Preview: Elke Rindfleisch’s “Do I Know You?” at Galapagos Art Space in Williamsburg; Sunday, July 1, 7:30PM $10
Back in 2003, Elke Rindfleisch began working in a style that people have now come to know her by: a highly flexible and unexpectedly athletic facility applied to mostly abstract movement but never veering too far away from the theatrical. The work created then, “Say,” also happened to be the first artistic collaboration she embarked on with her husband, Chris Woltmann, a composer who has also recently (and thankfully) picked up the craft of dance photography. Their match as partners in creation of dance threads many ways, all of which can be seen in Elke’s upcoming engagement at Galapagos Arts Space this Sunday.
Talking to Elke in her home-made studio apartment (that she and Chris built together) in the little corner of a neighborhood that is called Wallabout, just nuzzled like the inside of a bent elbow between the neighborhoods of Williamsburg, Bed Stuy and Clinton Hill, she describes her new solo, “Do I Know You?”, as an “investigation of personality within the perspective of an artist’s persona.”
The challenge here, Elke admits, was how to explore the plethora of humanity without a corps of individuals (dancers) to help realize inter-human relationships. Using her own body, that quest seems to have led naturally to an exploration of the self. But as Elke’s choreography pushes and pulls a dancer’s body against itself, in a sometimes relentless effort to reach its flexive limits, her approach to the solo has been no less challenging to boundaries.
In addition to movement she’s choreographed for herself, theatrical in its representations of her as an artist (dressed only in sweat pants and a t-shirt, a la rehearsal) and as a woman (dressed in a slinky black dress and disguised in an electric blue wig), Elke has provocatively asked some of her company dancers (a faithful team of top notch performers whose dance credits span up and down town) to create some of the material for her.
“They didn’t let me off easy,” she says wryly of the material they came up with, which includes some textual tasks as well as movement. Her dancers also make appearances in the video projections and photographs (presumably taken by Chris) that will be on display within and throughout the performance.
Chris’ contribution as composer is a rarity, both musically and within the circles of New York dance. Breaking from a classical route to composition, his music for Elke’s performances, which have included “Overhead” (2005) and last year’s “Damage” (which also included the musical collaboration of Brooklyn-based Collective Opera Company) is unabashed rock. Armed with an electric guitar, Chris guides a band (also known on the music scene as Czar Bomba) through faithful garage band riffs and distortions, songs juxtaposed with droney passages, in a surprisingly fitting accompaniment to Elke’s choreography. Although he will be performing solo on Sunday, the music is bound to have the kind of thrashy lyricism that make his rock music non-pretentious and totally satisfying.
Rindfleisch’s work is certainly some of the freshest work out there, that is earnest is the best possible way; always with a little bit of dark humor, and a lot of mystery.
Elke and Chris are also at work on a new piece, 80% of Love, that will premier at the Ohio Theater during the Ice Factory Festival the first week of August. Based on Murakami’s novel, “Sputnik Sweetheart,” the work explores a triangle of love stratified through a prismatic exploration of self and being.
Leave a Comment
No comments yet.
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
