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By Rachel Straus<\/p>\n
The mot du moment<\/em> in the New York dance scene is \u201ccurate.\u201d Dances are usually presented, but museums\u2014From the Whitney to the Museum of Arts & Design\u2014are getting in on the fun. Museums, however, don’t present. And so the fifth\u00a0“Works & Process” program at the Guggenheim Museum was called \u201cWatermill Quintet\u2014Robert Wilson Curates New Performances\u201d (March 13-14)<\/p>\n With a sold-out audience on March 14, the Peter B. Lewis Theater hummed with excitement. Then began Andrew Ondrejcak\u2019s Veneration #1: The Young Heir Takes Possession of the Master\u2019s Effects<\/em>. What a title! But the headline bore little relationship to the stage action. Ondrejcak ran in his underwear on a treadmill for about 15 minutes. An excerpt of composer-violinist Michael Galasso\u2019s Les Fables de la Fontaine<\/em> (a 2004 co-commission with Wilson from the Com\u00e9die-Fran\u00e7aise) created a suitably intense, modernist musical landscape.<\/p>\n Like Wilson\u2019s Einstein on the Beach<\/em> (1976), the work that put the Texas-born director on the international avant-garde theater map, Veneration<\/em> included repetition (running), dramatic lighting (by Wilson and John Torres), and a recognizable tone (deadly seriousness). When Ondrejcak fell off the treadmill, I looked at my program notes to find:<\/p>\n \u201cLeading up to the death of his father in 2010, Ondrejcak devised Veneration #1<\/em>: The Young Heir Takes Possession of the Master\u2019s Effects<\/em>, in which he isolates and observes the body\u2019s process of physical weakening (and eventual failure)\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n This reviewer did a double take, unsure of whether the program notes corresponded to the stage proceedings. But they did. And so the serious study of the program notes (throughout the show) became part of the performance. Connecting the moving images on stage with the long descriptions of four 15-minute works and six video interludes\u2014created by five artists who had been mentored by Wilson in 2010 at his Watermill Center\u2014became the elusive goal.<\/p>\n Some works seemed to be about so much, as in the case of The Dorothy K.: Shorter Are the Prayers in Bed, but More Heartfelt<\/em>,<\/em> which included blood soaked costumes by Anna Telcs. Another seemed to be about so little, as with MOMENT-a duet for one, <\/em>which\u00a0involved the choreographer Marianna Kavallieratos and Thanassis Akokkalidis\u2019 moving and sitting across from each other in chairs.<\/p>\n The works bore little relationship to each other. The press release stated that Wilson had made a \u201cvisual and performative framework.” In the end, the event felt like subterfuge for the obvious: The star of the show was Wilson. The curator is the new rock star. Performance theory jargon isn\u2019t just for academics. Artists can spin profundities about their creations with mots<\/em> mysteres.<\/em> If this approach fostered intellectual stimulation or comedy, that would have been fabulous. But on March 14 at the Guggenheim it created consternation, and multiple departures by formerly excited audience members.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n