ON THE OCCASION OF HIS LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
FROM UC IRVINE CLAIRE TREVOR SCHOOL OF THE ARTS
Presented by Stephen Barker, Dean
Produced by Deborah Oliver & Ulysses Jenkins
A program of dance, including world premiere of Slate in Three Parts
xMPL Theatre
NOV. 7, 2015
Introductory Remarks by Sasha Anawalt
FROM UC IRVINE CLAIRE TREVOR SCHOOL OF THE ARTS
Presented by Stephen Barker, Dean
Produced by Deborah Oliver & Ulysses Jenkins
A program of dance, including world premiere of Slate in Three Parts
xMPL Theatre
NOV. 7, 2015
Introductory Remarks by Sasha Anawalt
Thank you Deborah and thank you Ulysses.
When you invited me to introduce Rudy Perez, I asked who is in the audience? You showed me a list of people, and I said, “Oh, this is family. Almost everybody on it is connected or has a maximum Three Degrees of Separation.”
But you pointed out that there would also be 20 students. UC Irvine students from the Art Department, most of whom work in Performance Studies with you. They have never seen Rudy Perez, his work, his dancers. They are relatively new to performance art. And may have come here because UC Irvine is where Chris Burden, Barbara Smith, Nancy Buchanan and Richard Newton studied, and where YOU teach -- and both of you have been influenced by Rudy Perez.
By way of minimal degrees of separation, Rudy is in the DNA of UC Irvine. What has he done -- and is continuing to do -- that brings us to this watering hole together, family all -- new members and old? To remember what it means to be human. To move. And be moved. And to honor Rudy for his achievements.
“Wherever we are, what we see is mostly neglible. ”Insignificant. To be taken in as information. For the brain to tell us, “the chair is behind my legs by about two inches.” When you entered the theater tonight, you found your seat. You sat down. You didn’t miss the seat. You relied on a built-in two-inch reference point behind your legs. This is called survival. Your body also instinctively knew how much room there was between you and your neighbor. You adjusted. You know space. We all know our own space. We ignore what’s around us mostly. But what happens when we are called to pay attention? What happens when reference points are loaded?
This is Rudy Perez. He was among the first in dance ever to hold still. To absorb the weight, and to focus our attention on the simple actions – or one could say “mostly neglible” actions -- our bodies are hard-wired to make. Walking. Standing. Sitting.
Perez –and I am calling him Perez rather than Rudy for this stint of my introduction, because I’m going to go into his history and also because I am a journalist, a dance critic, a member of the press who has known Perez for 45 years and been watching his work professionally for 32– and I want to look at him clear-eyed. Straight forward. Just as he is. Facts and stories.
But first, I also want you to know that I stand here with a cadre of invisible ghosts (my colleagues who could not be here tonight, including Deborah Jowitt, Marcia Siegel, Kitty Cunningham, Don McDonagh, Lewis Segal, Victoria Looseleaf, Deborah Vankin and, I am sure, Sally Banes and Jill Johnston, as well). We – press -- are in this room because Perez compelled us impulsively to look inward at movement, and as Johnston said, “turn the art object and self inside-out.”
A new vocabulary for dance had to be developed and articulated because of Perez – (and some significant others not least of whom were Merce Cunningham and his partner John Cage -- but Perez was a big chunk of it and he worked with Cunningham).
Because of Perez the DE-Volution of movement – its reduction, its absence, its minimalism – became an integral part of any subsequent conversation starting in the 60s about “The Progress of Dance.” “The Evolution of Performed Movement.” “The Dance Boom.” “Postmodern dance.” “Conceptualism.”
A confusion of roles: Dancer/Pedestrian? Performer/Real Person? Spectator/Critic?
Gender, race, class – all of these Perez threw into our face. And this was the 60s…Starting with Perez’s first piece: “Take Your Alligator With You” in 1963 at Judson Memorial Church in Manhattan.
At that concert was Deborah Jowitt from the Village Voice. Perez’s suppression of movement caught her attention.
Perez has always appreciated the press, saying it often understood what he was about before audiences did. He forced critics to reckon with the opposite of action -- and in this way I think profoundly affected American dance discourse.
Here’s an exchange I cobbled together out of direct quotes that happened on separate occasions, across several years:
Perez said of that one piece, “Alligator” at the Judson: “The people at Judson were anti-drama and emotion…That’s how I arrived at the stillness that I am known for.”
