Upright, and the monotony of the ordinary sets in. Pedestrians walk across the horizontal plane. Things fall down. Turn things sideways, and absurdity takes hold. Pedestrians walk down the sides of buildings, effortlessly perpendicular to their facades.
Upright, and onlookers keep on walking. Sideways, and they stop and wonder.
And wonder they will when Amelia Rudolph, founder and artistic director BANDALOOP, a vertical dance company, walks down the face of the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Center later today. Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA presents the performance titled, “Man Walking Down the Side of a Building,” originally conceived by world-renowned dancer and choreographer Trisha Brown and performed by Joseph Schlichter in 1970.
The performance will open for “Trisha Brown Dance Company: Program A” at Royce Hall tonight. This is a part of UCLA’s “Trisha Brown Dance Company: The Retrospective Project,” which celebrates the works of Brown, who recently announced her retirement from a career spanning five decades.
“Long before BANDALOOP, just as a dancer and as an aspiring choreographer, I considered her to be – and I still consider her to be – a titan in the field,” Rudolph said. “She was a leading part of a movement that changed people’s perspective in a profound way about what dance could be, … what dance is.”
BANDALOOP, an Oakland-based dance group formed in 1991, is a pioneer of vertical dance. Rather than the more conventional style of dancing on the ground, the company straps its dancers into harnesses, ties them into ropes and dangles them in open space, off the ground.
“What BANDALOOP does and what I do with my work allows people to see public space and places that they either walk past or take a bus past everyday and didn’t really notice before,” Rudolph said. “They get an opportunity to reimagine those spaces and to invest them with meaning.”
The company has roots in two of Rudolph’s greatest passions. Rudolph was technically trained in ballet, Indian dance and a number of other styles of dance since she was a child. Then in the late ’80s, Rudolph began climbing the Sierra Nevada mountains. Her dual love of climbing and dance has since manifested itself in the company’s foundation.
“The concept was to use climbing technology and the aesthetics of the possibility of working in a vertical environment and blending that with the techniques of post-modern dance,” Rudolph said.
A love of nature is interwoven into the mission of BANDALOOP. In the past 20-plus years, the company has created works on El Capitan in Yosemite, the Dolomites in Italy, the fjords of Stavanger in Norway and in Inyo National Forest.
But for Rudolph, both natural and man-made spaces are inspiring for very different reasons.
“Over the years we have performed on perhaps 100 buildings all over the world,” Rudolph said. “What’s so amazing about performing on buildings is every building is in a community and every community perceives their public space differently.”
BANDALOOP appeared at the Seattle Space Needle, the Old Post Office Pavilion in Washington, D.C., and countless museums, libraries, theaters and other public spaces.
Despite Rudolph’s experience, “Man Walking Down the Side of a Building” will be a new kind of challenge.
“The actual act of walking is completely different when performed horizontally than it is when the body is vertical,” said Susan Foster, choreographer and distinguished professor in world arts and cultures/dance at UCLA. “So, the walking itself looks completely different than you think it is going to when you imagine the act.”
Rudolph must strike the perfect point of rotation to avoid either her head or feet falling toward the building. And she must do this without revealing any struggle.
“It’s really hard because you don’t have a lot of traction on the wall, … (but) she’s trying to create the illusion that gravity is going in a different direction,” said Laurel Tentindo, a graduate student in world arts and cultures/dance, who was in Brown’s company for several years.
Rudolph said she hopes her hours of training will pay off to honor the artistry and legacy of Brown. She said she has a long-standing respect for Brown and has been influenced by Brown’s work since her college days.
“Man Walking Down the Side of a Building” exhibits high minimalism with an absurd twist, Tentindo said. It continues to challenge the definition of dance, more than 40 years since it was first performed.
“It is asking, not even asking, … (but) inviting (the audience) to experience movement and gravity very differently,” Rudolph said. “And when we really draw them into our world, I hope to create a sensation for the audience where it is truly confusing to them as to whether I’m walking on the ground or walking on a building.”