FROM THE HORSE’S MOUTH

Since 1998, From the Horse’s Mouth has honored individuals, collectives, and
movements in the dance world at large with a tried-and-true structure which achieves a sort of
simplicity proportional to its devisers’ seasond-ness – a rotating cycle of improvisational
movement, one part solo and one part interactive, which forms a fluid frame around spoken
remembrances on the evening’s theme. Most recently, The Horse’s Mouth spoke for itself at
New York Library for the Performing Arts, celebrating twenty-five years of oral and kinetic
history.

Simple though it may be, the structure, devised by choreographers Tina Croll and James
Cunningham, can prove daunting to dancers in different ways. In an excerpt of Sharon Kinney’s
documentary on the series, filmed in its inaugural year, Carmen De Lavallade spoke candidly
about her discomfort with improvised movement. Norton Owen shared similarly onstage about
the pressure a dancer might feel to pack something meaningful into two minutes, particularly
when spoken word isn’t their primary medium. What they both landed on was the ultimate
gratification of doing it anyway, as well as, in the case of many, doing it again and again through
the years.

Another source of storytelling dancers, Celia Ipiotis, spoke to the eager side of the coin,
recounting Anna Sokolow’s insistence that she be a guest on EYE ON DANCE, which similarly
provided dancers a necessary outlet to share lore that might otherwise never go on what is
already a highly ephemeral record. Wendy Perron was captured in the documentary illustrating
the great benefit of the process – how artistic moments that feel in the moment divided into
separate camps invariably end up achieving unity through collective memory, which the late
Linda Tarnay poignantly described in the film as “coming alive again, like living in a dream.”

Spectators and participants alike got to inhabit the dream as Managing Director John
Claassen facilitated a conversation between Croll and Cunningham, who recalled encountering
a poster outside a NYC ashram which stated “one truth; many paths.” These paths were
exemplified live by Rajika Puri, whose curation of Indian dance in America brought to light when
Indian dance first came to the US, Yoshiko Chuma, who, having to forge a pathway all her own,
ultimately advocated that one never pays tuition for their dance education, and Perron’s telling
of Viola Farber participating in an early Horse’s Mouth against her doctor’s orders, only to pass
away months later.

There are scant other forums for such an unbridled comingling of joy and loss.
Celebrating itself gives the ritual renewed energy to continue into the future, allowing more
pathways to join into the fold.

EYE ON THE ARTS, NY — Jonathan Matthews-Guzman