Jowitt said of that performance: “Dance is usually so actual; it’s odd and interesting to see a dance concert in which movement is mostly an AGONIZING POTENTIAL.”
So. Here we are. Confronting something that it takes a lifetime to make: Imagine if you were asked to embody or convey without words: AGONIZING POTENTIAL. “Agon” means “struggle” in Greek. It is associated with “painfulness.” Agonizing pain.
What about “potential”? There has always been this sense with Perez that his movement, though often still, is about to burst. He takes it up to that edge. There is something melancholy about it, as writers have noted. Something dark in that edge, that in-between and “mostly neglible” place that is so elemental to our survival.
That place where we have the potential to miss our seat and fall on our tailbones, or to land squarely and be able to watch the performance without self-consciousness. When Deborah Vankin’s piece came out this week in the LA Times about Perez, I was so moved because he talked I think for the first time about his childhood in some depth, revealing what we DID know which is that his mother died when he was seven and he had three younger brothers for whom he then had “responsibility of taking care” – his words – while his father worked as a merchant marine).
But what I did NOT know is the following – and I quote directly from Vankin’s article. She writes:
Just don't ask Perez what a piece is about. Of the new "Slate," [which we’ll see tonight – a world premiere by Perez who turns 86 later this month] …Of the new “Slate,” he says: "It's very much how I feel about what's going on in the world."
"Which is what, exactly?" Vankin asks.
And Perez responds: "I'm not gonna say. I'm very abstract. Once it becomes narrative, it's all over. Let the audience decide what it's about."
Then, HE ADDS: "Come on, they don't ask Merce this stuff."
VANKIN DROPS THE CONVERSATION AND PICKS BACK UP ON PEREZ’S BIOGRAPHY IMMEDIATELY WITH…
“Dance has always been a part of Perez's life. The son of Peruvian and Puerto Rican immigrants, he grew up in East Harlem and the Bronx doing the cha-cha and samba at family gatherings, where he'd improvise on the dance floor.
But struggle has also been a through line. His mother died of tuberculosis when he was 7; the disease landed him in the hospital, where he stayed, mostly bedridden, until he was 10.”
Perez responds: "I think a lot of the pain you see in some of my work –that's very sort of contained, comes from that experience, from being in the hospital and hardly having any visitors. It's all very suppressed, but it's there in my work."
+++
Does the personal, does the narrative, eventually come to play? Does it trump the abstract or sit closely beside it, knowing the two-inch “reference point” by instinct like the you and the person next to you know enough to touch or not touch, depending.
What does it MEAN to be abstract and to be minimal? Is it life condensed? Intensified? Paid attention to? Scarcity appreciated?
+++
Perez was born in 1929. The year of the Great Depression’s onset. He listened to who he was from birth: a mover. From the get-go having integrity is what mattered most. That word “integrity” pops up – uttered by him -- across decades in his many interviews. He came to LA in 1978 and never left.
I’d go more into his history, but, frankly, 80 of you already know it and were part of it. If you were with the shrimps (Martin Kersels. Melinda Ring) or if you are Carol Cetrone, Lin Hixson, Jacki Apple or Deborah Oliver) you know. Simone Forti, his magnificent contemporary—you know. Ian Cousineau, Karen Goodman and others of his dancers. You know.
Twenty of you here tonight are deeply invested and curious enough to go figure it out on your own, because – guess what?? – it matters. Your forebearers matter. Perez matters. He came before you, and expects you to deviate and break and keep going and fight him, pushing to shatter the critics’ codes and change your lives irrevocably: By being memorable!
Rudy, you are memorable. You have influenced our “Forward Look” whether it was over 50 years ago OR tonight with your premiere in front of at least 20 who have never seen you. Imagine that. A new audience. Imagine at 85, a world premiere.
And now from YOUR seat – watch how Perez DEALS with seats. With sitting. With Walking. Standing. Everything we think is “mostly neglible.” He has a method, a technique that is transferable to others. Rudy Perez spent a lifetime on this and has inspired people to stick with him for a lifetime.
Thank you UC Irvine for “getting it.” Thank you Rudy Perez. This award is for you. You deserve it.
