Biba: Well, welcome!

Matthew: Thank you! Thanks for having me. So...It Never Really Happened, Part I: how do you think it went?

B: I think that it went well! Part of the way that I assess that is just the audience response, which became progressively more excited and interested and sort of passionate. There were lots of different perspectives, different moments. Everybody seemed to have different moments that they were drawn to, which is something that, I think, reveals the possible complexity of the work, something that I can’t necessarily perceive fully. So that was really great, to have the time afterwards to talk to people and hear about the moments that they were drawn to or the images that stuck in their minds.

It was neat because I just did this performance at the Music Hall (fig. 2), and somebody emailed me about it afterward and said, “I loved it so much and I went with four different people and everybody had these really different interpretations of the dance.” And I wrote back and said, "Oh, I’d be really curious to hear what the interpretations were." And so she wrote a brief synopsis of each of the interpretations, and one person said that I looked "like a soccer mom trophy wife." And because I had these big plants on stage with me, another person thought I was like, trying to make a statement about being with living things in the Facebook generation or something like that. And I was like, “OK, so it’s a story that has to be interpreted." That’s a very particular -- I don’t really make work like that all the time. I mean, I do in some ways, but it’s sort of like, “Well, yes, I guess that is a way that people can access dance.”

figure 2

SMELL at Music Hall. Photo by Brooke Viselli, 2015

Here, it was a very different response and it was much more expanded, the way in which people were engaging with the work. It wasn’t this sort of, "I need to interpret it and you’re telling a story" thing, necessarily, instead it was very much more felt — it was just much more visceral.

M: Oh, I’m really glad you brought this up because interestingly, I was just walking over here thinking that this work seems to me like the most, well, not narrative, but it did seem to me much more than just movement. It doesn’t necessarily need to be a story, but there was this very strong idea or theme that did invite this interpretation or narrative-making, maybe more than anything else I’ve seen you do. Maybe I'm thinking about this because I’ve been watching these early Trisha Brown dances on DVD and they’re all so "in the laboratory," scientific, almost -- experiments in pure movement, I guess -- and then I've been contrasting that with this performance, which was so — it reminded me more of like, Martha Graham. And it's also so not like Martha Graham, but it is much more theatrical, with the wig (I’m really interested in the wig) — there is very much this character that I felt was being created. And then when I left the performance, I found myself talking about your character and Nicola’s character— interpreting. (Are they different characters? The same character at different times? Facets of the same character?) It seemed somehow less abstract than a lot of stuff I’ve seen you do.

figure 3

photo by Norman McDonald, 2015

B: Well, dance is so much about dance history, too, and in terms of my training and my background, the sort of formalism that I’m familiar with is the post-modern, Cunningham sort of school. But to me, that notion of pure dance or form, or the abstract, the way that’s discussed, it’s very historically specific, so in terms of contemporary dance, that’s something to be in dialogue with. I mean, modern dance began a century ago. And post-modern, 50 years ago! So we’re dealing with these very specific moments and how the abstract and the expressionistic become these two poles, on some level. And then we have the '80s and the '90s and AIDS and identity politics and all this other stuff....

But at the same time, the apartment is a domestic space. A space of affect and emotional labor. And if we’re thinking of the sort of feminizing, historically, even into the classical modernist period, we’re still sort of basically just pre-women’s lib, and the kind of shifting of that figure, who starts to become more athletic or svelte, especially when we’re thinking about this kind of European modernism that these guys are all a part of [gesturing around at the apartment]. And also the way in which that body is framed. I immediately go back to these sort of sketched out figures in old Vogue magazines, like dress-making patterns, and the ways in which that figure starts to become represented in these spaces.

figure 4

photo by Norman McDonald, 2015

But it is really interesting because I’m not an actor. And I’ve had people people ask, can you be in a movie or do you act? No, I don’t act! I perform.

M: But you do more than pure movement. There is characterization, right?

