One Good Quote: PEILING KAO DANCE

Photo: Robbie Sweeny

In Fall 2017, Life as a Modern Dancer launched a new concept for post-performance discussion and writing. The goals are multi-fold:

What are new ways to invite post-performance writing (since so few publications now print dance reviews, and there are fewer and fewer dance critics in the United States)?
How can choreographers hear and read more from audience members about their impressions and experiences of dance events?
Can we offer new mechanisms for choreographers to gather language about their work, to further their work and to promote their work?

The premise is simple. If you attend the performance of PEILING KAO DANCE'S One Body Five Dances Six Perspectives at Earle Ernst Lab Theatre (University of Hawai'i at Manoa) on December 7 and 8, 2018, please take a few minutes here to leave a comment. Write down images, impressions, appreciations, and questions from the performance. These can be words, phrases, or a few sentences. Then please sign it with your name and a descriptor, such as:

Jill Randall, Director of Life as a Modern Dancer

Chris Randall, dance enthusiast

Reed Randall, first-time audience member

We thank you for your time, support, and thoughtfulness. Here's to more dialogue, more reflection, and more writing on the dance performance experience. As choreographer Mariah Steele noted, we are "democratizing dance criticism."

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4 responses to “One Good Quote: PEILING KAO DANCE”

Peter Chamberlain

Dec 9, 2018 at 3:33 pm

I attended the Saturday Matinee Performance of Peiling’s One Body/Five Dances at UHM. I have, as a musician, worked improvisationally with dancers and have always focused on the interaction between .. the points of contact. It is the effectiveness of that focus in Peiling’s work that stands out the most to me. Although the sound accompanying these dances (accept for one silent piece) was pre-recorded the resulting sense was that the sound and movement were inseparable … intrinsically woven together. I have seen Peiling dance in a variety of scenarios (supplied live sound for her once) and her seamless immersion with the sound is always incredibly sensitive and dynamic. Synergy. That said, let it not imply any lack of brilliance, skill, and intensity in her mastery of her own body. Fluidity and grace contrasted with gestural action that can even border on the grotesque. During this performance I also began to recognize some signature elements in her work though not at all redundant as the context is always in flux. (with a smile, I think…”follow the hand”).
Flawless and brilliant!

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Peter Chamberlain

Dec 10, 2018 at 1:19 pm

Later thoughts on Peiling’s Five Dances. It was great to have a flyer that explained the back grounds of the 5 guest choreographers (and nice to know that at least one of them, Betsy Fisher, was in attendance to witness the transformation and translation of her work). Again, considering my personal POV, I REALLY wanted to know more about the actual structure and physicality of the choreoraphy as presented from one artist to the other … what exactly does the choreographer share with the dancer and to what extent does the dancer apply persona;l modulations to the original score? or is the structural notation even in graphic form?…verbal? or is the editing of the sound…which clearly informs the movement … sufficient as the inspiring element? I would have loved to have a flyer that exposed the secrets of what was behind the scenes. I also think this would have honored the choreographers a little more than just offering their resume’s. Further, how can one possibly answer the question posed at the beginning of the flyer without knowing the choreographic details? …”If a dancer is chosen to work with a choreographer, can this dancer’s body be colonized by the choreographic intentions?”…

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Amy Bukarau

Dec 12, 2018 at 2:34 pm

I attended the Saturday evening performance of Peilings One Body, Five Dances performed at University of Hawaii. It was interesting to watch the same body embody five different movement styles, nuances, and motivations. I found that Peiling transformed her own personal intention each time she took the stage to dance each piece, which gave me the opportunity to get to know each choreographer and their movement language. I also applaud Peiling for her ability to bring her own voice to each work while being totally invested in the choreographers voice, as seen by the change from piece to piece. Having worked as a graduate student in dance with both Peiling and Betsy Fisher, who choreographed “Synapse”, it was intriguing to witness their two movement styles melt together to create a new style. I saw the carving of the spine and carved traveling pathways combined with Peilings efficient and effortless approach to movement. I believe that Peiling is a master technician and artist and this performance highlighted both of those qualities. She always brings a high level of professionalism when she dances and creates an environment for me to evaluate what I know and don’t know.