Here, now: an excerpt from 2003’s “SHIFTS,” one of Rudy’s favorite pieces of his own– with music by Steve Moshier and Lloyd Rogers, performed by lifetimers old and new -- Anne Grimaldo, Jeff Grimaldo, Michael Rowley and Sarah Swenson,
[1] [1] This is a deliberate play on John Cage’s opening line in his The Future of Music: Credo, a talk he gave in 1937 and that is published in “Silence: Lectures and Writings by John Cage,” (Wesleyan University Press, 1961).
When you invited me to introduce Rudy Perez, I asked who is in the audience? You showed me a list of people, and I said, “Oh, this is family. Almost everybody on it is connected or has a maximum Three Degrees of Separation.”
But you pointed out that there would also be 20 students. UC Irvine students from the Art Department, most of whom work in Performance Studies with you. They have never seen Rudy Perez, his work, his dancers. They are relatively new to performance art. And may have come here because UC Irvine is where Chris Burden, Barbara Smith, Nancy Buchanan and Richard Newton studied, and where YOU teach -- and both of you have been influenced by Rudy Perez.
By way of minimal degrees of separation, Rudy is in the DNA of UC Irvine. What has he done -- and is continuing to do -- that brings us to this watering hole together, family all -- new members and old? To remember what it means to be human. To move. And be moved. And to honor Rudy for his achievements.
“Wherever we are, what we see is mostly neglible. ”Insignificant. To be taken in as information. For the brain to tell us, “the chair is behind my legs by about two inches.” When you entered the theater tonight, you found your seat. You sat down. You didn’t miss the seat. You relied on a built-in two-inch reference point behind your legs. This is called survival. Your body also instinctively knew how much room there was between you and your neighbor. You adjusted. You know space. We all know our own space. We ignore what’s around us mostly. But what happens when we are called to pay attention? What happens when reference points are loaded?
This is Rudy Perez. He was among the first in dance ever to hold still. To absorb the weight, and to focus our attention on the simple actions – or one could say “mostly neglible” actions -- our bodies are hard-wired to make. Walking. Standing. Sitting.
Perez –and I am calling him Perez rather than Rudy for this stint of my introduction, because I’m going to go into his history and also because I am a journalist, a dance critic, a member of the press who has known Perez for 45 years and been watching his work professionally for 32– and I want to look at him clear-eyed. Straight forward. Just as he is. Facts and stories.
But first, I also want you to know that I stand here with a cadre of invisible ghosts (my colleagues who could not be here tonight, including Deborah Jowitt, Marcia Siegel, Kitty Cunningham, Don McDonagh, Lewis Segal, Victoria Looseleaf, Deborah Vankin and, I am sure, Sally Banes and Jill Johnston, as well). We – press -- are in this room because Perez compelled us impulsively to look inward at movement, and as Johnston said, “turn the art object and self inside-out.”
A new vocabulary for dance had to be developed and articulated because of Perez – (and some significant others not least of whom were Merce Cunningham and his partner John Cage -- but Perez was a big chunk of it and he worked with Cunningham).
Because of Perez the DE-Volution of movement – its reduction, its absence, its minimalism – became an integral part of any subsequent conversation starting in the 60s about “The Progress of Dance.” “The Evolution of Performed Movement.” “The Dance Boom.” “Postmodern dance.” “Conceptualism.”
A confusion of roles: Dancer/Pedestrian? Performer/Real Person? Spectator/Critic?
Gender, race, class – all of these Perez threw into our face. And this was the 60s…Starting with Perez’s first piece: “Take Your Alligator With You” in 1963 at Judson Memorial Church in Manhattan.
At that concert was Deborah Jowitt from the Village Voice. Perez’s suppression of movement caught her attention.
Perez has always appreciated the press, saying it often understood what he was about before audiences did. He forced critics to reckon with the opposite of action -- and in this way I think profoundly affected American dance discourse.
Here’s an exchange I cobbled together out of direct quotes that happened on separate occasions, across several years:
Perez said of that one piece, “Alligator” at the Judson: “The people at Judson were anti-drama and emotion…That’s how I arrived at the stillness that I am known for.”
Jowitt said of that performance: “Dance is usually so actual; it’s odd and interesting to see a dance concert in which movement is mostly an AGONIZING POTENTIAL.”
So. Here we are. Confronting something that it takes a lifetime to make: Imagine if you were asked to embody or convey without words: AGONIZING POTENTIAL. “Agon” means “struggle” in Greek. It is associated with “painfulness.” Agonizing pain.