B: I definitely experiment with different ways of being present or with evoking different types of physicalities, and that’s something that leads the choreography, on some level, the way in which it produces different states of being physical. For example, the sobbing; it’s very formal, the way I’m thinking about that. I’m not working on it from an emotional place in a Graham sense, which would be, you know, the body, the movement itself is —certainly people would argue with me, but the way I understand the Graham technique is that the physicality is really in service of this emotional, foundational sort of essence. And that’s where it comes from. And that’s the power of it. I'm not doing that. But then for me, because I am such a dramatic or physical dancer, I certainly put the concept to work in my body. And so that sobbing is just one example. I’m not having an emotional experience, but I am bringing myself to the limit of the physicality of that action.

figure 5

photo by Norman McDonald, 2015

M: Which then provokes an emotional reaction in the audience.

B: Yeah, it does something to the audience, but I’m not trying to perform and bring the audience into this emotional space. I am producing these images and associations and it’s very intense because I’m having a very intense physical experience, going to the limits of what I can do.

M: Which is actually, I think, what does provoke the emotional experience in the audience.

B: But it complicates it, too, I feel.

M: Sure, but for me, it starts with this immediate, “Oh my god, what is Biba doing to her body?"  Which can then be filtered through this characterization, "OK, this figure, this character is in some kind of turmoil,” if you want to characterize it. But it starts with that immediate physical reality, that shock or concern, in this case.

B: And then there are the historical figures of the hysterical woman that can be provoked by that, that kind of intersects that moment, which I find is also part of the mining of the space, the context, in a certain kind of way.

And it's personal, in terms of my own journey, my own interrogation of the domestic and my relationship to it at this point in my life, here, which is definitely a personal trajectory because coming to Detroit, the first move I made was buying a house. And the choice to make this shift in this transition from New York City to this experience of cultivating a domestic sphere, which I had never done as an adult, really. And then how that was going to affect my artistic practice…. And yes, the turmoil, certainly, in that sphere, for me personally. So that also becomes — they intersect, they’re not separated. I’ve realized as I’ve gotten older that my decisions, my choices, my interests, are also led through these kinds of personal experiences. But how do I bring it from this idea of, "Oh, here, come and be a part of my world, Biba, I’m having this cathartic thing?" I’m not interested in seeing that. I’m not interested in doing that. That’s not the kind of work that I make. But how do I have these experiences and how are they integrated with the work, ultimately?

And also, you know, the wig, and the development of this figure (because I think of it as more of a figure than a character) is also a way to create some space for me and also for the audience, which I think is ultimately space to breathe. It’s important to have that kind of space to breathe in such intimacy.

M: Wow. But how do you draw that line? Because the work is so much about that immediate physical confrontation anyway...do you think that not wearing the wig would be too close for you? For the audience?

B: Well, I think that it just works. It works in here. I mean, I think about it in terms of the vintage of the space, too. It’s this grey, it’s not exactly a ‘50s cut, it’s more like a ’70s, maybe, but it does sort of work to blur that temporal relationship. It is sort of like stepping into a time capsule here. Well, maybe not a time capsule so much, but…

M: An artifact.

B: Yeah, an artifact, so it’s also in response to that, I think. And going back to the Nicola character (character, figure....she’s a little bit more of a character than I am, maybe), but part of the reason that I was immediately interested in working with her for that role is that 1, she’s a great hostess. Nicola is very warm and that’s a role that she’s very comfortable in. She’s a homemaker, absolutely. And 2, there’s a familiarity with her. People are familiar with her, whether they know her or not. She’s lived here for 20, 25 years. She and Adam [Lee Miller, Nicola's husband and the other member of their band ADULT.] are figures in Detroit. Whether people know her, they know of her, they’re familiar with her look, her face, what she’s done. There was a way in which that became a way in for the audience, to be greeted by a familiar figure, whether you actually know her or not, the possibility of that familiarity is there on multiple levels. That would produce a level of comfort that I thought would be helpful in terms of relaxing the audience in order to not be so startled by the confrontation of the piece, of the dance itself. That was a big reason I brought her into it.