by Sophie Landres

New York Foundation for the Arts

www.nyfa.org

The Modern Garage Movement (2006)

Traditionally, dancers have relied on presenting organizations to provide what they’re thought to “need”: smooth wood floors, dramatic spotlights, and hushed presence. But with increasing vigilance and visibility, these models are being challenged by small troupes, one of which is the Modern Garage Movement (MGM). The New York City-based group recently returned from a US tour for which they arranged renegade performances in garages, backyards, or anyplace else available, tailoring and tweaking content to fit site. MGM embodies a similar spirit as Chez Bushwick, whose founder Jonah Bokaer recently wrote a NYFA Current essay on AMBUSH, a nomadic experimental dance laboratory active in Brooklyn. By confronting people in modest spaces and deflating the exclusivity of dance, MGM’s current performances announce a decisive break from the codified, institutional aesthetics of dance.

The picture shows four women, a white cement floor, some beat-up filing cabinets, a snow shovel, and a bright yellow drill hanging like the descending evening sun in Salt Lake City, where the photo was snapped. Three of the women’s heads are blocked by a fully open garage door, lit silver by outdoor streetlights or maybe passing car beams. Clamp lights transform the garage into a showroom for their motionless bodies; they stand frozen like inert power tools or homemade shelves. Nothing except the perfectly statuesque poses of these enigmas would signal that the photo documents a “dance event;” no stage lights, no soft wood floor, no curtain in sight.

The photo is of the New York-based dance troupe Modern Garage Movement. Fresh from a tour that spanned more than a dozen West Coast towns, MGM reaches outside the convention, tradition, and exclusivity that have handicapped the reception of dance in the past. There’s an unscientific concensus that, of all the arts, dance may be the least accessible to the public. Dance is, by nature, abstraction. It isn’t literal or pictorial and it mostly eschews narrative. Socioeconomic factors contribute to the public’s unfamiliarity with its language; ticket prices can prohibit those with a casual interest from attending performances regularly. Practice space and fees for stage time, lighting technicians, and performers, and music typically require budgets larger than other art forms, further enmeshing participation with privilege. Conspicuously missing from most school programs and governmentally sponsored events outside of large metropolitan areas, dance isn’t “misunderstood” so much as not understood at all. In this environment, it is the dancers themselves—especially those subverting associations with presenting organizations—responsible for defining contemporary underground dance and determining what enters into the cultural lexicon of the future.

Finding performance headquarters in privately owned garages, vineyards, barns, and whatever other unconventional spaces would take them on, MGM aims to change this. Uncomfortable with perpetuating an image of dance as both alien and alienating, the group has adopted a structure more akin to rock bands than to modern dance companies. Fresh from a tour that spanned more than a dozen west coast towns, Felicia Ballos, Reba Brooks, Erin Sylvester, and Jamm (formerly Jbird Leary) are situated at the fore of contemporary underground dance.

Created out of boredom and in their free time of three weeks together during the icy beautiful San Francisco summer ’05, bicoastal dancers (Brooklyn-SF) Jbird Leary, Erin Sylvester and Biba Bell simply made a dance, in the garage of Jbird’s stepfather. It was the first MGM dance...

So reads the MGM MySpace page statement, compiled for the 2006 tour that involved a slightly different cast of women than in previous projects. Jamm’s vision for the group began to gel over the summer. She hustled to access host garages through open-minded strangers and friends of friends, and from town to town MGM created different versions of the same dance. Each performance became host and audience-specific. Much of the content was determined by their changing surrounds: soccer moms in Seattle, cougars in the desert, hatchet-toting spirits in Santa Fe. All meaningful experiences—even banalities like laundry and shopping—were incorporated into performances. By mid-tour in Albuquerque, when a dancer exited the space, the others dropped to all fours, miming the panting, scratching, nail-skittering stretches and rubs of local dogs. At times, stray tennis balls were added to their costumes and several performances débuted their hosts, and their hosts’ pets. The sound score was also subject to metamorphosis. Jamm regularly rearranged a dissonant but dreamy Lani Rowe composition with reggaeton beats and other alterations. Without the sterility of an empty and mirrored dance space, the dancers could gather objects and stimulation from the raw environment.

The attire MGM performs in pays homage to traditional dance attire (they wear tights and occasionally fashion their hair in buns) while also incorporating street wear for an effect that’s glamorous, tender, goofy, and functional all at once. A typical costume might involve layers of gold necklaces anchoring a loose yellow t-shirt tucked into transparent lime tights, visibly clutching cotton underwear tight to the body. Equal parts sports fan and pin-up girl, an MGM dancer in action looks something like a swiftly moving Rothko painting.

During their summer tour, MGM’s use of informal locations as performance sites gave the audience a feeling of being on equal ground. Knowing what a garage is (and isn’t) used for, audiences felt comfortable asking, “What are these women doing here?” The rigid formality of most dance spaces can stultify even the most nontraditional performance, can swallow it up. But during MGM’s summer tour, the audience leaned on recycling bins, lolled on blankets, unfolded lawn chairs and camping gear, and acted more like attendees of a company picnic or fireworks display. MGM is ammunition for the argument that what is currently most innovative in contemporary dance is also most accessible. This is their desired legacy and the ethos they dispersed among forgotten game boards and dusty 4x4s during their west coast tour. The group strips dance from the wobbly pedestals of the New York avant garde without sacrificing abstraction or concept. When asked of MGM’s future plans, Jamm suggests an RV tour of rest stops, old folks’ homes, mental institutions, and high-security prisons. Revolutionary in their egalitarianism, MGM is forging overdue pathways between dance and municipal attention.

Sophie Landres is an independent curator and the director of Naked Duck Gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. She received her bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the University of Iowa and is currently earning a master’s degree in Art Criticism and Writing at the School of Visual Arts. Her most recent activities include a video project, set decoration, and an after-school gallery program for kids. She is currently working on dance, music, and multimedia art projects for raw spaces in Bushwick, Brooklyn. To contact her, email, nakedduckgallery@gormleyart.com.

For more information on the Modern Garage Movement visit:

www.myspace.com/moderngaragemovement

www.myspace.com/aunts