sarma

Bill Dunas must be unique among bright young artists in that he doesn't have to worry whether his second work will live up to the promise shown by his first. This is because he never does a second work. The six (or is it seven?) dances that he's made over a two year period are really one piece. He built this dance, block by block, until he had over an hour of material; then in each subsequent performance he varied the order, added or subtracted parts, changed his appearance or performing attack, appended a new title. When Dunas topples his block structure and builds up a different one, those who have seen the previous versions are lightly bombarded with associations denied those who are seeing the dance for the first time. It's the same as if you had actually built a castle out of painted blocks, knocked it down after a while and built a new one, and then noticed that a specific block that was the chimney before is now the doorsill.

Dunas's dance is always a created autobiography of a man alone -horribly alone; he might be the last man on earth or the first man in space, so complete is his solitude. Each version has been increasingly painful to watch, because he has been gradually denying us the palliative of virtuosity -that is, of knowing that the strong young dancer's body really dominates the suffering and exhaustion it is manufacturing. Now we see him, seemingly actually wearing out before our eyes. Very little "dancing" and very little youth.

Seeing the latest installment, "Ajax", at the Cubiculo, I sensed an unnerving progression (if only in my own mind): the man we see has been getting older in each dance. Now he wears his hair parted in the middle, and his jaw is edged with budding mutton-chop whiskers. His body, held in such a way as to make it look slack and bottom-heavy, is dressed in cut-off winter underwear. Nobody's foxy grand-dad. In the last performance ("Wax"), Dunas added a run that turned into a gasping hobble. Now he starts with a hobble-around the perimeters of the Cube like a mole lost in someone else's burrow. In "X" and "Express", he tried again and again to clamber out of the performing area via fire ladders or the wall itself; now he picks up a tangle of rope, looks up, and laughs until he chokes. He's older in another way too -hardened, cynical. Once he used to devour a slice of bread, drink a cup of water, smoke a cigarette with the singlemindedness of a child, or someone who has gone without for a long time, or someone who may not experience these things again. Now, in "Ajax", he eats his bread meditatively, drinks eying things over the rim of his glass, smokes as he follows a conversation in his mind or around him. Still alone, but watching others' eyes for confirmation of his existence. The dance is now permeated with the twitching fear of a cornered animal, but within an intellectual being. Dunas plays almost the entire dance in a crouch, a slack snarl on his face. When he speaks, civilization hides the terror: "They picked me to play the Yellow Rose of Texas", he says drily, "I wore a long yellow dress; they sang, and I skipped."

There has been another progression too. Whatever this man is struggling against has become increasingly internal. In his very first solo, "Gap", he seemed to be up against overwhelming outside forces beyond his control. By "Express", the forces seemed to be the actual environment that imprisoned him; one by one he pried up the trapdoors in the stage floor at Riverside Church and dropped inside. In "Wail", he appeared a stoic, passively enduring prisoner. In "Wax", the adversary was clearly his own body -or soul. He seemed to be running down, melting away. I probably won't fully understand "Ajax" until I see the next version. The invincible hero still struggles. Or almost invincible: the real (?) Ajax was invulnerable except for one spot in his armpit and one on his neck. (Is it a coincidence that Dunas's hero always announces mysteriously, "I had a lump on my neck."?) I say that I won't understand "Ajax" until I see the next version, but, brilliant as I feel the dance is, I can't help hoping that someday soon there won't be any need for a next version. I look forward to Bill Dunas's second dance.