Travis Wall’s Timely and Timeless Dance on So You Think You Can Dance
So You Think You Can Dance is somewhat controversial in the dance world. On the one hand, some say it overemphasizes the purely aesthetic and athletic part of dance art -- the “tricks” and “flash”, “glitz and glam”. The unfortunate effect is not fully portraying what the art of concert dance can be -- with a deep historical context, sometimes speaking to key social issues, and also at times confrontationally progressive in its politics. On the other, its widespread appeal and commercial viability offers the general public an access point to the art form of concert dance.
Travis Wall is a choreographer, amongst others on the show, who has skillfully spoken on social and political issues through his nuanced work -- in a commercial dance format that can appeal to a wide audience. Two of his works stand out as particularly cogent and adept in this regard, Strange Fruit (set to Nina Simone’s rendition of the Billie Holliday classic, speaking of the horror of lynching in the antibellum South) and Sign of the Times (Wall’s artistic statement on gun violence and mass shootings).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mm0iRtDGCEA
Strange Fruit is full of deeply rich imagery, beginning with dancers laying in the shadows of a barren tree. As a dancer, my mind chewed on the preparation needed to make that happen -- to be in the place on stage where they’d be right in the shadows. As they rose, they came slightly out of the shadows. The visual effect was pure poetry, saying a lot with so little -- and, as sometimes only dance can offer, saying something that can’t quite be put into words.
They wore white costumes of a late-nineteenth, early twentieth-century style. The white offered a blank canvas of mystery, but in another way stood in opposition to the darkness at hand in the subject matter -- darkness of the heart, darkness of bloodshed. Their bodies jerked, as if pulled by external forces of extreme internal unease. They paused, but ever-so-slight vibrations of movement through their bodies evinced that movement’s resonance.
Becoming clear was the juxtaposition of action and stillness. As one effect, I felt as if I had time to absorb movement as it came -- in my own experience and in my own body. As another, moments of pausing created tableaux, yet those with energetic resonance humming through them. These tableaux also reflected the heavy, eerie stillness remaining after the heinous act was done and the “strange fruit” hung. This energetic and temporal wave also progressed in alignment with the peaks, valleys, and the varied nuances of Simone’s vocals.
Towards the end, the camera panned to show the dancers standing before the backlit tree, them again standing together in its shadows. In an arresting moment, they fell to the ground together, as if overpowered. Yet they rose again. The camera closed in on two dancers closest to the tree, one black and one white, clasping hands. It was truly a case of a picture saying a thousand words. They had shed the white costumes for those of deep blue, as if having shed a facade of purity for true unity and human kindness.
Being also that one of the dancers was a woman and one a man, it spoke to yin and yang, the never-ending balance of masculine and feminine forces in all that exists. The work spoke deep, lengthy volumes about civil rights atrocities in the United States of America (past, and -- chillingly -- also present), but also struggles that will endure as long as we as a species do. It reminded me of how dance can say so much without a word, something that will endlessly fascinate me. It’s a gift that can keep giving, if we give to it through creative generosity and good old-fashioned hard work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82PVxS0KFG4
Sign of the Times similarly offered striking, memorable imagery, showing the power of movement to speak in ways that words never could. Backlit, all dancers stood in formation, in windows. Rather than clichey and “recital-ey”, this allowed for a following sequence of dancers weaving in and out of others -- crouching low and then rising once back in (their new) place. Later, as one lunged away from the group, the rest of the dancers opened and closed their parallel forearms in a wave. The effect was visually and energetically captivating.
Continuing this idea of the individual in tension with the collective, at another point the group lifted one dancer through a cartwheel shape through the air. She leaned forward and lurched back into the group behind her, the backward motion rippling through to the back of the formation.
A second forward and back motion with one dancer led into dancers stepping with a bounce in the beats of the score (Harry Styles’s “Sign of the Times”) — further building the sense of the juxtaposition of unity and individuality,Soon after, with the support of the two other dancers, one dancer jumped across the backs of kneeling others -- as if running. It was another image that was both visually and energetically engrossing.
The energy rose towards the latter part of the work, the dancers spread out across the floor and alternating between grounded and leaping. They then all came to a line, removed overshirts, and turned around. Each with one letter on their back, together they read “ENOUGH”. Wall has attested that the work is a commentary on gun violence.
Looking more closely at the lyrics of the song, it references running from bullets and asking when that will stop. In jeans, plain cuts, and plain colors, they were any one of us out there. Each of us as individuals shares a common struggle of being in a nation plagued with this epidemic. Doing something about that epidemic also requires collective action, for us to be a small part of together saying “enough”.
In this day and age, that is timely, but also timeless. As Margaret Mead said, “never doubt that a small group of committed individuals can change the world. In fact, it’s the only thing that ever has.” With work that speaks boldly and resonates with various types of people, such a small group can be a choreographer and a group of dancers -- saying much without a word.
Travis Wall and the talented, committed artists that come through So You Think You Can Dance show that to be true -- however commercial the show, however “flashy” the movement may be. It’s all dance art, and it all gets to something innately human about us, past and present and future: what we share, what falsely divides us, how we co-exist on this hunk of rock hurtling through space. Sometimes, no words are necessary.
