Summerstage - Central Park 7/19/96

Neil Greenberg's Solo from Not About Aids Dance and The Disco Project

All art is a flow of information, and its pacing, the regulation of the drip, is what has made art memorable from Sophocles on. Mr. Greenberg's pieces, presented last Friday at Summerstage showed impressive mastery of this skill.

The solo, danced by Mr. Greenberg, in the vocabulary of release technique, shows material later amplified and fractured in the group work, The Disco Project, created about a year later. Mr. Greenberg dances dressed in white shorts and a tank top, rubs his shorts and moves on. Projected with no explanation across the cyclorama are the words "This is the last material I worked on before my brother died." The work is danced in silence, the projection, like the dedication of the performance to Chris Komar, is not commented upon, as if no explanation were necessary. One isn't. Information is regulated so that almost as it hits you, a new piece is there for you to parse.

There is precious little Disco in The Disco Project, what little there is, sends the crowd at Summerstage shouting. It's an interesting audience; many left over from a previous concert involving a rock band. When Sylvester's Do You Wanna Funk? starts to play, the crowd begins to groove, and even to whistle. The earlier group sections, quiet release work punctuated on occasion with aggressive hip thrusts, has them apprehensive. Mr. Greenberg has set the dance before them with almost didactic precision; it's a fugue on the disco era, the movements of the time broken into splinters, the dance in silence. The music comes on and the crowd breathes a sigh of relief. It's a crowd too young to have danced to that music when it first came out. I am as well, but I am not too young to remember that Sylvester was one of the first recording artists to die of AIDS.

The construction of the piece maintains its careful structured regularity, the hip thrusts travel slowly forward, and become the main "Disco" step. On the cyclorama, a year's history is projected. "My ex-lover Frank Maya died since the summer. It broke me up. I didn't want this dance to have to include his death. Ellen's Father died. Like her Mother, it was unexpected. Jo went to Australia. Jennifer is dancing for her. Justine turned 23. Christopher wanted his dancing to speak for itself." Even while manipulating the sympathy of the audience, Greenberg acknowledges the process.

At the same time, the overwhelming sense is of history, Time's parade, loss. And anger. Anger directed at the music that promised easy pleasures, not being able to foresee the consequences none of us knew. Supermodel comes on. "This is the song that was big when my brother died." And the music and projection remain only long enough for you to add them to your perceptions, and the dance continues silently. In the Name of Love plays for a few moments. "I danced to this song when I broke up with the married man. That was years ago. Before AIDS." Are we actually learning about Greenberg's life? Is this Victim Art? The question is not relevant. What we are watching is the quiet unfolding of a situation, the mystery of the flow of information.

LAW

No programs, so I'm writing off the top of my head. See his work.

Postscript: Material in this essay and in the other essays on Neil Greenberg was incorporated into Neil Greenberg's Trilogy: A Survivor's Tale, which appeared in the Fall, 1998 issue of Ballet Review.

©1997 Leigh Witchel. All rights reserved.