VANGELINE

Vangeline, a New York based teacher, choreographer, and dancer specializes in Japanese Butoh performance. This art form is known to “resist fixity.” Naiad Metal, a fifty minute achievement in slow, meditative ritual, fixated the audience’s attention on her response to each moment of time, and the space, sounds, and architecture surrounding this location. (Naiads, or water nymphs, in ancient Greek mythology, presided over fountains, wells, spring, and fresh water bodies.)

This water spirit, dressed in a flowing, silvery gold metallic drapey dress (costume by Machine Dazzle) with traditional Butoh white face and mask, stood in the middle of Lincoln Center’s Milstein pool, next to the Henry Moore  sculpture, Reclining Figure in the plaza. The dazzling costume shimmered and reflected in the light on the pond. Vangeline wanted to appear as a “metallic, almost monumental presence: part guardian, part relic, part nonhuman body… protector of the city, standing at the threshold between nature and civilization, water and architecture, mythology and contemporary urban life.”

The piece began with loud, pounding sounds suggesting the hard, metallic city noise, from a score by Michael Shannon as Vangeline slowly, oh, so slowly, rotated her head over her left shoulder, then slowly turned back.

Cricket and bird sounds filled the air, bringing our attention back to the pool. Her arms raised from the elbows, as the fabric drooped over her lower arms into the pool. Lifting her arms to the sky, helicopter sounds whirred while her hands responded, twisting and turning, almost talking to each other as tiny propellers. 

Vangeline’s arms descended slowly, reaching out to her sides as the mask fell from her face into the pond. More exposed and humanly vulnerable, her bare arms reached behind, coming together at her lower back.   After turning ever so slowly she gazed at her hands, as she bent and lowered herself into the water.  Crouching like a frog, she transformed, then descended into the water, rolling, until she floated on her back, staring at the sky — not a care in the world — enjoying the summer day.

Always in slow, meditative time, she rose from the water, one arm reaching to the sky, perhaps connecting the Naiad moon, orbiting the planet Neptune, to her place here on earth?  

Vangeline’s precision, timing, and embodiment of slow intentional movement and subtle responsiveness to the sounds and location, allowed us to pause and contemplate nature, spirituality, and simplicity in a city filled with modern culture, sophistication, and complexity. 

EYE ON THE ARTS, NY – Mary Seidman

Cover photo by Michael Blase.