Review: Portrait of the Unknown on Dec. 14

People as poetry

I like to experience something new and unpredictable when I look at any kind of art. That's a pretty tall order in these it's-all-been-done-before days.

But Melli Hoppe and her students and cohorts in Butler Theatre's dance program - as well as her non-profit dance group, Susurrus - are a constant source of joyful surprise for me in Indianapolis. I've enjoyed the great fortune of working with Hoppe and her students - including several in the performance I'm reviewing here. In those previous collaborations, I didn't perform, I wrote some words and they embodied them as living, moving poetry. But that connection has nothing to do with why I so much enjoy what Hoppe does.

That's exactly what I saw again Friday night at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Located in this weird Roman-columned castle area called the Clowes Pavilion in the back of the European galleries, the Butler Theatre Department's Stage Movement 3 class's site-specific performance "Portrait of the Unknown" was a reaction both to the space and to Ovid's "Metamorphoses" and Beckett's "Sans." The multi-talented Michael Burke adapted these classic works, choreographed part of the performance and was one of the lead dancer/actors.

It's hard to call this piece a short play or "modern dance" or "movement," though those are all accurate. This is really a theater piece of its own sort - a rare hybrid that is about people as bodies and voices - physical presences - versus characters we need to think of as whole people.

So the connection to the Roman-art exhibit at the IMA makes a lot of sense. Like those statues, the Butler students here were standing very still, moving slowly or quicker - sort of like breathing sculptures. But this doesn't objectify them in a negative way. Instead, it allows us to face the fact that people really are objects and that's fine. We are physical things like a tree or a stone or a painting hanging on a wall. Sometimes we are more than that. Sometimes we aren't.

And, with Hoppe's performances the spectator is right there in front of the performers, looking at the beauty of these people. They might not all be considered statuesque. But that's fine. They are lovely in their own ways, in their movements, in how they move together and alone. And it's impossible to not stare at them and appreciate this as they purposely stare right back at you.

The most unpredictable and fresh aspects of these performances comes from where they happen. By taking the show into the Clowes Pavilion, Hoppe is happily losing control of several factors. Foremost, the audience isn't corralled into their seats and placed at a safe distance back a few feet from the stage. So audience members often stumble in to the middle of he action - like Friday night when a security guard walked though the middle of the performance or when a group of surprised people arrived a bit late in an elevator that opened right behind the dancers.

Hoppe knows this kind of stuff is going to happen and she's fine with it. And she knows some people are going to be a little disoriented during her performances and may not know when to clap at the end. Most of the audience for these performances is untrained. And that means they are there seeing and doing something surprising and new. What an achievement.

The December 14 performance was the last for this two-night run at the IMA.

For more about Hoppe and her local non-profit dance group Susurrus visit http://www.susurrus.net.