Artist breaks wall between performer, audience

Abstraction, symbols and silent dance create an unordinary and expressive performance

 

By Sharon Christensen, On-Line Forty-Niner

Tuesday, October 6, 1998

 

Claire Porter's Saturday performance of "Portables" was filled with humor ranging from mildly amusing one-liners to over-the-top Lucille Ball style physical comedy.

Porter has said that her integration of monologue into her dance pieces has torn down the imaginary fourth wall between audience and performer.

While her speaking seemed to accomplish just that, her occasional silent movements seemed to be oddly introspective and isolated her in contrast.

Porter began her show with "Green Dress Circle," an orientation to the theater and surrounding areas, beginning with a description of the path to the theater lobby and ending with Cal State Long Beach's location relative to the rest of the Milky Way.

With each ever-widening circle, Porter returned focus to the stage by highlighting the bright green of her flamboyant earrings and the rest of her costume with "this is green, and this is a dress, and this is a circle," creating a circle with her arms and stepping through it.

"Piano" showcased Porter's precise movement analysis, as she portrayed a concert pianist confronted with a delay in the arrival of her instrument.

She repeatedly informed audience members of her pre-performance ritual, while reminding them of the unfortunate mistake regarding her piano.

Able to play a nonexistent piano, Porter created a subtle difference in her "playing" from aggressive to slow and moody.

A more dramatic piece was "Fitness Digest," in which Porter becomes an absurd aerobics instructor, attempting to control her own autonomic bodily functions.

She directed the audience to "blink, blink" and attempted to synchronize the crowd's heartbeats.

While perched on a stool, Porter gave a realistic impersonation of a woman so fanatic in her belief that she can control her own body, that she has taken it to an absurd level.

Initially humorous, Porter's outrageous hot pink hoop earrings and poofy, spiky hair did not prepare the audience to see the deeper meaning of "Fitness Digest."

While barking directions at the audience, Porter's words took on a sadder meaning, "Wrinkles in and out, bulge, flaw, relax," "relax into gravity, bloat," "let the years creep up, grow gracefully old, grow gray ... waste away."

"Fund Raiser," a broadly comic stereotyped characterization of a frustrated charity fund-raiser was the highlight of the evening.

Porter's character continually fought with her reading glasses as they became more and more entangled in the huge pink bow at her collar.

When unable to find her glasses, she squinted at her notes and finally, as though to fill air time, started telling a joke.

In this piece, the moments of pure silent movement seemed to serve as perfect segues as the character's methods changed from angry admonitions, "Are you gonna contribute, or what?", to sexual innuendo, "stimulate your drive to the level of donor, sponsor..."

In "Lost in the Modern," Porter portrayed a woman lost in a museum of modern art.

While looking for her keys, she stumbles upon a few "works," all consisting of everyday brooms, buckets and vacuum hoses.

The silent dancing seemed injected into this piece about a woman's confusion in her modern life.

"Dining Out," her only piece completely without monologue but which included a soundtrack of Brahms and Fritz Kreisler, did not seem as introspective as the silent sections of her other pieces.

On the contrary, "Dining Out" seemed to highlight Porter's comic timing and expressive movement.

As a woman dining alone and slowly becoming intoxicated, Porter displayed a subtle comic sense, Chaplin-esque in its underlying melancholy.