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PICTURE REDHOOK

August 27, 1998, Thursday

Footnotes
September 4 - 10, 2002

Choreographer Joanna Haigood (Dancing in the Streets, August) lets us see familiar landscapes and buildings in new ways. In a wooded area around Jacob's Pillow she unearthed safe houses used on the underground railroad; her performance Invisible Wings took audience members on an imaginary slave's journey from house to house and sent the dancers soaring through the sky. In her new Picture Red Hook, three collaborators and her Zaccho Dance Theater explored an abandoned 12-story grain terminal in a part of Brooklyn formerly troubled by drug violence but now in transition. The terminal rises up like a hulking pack of worn cigarettes; Haigood used it to explore the area's industrial and human history. Evoking the heyday of the grain terminal's operation, in an opening vignette she sent a dancer soaring overhead on a cable, creating a breathtaking tableau. Mary Ellen Strom's film, projected onto the 12-story facade, let us see the grain terminal's activities with a kind of X-ray vision, revealing the machinery housed inside. As the woman ascended, she struck a funny stoic walking pose. The juxtaposition of this determined person against the giant terminal and its heavy-duty equipment let us feel complexity, massive scale, and human effort. The sound score, recorded at a working grain elevator in Minnesota by Lauren Weinger, let us imagine the operational terminal in all its ferocious glory.

Cables conveyed aerialists seated on window-washer platforms up the front of the terminal. As they scaled the heights, they executed abstracted work tasks, adjusting and repairing machinery. Their actions were amplified by a live video feed projected onto the building, making us aware of the delicate balance required to perform their duties. Less deft adaptations of work reduced the six performers to miming activities like shoveling, pitching, and lifting.

Woven into Haigood's exploration were portraits of Red Hook's human history. A film collage of passenger ships, trains, and the Statue of Liberty highlighted the waves of immigration to the area. Current residents discussed their affection for their "small town," and concerns about encroaching gentrification in filmed interviews projected onto the building. Haigood brought us full circle, from transport, processing, and shipping to shots of the grain's origin in the flat plains of the Midwest, surrounding the dancers as they ran, twisted, and flipped, playing in endless fields.

- Shanti Crawford