give them human voice. The portrayal of cats as “Hello Kitty” human-animal hybrids says more about us than animals. And there’s an implication in there about the sublimation of our animal urges into desires for modern comfort, iPhones and air conditioning.
The cats are scurried away by Paul Moore, playing an eager and rambunctious dog. His master, played by Delisa Myles, leads Moore by leash onto stage and attempts to control and train her beast. The battle of wills between the dog and master – with the dog trying to please his master while also satisfying his urge to be free, and the master trying to gain control of a barely controllable beast for self-serving reasons – becomes a microcosm of the relationships in our world. Masculine feminine miscommunication and angst. Worker supervisor dominance and struggle. Our primal urges crushed by a modern civilized world.
Commenting on where this will lead us, a chilling piece of music in the immersive soundtrack for the show asks us, “Will I miss the sky? Will I miss the ocean? Will I miss you?” I am spurned into thoughts of the endgame we, as a species, are playing. Our own behavior, and the nature of our industrial territorial drive for alpha dog status, seems to be leading us down a path that has a clear end. The beauty of this sadness washes over me as I watch the grace of these dancers.
Auden’s poem also says to the animals: “you cannot engender / a genius like Mozart, / neither can you / plague the earth.” Human Nature asks us to consider that real environmental consciousness is less about our recycling programs, endangered species or greenhouse gases, but more about our psyches and interactions with each other. How we, unaware, strive and clamor for control and dominance over our lives, our impulses, and the natural world around us. And how that has led us astray.
J.T. Tannous is the executive director of the Flagstaff Cultural Partners and our local czar on all things artistic. His column, “In the Frame,” runs once a month in Flag Live.