PAMELA LYDON
Solo Performer
This dance is illustrative of one of the ways I work with dancers to make them more comfortable when working with gesture. A gesture of futility is what Laura Ingalls Wilder called "wooden swearing" in The Little House books. It is the stomping of the foot, the abrupt hand-wave of dismissal, the balled fist, the jerking away of the head. It doesn't do any good or solve anything, hence the title of the work.
"The Futility of the Gesture of Futility" began with a company discussion of one dancer who always yelled "Oh crap!" when she made a misstep, accompanied by one of several telling gestures. I pointed out to them that the gestures were futile, but were also very interesting when considered as pure movement. I proposed assembling a vocabulary of futile gestures with their help, and then making a dance about them.
The resulting dance is a shape-shifting work. It has been structured for three, four, and five dancers, has been performed to several different scores, and is anywhere from seven minutes in length to twelve minutes, which version includes a section of improvised gestures. This section is sometimes inserted by a chance operation, such as a throw of dice.
The costumes consist of transparent dresses, pants and tunics in primary colors, which are wired at the hems, enabling the dancers to change the shape of their garments....and each other's! This is sometimes a part of the improvisation section, and is also able to be inserted into the set version.
This work is structured to be set on a large group, although it never has....yet.