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Donovan Oakleaf

Dec 14, 2018 at 12:41 am

I will tell you now: I am out of my depths. I’m not a dancer or a dance writer. My vocabulary for responding to dance is painfully limited. Dance happens without words, happens in a completely different vernacular, requires a whole other vocabulary than the one carrying these thoughts on this page just now.
I know enough to know that no dancer in the world would be pleased to hear the clunky responses I can muster: “Wow,” and “Cool,” and “So beautiful,” and “I-am-in-awe-of-your-physical-fitness-how-do-you-move-like-that?”
On Friday, December 7, and again on Saturday, December 8, I sat among the lucky few who witnessed the solo dance offering, One Body: Five Dances: Six Perspectives. (For what it is worth, I recommend this approach: one cannot hope to take the whole thing in with just a single viewing).
The One Body in question belongs to the astonishingly gifted choreographer/dance educator/performer Peiling Kao. The Five Dances refer to the visions of the five choreographers she commissioned through her eponymous company, PEILING KAO DANCES, to create and set work upon her for this occasion: Betsy Fischer, Ming-Shen Ku, Molissa Fenley, Hope Mohr, and Christy Funsch. The Six[th] Perspective is the one which unifies those visions and also stands apart: her own.
It isn’t fair picking favorites, but I’ll do it anyway: Synapse, the first piece, leaped out at me. Peiling Kao enters upstage left with the music Fragmentary Blues in the air. Those Blues have something of playful, campy, mid-century cartoon fun in them and Ms. Kao allows brief moments of almost-comedy to unfold in conjunction with them: bouncing her bobble-headed way from point A to point B, a BONK! to her scalp – administered by her own hand, and a hint of the clown’s dazed eye-roll before the moment is gone.
She doesn’t allow the moment to become fully funny – of course, that wouldn’t be the point – but I thought I saw Playfulness there. I mention it here because Playfulness is what I watch for in the world and I think others may share my preference. After all, what’s not to like about Playfulness?
Another moment that stood out later in the same piece: Ms. Kao’s right hand enacts its own agenda as the remainder of her body lays still on the floor, the left hand policing the rambunctious mischief of its counterpart. The right hand is determined to resist all efforts at soothing though and is indifferent to the well-being of its host – like anxious impulses in the darker corners of the mind – an irritated, obsessive, mis-firing Synapse.
A light steel door frame mounted to a fancified skateboard informs each image in Liminal Turnings, the second piece.
Two moments I retained: one where Ms. Kao storms through the frame from upstage to downstage with all the furious deliberation in the world.
Another, where she finds herself passing through the movable opening, alternating from one side of the frame to the other, searching for the better view.
And from the last third of Stay With Me, the fourth dance of the five: Ms. Kao accomplishes a progressive, circular, silent stomp – her leg flying high, racing toward the ground, but never announcing the collision with sound. She repeats this in tighter and tighter snail-shell circles.
Why call these moments out?
Because they looked so cool!
True.
Also true that they were simply moments I was able to latch onto and repeated in my mind until words slowly came to represent them with some small degree of accuracy.
When it comes to modern/postmodern dance, I think I am right to say an interweaving of gestures apart from their originating contexts is the rule. This makes for a torrent of images, each as resistant to verbal rendering as the rest. I’ve simply grabbed what little I could hold from the stream and made the best of it here. The remarkable thing is the way these images and gestures still fit together, still add up in some way, still make for rewarding consideration even if there’s no saying just what that reward is or should be.
Here is a layman’s admiration: Peiling Kao wastes not a flicker of movement ever, at all, even a little bit. She makes it look easy, like nothing much is going on, like this kind of synthesis happens all the time, ho-hum, who cares, f’ggedaboudit.
It seems impossible to me that she learns this, that she works with this, that effort was ever part of the conversation: she is so perfectly in control of her physical presence, she seems to have transcended any potential she could ever – in any sense – struggle or fail. She is somehow lighter, faster, stronger than all of that.
I would say her thoughts and her corporeal being are in perfect harmony, but the word “thought” seems too heavy, ponderous, slow: whim is more to the mark. Her body is wherever her whim says it is – is there already, as the whim whims it; and where whim says now; and whim, and where; and whim and where and how and altogether now.
Past that, I can only say that I am – again – happily, totally, and completely, out of my depths.

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