Minds and movements that move mountains

Deborah Hay was a radically innovative choreographer back in the 1960s when she was one of the New York experimental group known as the Judson Church dance movement. That hasn't changed.

"She was radical in her Judson days and she is still radical in her forward thinking about choreography," says Gaelen Hanson, one of three Northwest dancer/choreographers involved with Hay in the creation of "Mountain" opening Thursday at On the Boards.

Hanson, Peggy Piacenza and Amelia Reeber went into a studio with Hay for a monthlong residency in Bellingham, in view of the mountain in the title, to create the trio. The way they describe it, Hay keeps dance fresh and revolutionary not by piling up theatrical elements which have become so much a part of contemporary concert dance (video, driving music, spoken text) or even by inventing steps, but by concentrating completely on how the mind affects the quality of movement. In other words, Hay does not so much choreograph as elicit movement from dancers through ideas and questions.

"She gave you everything you need to know, all the choreography, in fact, except for the movement," Hanson says, describing the composition process as a dialogue between the "experiential body" and the mind.

"It can sound very complex and complicated, but it's really very simple," Reeber says. Hay might pose a question such as "What if the body has no front and it just behaves as though it has one?" Or "What if every cell in the body has the ability to perceive the uniqueness and originality of all that there is?"

Piacenza points out that in the studio, these concepts are used as triggers. "These questions are raised not to be answered but for the interesting things that happen when it is impossible to answer them," she says.

Practicing Hay's work, Piacenza said, made her feel as if she were "playing time," as if time were an instrument which could be speeded up or slowed down. "Where the sense of time breaks down, that's where the magic and the mystery are."

All three dancer/choreographers working with the legendary Hay are well established in their own right. Most well known is Hanson, who co-founded the internationally acclaimed 33 Fainting Spells. Piacenza, a founding member of D9 Dance collective, has had work commissioned and presented by Bratislava Movement Festival and by New York's Dance Theater Workshop. Reeber, a founding member of Foot in Mouth, has toured nationally (recently with Pat Graney's "Vivian Girls").

In addition to performing Hay's trio, the three dance makers will present solos inspired by the collaboration.

Hay's own connection to the Northwest was first formed when she came in the mid-'60s with Robert Rauschenberg, Steve Paxton and Alex Hay to teach a series of workshops in Port Townsend. Hay has said that the mountain in the title can be seen as a metaphor for a single individual and for the apex and supports of a trio.

The title can also be seen as a metaphor for the experience of climbing the work itself, of actively participating in the process.

"It will challenge people," Piacenza said. "I hope the audience will meet us half way."

Mary Murfin Bayley: marybayley@aol.com