What about “potential”? There has always been this sense with Perez that his movement, though often still, is about to burst. He takes it up to that edge. There is something melancholy about it, as writers have noted. Something dark in that edge, that in-between and “mostly neglible” place that is so elemental to our survival.
That place where we have the potential to miss our seat and fall on our tailbones, or to land squarely and be able to watch the performance without self-consciousness. When Deborah Vankin’s piece came out this week in the LA Times about Perez, I was so moved because he talked I think for the first time about his childhood in some depth, revealing what we DID know which is that his mother died when he was seven and he had three younger brothers for whom he then had “responsibility of taking care” – his words – while his father worked as a merchant marine).
But what I did NOT know is the following – and I quote directly from Vankin’s article. She writes:
Just don't ask Perez what a piece is about. Of the new "Slate," [which we’ll see tonight – a world premiere by Perez who turns 86 later this month] …Of the new “Slate,” he says: "It's very much how I feel about what's going on in the world."
"Which is what, exactly?" Vankin asks.
And Perez responds: "I'm not gonna say. I'm very abstract. Once it becomes narrative, it's all over. Let the audience decide what it's about."
Then, HE ADDS: "Come on, they don't ask Merce this stuff."
VANKIN DROPS THE CONVERSATION AND PICKS BACK UP ON PEREZ’S BIOGRAPHY IMMEDIATELY WITH…
“Dance has always been a part of Perez's life. The son of Peruvian and Puerto Rican immigrants, he grew up in East Harlem and the Bronx doing the cha-cha and samba at family gatherings, where he'd improvise on the dance floor.
But struggle has also been a through line. His mother died of tuberculosis when he was 7; the disease landed him in the hospital, where he stayed, mostly bedridden, until he was 10.”
Perez responds: "I think a lot of the pain you see in some of my work –that's very sort of contained, comes from that experience, from being in the hospital and hardly having any visitors. It's all very suppressed, but it's there in my work."
+++
Does the personal, does the narrative, eventually come to play? Does it trump the abstract or sit closely beside it, knowing the two-inch “reference point” by instinct like the you and the person next to you know enough to touch or not touch, depending.
What does it MEAN to be abstract and to be minimal? Is it life condensed? Intensified? Paid attention to? Scarcity appreciated?
+++
Perez was born in 1929. The year of the Great Depression’s onset. He listened to who he was from birth: a mover. From the get-go having integrity is what mattered most. That word “integrity” pops up – uttered by him -- across decades in his many interviews. He came to LA in 1978 and never left.
I’d go more into his history, but, frankly, 80 of you already know it and were part of it. If you were with the shrimps (Martin Kersels. Melinda Ring) or if you are Carol Cetrone, Lin Hixson, Jacki Apple or Deborah Oliver) you know. Simone Forti, his magnificent contemporary—you know. Ian Cousineau, Karen Goodman and others of his dancers. You know.
Twenty of you here tonight are deeply invested and curious enough to go figure it out on your own, because – guess what?? – it matters. Your forebearers matter. Perez matters. He came before you, and expects you to deviate and break and keep going and fight him, pushing to shatter the critics’ codes and change your lives irrevocably: By being memorable!
Rudy, you are memorable. You have influenced our “Forward Look” whether it was over 50 years ago OR tonight with your premiere in front of at least 20 who have never seen you. Imagine that. A new audience. Imagine at 85, a world premiere.
And now from YOUR seat – watch how Perez DEALS with seats. With sitting. With Walking. Standing. Everything we think is “mostly neglible.” He has a method, a technique that is transferable to others. Rudy Perez spent a lifetime on this and has inspired people to stick with him for a lifetime.
Thank you UC Irvine for “getting it.” Thank you Rudy Perez. This award is for you. You deserve it.
Here, now: an excerpt from 2003’s “SHIFTS,” one of Rudy’s favorite pieces of his own– with music by Steve Moshier and Lloyd Rogers, performed by lifetimers old and new -- Anne Grimaldo, Jeff Grimaldo, Michael Rowley and Sarah Swenson,
[1] [1] This is a deliberate play on John Cage’s opening line in his The Future of Music: Credo, a talk he gave in 1937 and that is published in “Silence: Lectures and Writings by John Cage,” (Wesleyan University Press, 1961).