Sara Mearns Piece of Work Review
March 8, 2022 | The Joyce Theater – New York, NY, USA
“I can be more than just one artist,”
says Sara Mearns in a voiceover (one of several from the evening) filling the Joyce Theater.
Uncomfortable with a program just about herself, she desired instead to celebrate “the collaborators I am working with”. Her evening titled Piece of Work is in fact six pieces of work all curated by Mearns and often including the choreographers within the dance as well. Being the advantageous dancer she is, she not only wanted to bring new art to the forefront, she also didn’t want to miss out on any of it. Mearns is, admirably, in every piece.
Starting with something you might see playing on a television screen in the corner of the MoMa, Jodi Melnick’s Opulence is a study in subtleties. Clad in metallic sneakers and the most cobalt blue jumpsuit you’ve ever seen, Mearns enters the stage, casual like she just happened to be walking in that direction anyway.
Soon met on stage by the choreographer herself in similar garb (designed by Kaye Voyce with J.E.M), Mearns and Melnick commence in playfully faint movements. Between hip pops, gentle hand brushes, and precise arm shapes, they settle into stillness: a held arabesque, an extended développé front or side.
Simple but striking, the piece feels youthful, like dancing with a friend on a calm spring day and all the time in the world.
Following is the world premiere of Austin Goodwin’s film, carefully featuring Mearns and Paul Zivkovich.
You may know Goodwin from his satirical Instagram video New York Times Dance Critic, which I highly recommend viewing. I want to preface that his account of dance critics has not swayed my opinion of his work, the movie is beautiful.
Filmed in a shaky camera style and accompanied by eerie music and empty sun-drenched rooms, the dancers are in limbo between dream and nightmare. Repeating shapes as if we are traveling through a battered memory, Goodwin builds a shadowed storyline in which Mearns and Zivkovich commit themselves fully.
Musically, the score by Taylor Bense and Pete Lanctot strains to expand until a final release adds a cacophonic close to the film.
Sara Mearns Piece of Work Trailer
For Vinson Fraley Jr.’s On the Margins, Mearns and Fraley start in a cubed cave nestled into the back brick wall of the Joyce Theater. Fraley uses the space as bookends to his piece and I love the unconventional use of space. The majority of the piece is spent with the stage divided in half using a thin strip of light, Mearns on one side and Fraley on the other.
In leather-like tops, and coffee and cream tie-dyed sweatpants (designed by Fraley), Mearns and Fraley danced with physicality through mild torment. The piece had a feeling of seeking and not finding, being lost and also trapped. In a rare moment of connection, Mearns laid stomach down across Fraley’s back as she used her hands to crawl her way down.
Although danced well, I was left with a feeling of a question being unanswered.
One of the hardest pieces for me to experience was Merce Cunningham’s and not because of the dancing.
JoycEvent featured the most experimental music by far with live accompaniment by John King. Layered tracks of birds chirping, wind blowing, chimes, and faint piano tones were drowned out by screeching reverberations of altered violin strokes.
The dancing was classic Cunningham; polished, clear, and near-robotic. Cunningham seems to ask that his dancers give everything to the steps and nothing to the performance. The blank expressions and lack of épaulment however, heighten the shapes, driving home the clarity.
Being the largest piece of the evening, six notable dancers filled the stage in spring-colored full-body unitards, designed by Harriet Jung and Reid Bartelme. Jacquelin Harris stood out like a beacon in the group. Grounded and full of meditative grace, her presence was hypnotic.
Beth Gill’s world premiere SSSARA took us to another planet where Mearns was the sole inhabitant. Designed by Jung and Bartelme, Mearns was decked in a transparent white, hooded jumpsuit, very sterile looking.
The music, by Ryan Seaton, featured a guttural pounding giving off horror movie vibes. Despite the heavy beats, Mearns’ first moves are in the absence of sound, between the beats.
Mearns was often placed with her back to us, doing singular jump-rope hops and elongated balances on demi-pointe. The steps almost felt like they were done in spite of the audience, like “I know you are there, but I’m going to do this anyway”.
In a brief moment, Mearns looked out as if she acknowledged us, only to sit on the floor and bow her head, then proceed to part her ponytail and twist her hair together. The entire creation is tense and odd and just the sort of piece I would expect to see Mearns in.
Closing her adventure is Guillame Côté’s SPIR. As throughout the program, the curtain is lifted between pieces, so we are privy to the on-stage adjustments made by the crew. This time they set up three large, striking lamps on the stage.
In costumes designed by Marc Happel, Mearns and Côté both wear white button-down shirts, Côté in dark dress pants and Mearns without. Almost too on the nose, Mearns removes the shirt to reveal a very well-matched skin tone leotard, as if to say she is ready to bare it all.
The movement is unfortunately very conventional contemporary dance featuring several crotch-oriented lifts. It’s too bad the final piece wasn’t more substantial; however it doesn’t dampen Mearns’ accomplishment.
Piece of Work feels like a piece of Mearns.
She gives us a front row seat to the journey she’s catapulted herself onto and invites us and herself to accept the messiness of the adventure. She crosses lines, lets down her hair, leaves the curtain up between scenes, and talks to the audience as if we were old friends catching up after a summer spent apart.
And the fact is, we have been apart, the audience and Mearns. So much has happened in the three years of planning her evening (postponed due to Covid) and Mearns spent that time being curious. And this inquisitiveness is what allows Mearns to transcend beyond the simplicity of putting on a show or doing something to evoke applause.
An artist is one who seeks answers, challenges the status quo, yearns for more.
Featured Photo of Sara Mearns in Guillame Côté’s SPIR. Photo by Steven Pisano.
