From the ethereal movements of a prima ballerina, to the jarring and awkward movements of a David Byrne video, all movements have a place in the human psyche and provoke some kind of emotion; be it awe, jealousy, embarrassment, or disgust. In Los Angeles, there is a group that isn’t too cool to dance it all.
I first heard of bodycity (all lowercase) through Ali Hyman, Archivist and Florist for The Museum of Jurassic Technology. We sat down for tea one day to discuss volunteering possibilities (I really went in hoping for my dream job), but with our similar movement backgrounds, the conversation quickly turned to movement and dance.
Ali is a dancer in bodycity, a democratic dance collective based in Los Angeles. Their dances live in the in-between spaces of conceptual art, life, traditional performance, and social event. bodycity is democratic in that no dance is the brainchild of just one person, each dancer must both choreograph and perform every piece – becoming both teacher and student in an ongoing, collaborative cycle.
Apart from the collaboration process, there are other unique qualities of bodycity worth mentioning. The level of dance training varies enormously; from formal education, to having only bopped in front of the mirror at home. There is no ideal body type or style. Only when every shape, size and movement pattern of each dancer is expressed together as a whole, does bodycity’s ideal become visible.
The themes of bodycity dances are often time and site-specific. One example is Summer Solstice Session. The dance took place at the exact time of the Summer Solstice. No matter where they were, each member performed and chronicled a five-minute dance outside, sans music. The result was a collaborative dance, performed together at the same time all over the world. The videos were collected and shown at the California Film Festival in September.
Ali, told me about her favorite piece called Over Passages, which was performed last year. The dance converged at one of the busiest transportation intersections in the United States, between the 110 highway, the 5 freeway, the LA River, and the Los Angeles railroad tracks. Each holding a position throughout the odd wilderness, “in-between”, spots they communicated to each other by relaying energy and movement.- like a telephone game across great expanses of cars and trains and life on the go. It literally brought traffic to a halt. A two-minute video of the performance will be viewable through the Metro Arts program. So, if you happen to ride the LA bus system, look for it!
Their most recent bodycity piece took place this past weekend. End Trails was performed in the High Desert Test Sites of Joshua Tree. The site was a dry lakebed, exploring; the space between Los Angeles and Joshua Tree, the journey into the desert, the transformation that takes place once we’ve abandoned the city and are surrounded by the desert’s alien perspective, and then the road back home again.
With their democratic, site-specific, dance collaboration for any body, bodycity is not only changing traditional notions of performance dance, but pushing forward the idea of what social dance can be, by kind of going back to its roots. Social dance is tribal by nature, celebrating a time and place, celebrating a community and celebrating ourselves. For whatever reason, dance fulfills a human need to creatively and physically, self-express, and we shouldn’t deny ourselves this instinctive and inherent desire. bodycity reminds us dance is for everyone, at any time and anywhere.
