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The Grand Union gave its first performance in Minneapolis Friday night in the Walker-Guthrie concourse. It was the first dance event presented in the new Walker. The Grand Union consists of Douglas Dunn, David Gordon, Nancy Green, Trisha Brown, Barbara Lloyd, Becky Arnold, a guy called simply Doug and the woman who started it all, Yvonne Rainer. Yvonne Rainer has been an incredibly important figure in late modern dance, the first to use nondancers in her work, the first to try basic, even banal, movement in an attempt to probe the very basic nature of motion. The Friday performance was reminiscent of early happenings, but with emphasis on movement. It’s a form using simultaneous events spinning randomly around a space, sometimes coming together, sometimes competing, usually oblivious to each other. Dancers flop on their backs, pile in heaps, crawl over each other, skip in circles, slide on the floor, sometimes simply walk around the perimeters of the space to their own, internal music. When someone wants music, they walk to the phonograph and pop on a record. There are events for everyone, funny, boring, occasionally very beautiful, enigmatic, usually loose with talking among the dancers casually or dialogue addressed to the audience – “I must never do that experiment again,” says Gordon, twisted into a near pretzel shape. The dancers chant and sing and laugh, while a hippopotamus sculpture stands serene in the middle of the floor (until it is tipped and a leg breaks off, prompting Miss Rainer to stick it down her front and play with it inside her blouse, which prompts Gordon to feign a German accent and demand to remove the lump surgically, which causes everyone to break up). The audience was bored a lot when the company floundered around looking for a new movement, was interested often when something genuinely witty was happening or a creative choreographic effect began to show itself. Many left early, shaking their heads. It was hard dance to watch for the first time; a great number of traditions must be broken to enjoy it. It was challenging, fun, at times amazing, not something enjoyable in the usual sense, but provocative, the kind of thing the Walker does best.
Minneapolis Tribune
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