Dance scholar Cynthia Williams guides a deep dive into two different political works made by choreographer Jane Comfort in the 1990s, revealing the striking connections to American social injustices escalating today.. *This episode was directed by Lisa Niedermeyer.
Dance scholar Cynthia Williams guides a deep dive into two different political works made by choreographer Jane Comfort in the 1990s, revealing the striking connections to American social injustices escalating today.
*This episode was directed by Lisa Niedermeyer.
[Music begins, composed by J.S. Bach, performed by Jess Meeker]
NORTON OWEN: Welcome to PillowVoices, a production of Jacob's Pillow dance festival with content from the Pillow archives. I'm Norton Owen the Pillow’s director of preservation, and it's my pleasure to introduce Cynthia Williams as your host. Cynthia is a performer, professor, and scholar who was onsite in the Pillow Archives to conduct research for a book on choreographer Jane Comfort, the focus of this episode.
CYNTHIA WILLIAMS: Choreographer Jane Comfort creates radical theatre with works that erase the boundaries between dance and theatre, movement and text, and the personal and the political. Comfort has been making dance/theatre art since 1978; often political in tone and content, frequently combining spoken and/or sung text, her choreography has examined the values we hold and called out the “isms” and behaviors that appear in contradiction to those values. Comfort’s work is a call to conscience, a call to wake up and acknowledge the inequities and injustices that surround us. From early pieces such as Deportment (South), Deportment (North), S/He, and Three Bagatelles for the Righteous, to later works including American Rendition and Beauty Comfort has probed below the surfaces of manners, across the boundaries of gender performance, and beneath imbalances of power. Not confined to single-issue identity politics, Comfort’s work asks us to wake up, to engage, to speak up, in effect to be “woke,” long before wokeness was a trending term. Comfort’s choreography is a call to examine the ways in which we “change the channels,” avert our eyes, and attempt to escape from or cover up the ugly truths of the racism, homophobia, and sexism that are deeply entrenched in our world.
A pioneer in the exploration of new theatre/dance forms, Comfort creates work that challenges traditional disciplinary boundaries of form while using language and the language of movement to grapple with questions of power, gender, and race. Her choreography makes visible the ways injustices live below the surface of manners, how pretty words or social language masks corrosive beliefs, ideologies, and prejudices, and how the body can simultaneously contradict and express those complex truths in ways that language or abstract movement alone cannot. In her choreography, Comfort exposes not only the realities we would prefer not to come to terms with, but also our behaviors of avoidance, self-absorption, and our habits of surrounding ourselves with a choir of like-minded people. Comfort’s work makes us uncomfortable at times—it provokes, offends, calls us out for our tendencies to ignore or excuse injustice in the name of social etiquette or to avoid conflict. Rarely pedantic or preachy, Comfort’s choreography opens up a world and asks us to make a choice, take a stand, and acknowledge our own complicity and our own participation in this world, which is our world. It asks where do you stand? What do you believe? What do you want to do with this knowledge?
I first encountered Jane Comfort’s remarkable choreography in New York in 2004 where she presented Persephone in a bare-bones showcase. I was captivated by the fierce beauty and strength of her dancers, the stunning conceptual imagination of her staging, and the theatrical and visual design elements that held the space for it. Following that introduction I was able to present Jane Comfort and Company at my theatre and began a relationship that has included many conversations about her work, invitations to rehearsals and the opportunity to see works in process, access to her archives as a researcher, and the opportunity to perform a duet choreographed by her in 2014! Along the way I have been a devoted fan, reveling in each new work and revival, been inspired by studying her early works, and have embarked on writing essays and chapters for a book about her.
Jane Comfort and Company’s presence at Jacob’s Pillow has spanned nearly three decades including commissions Underground River creative residencies for Faith Healing , Asphalt , and premieres Beauty and Three Bagatelles for the Righteous and its precursor Bites were shown at Jacob’s Pillow, as were excerpts of Comfort’s iconic S/He.
This podcast offers a glimpse into Comfort’s choreographic process and perspective as seen in the “Bites” section of Three Bagatelles for the Righteous, and then focuses on the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas section of S/He. In both works Comfort juxtaposes text and movement in ways that disrupt our complacency; she provokes us into a deeper understanding and empathy for those we may have been unconsciously othering.
The archival recordings in this episode come from the following sources: the 1999 Inside/Out performance and post-show talk, the 1999 Doris Duke performance, and a 1996 performance at the 92nd St Y in New York City, which was gifted to the Pillow Archives by the artist.
“Three Bagatelles for the Righteous,” exemplifies the choreographic genius of Jane Comfort. The work deftly incorporates movement language and spoken text, highlights Comfort’s use of structure and metaphor to make meaning, and demonstrates her ability to present work that is simultaneously political and personal, rooted in a social justice activism that transcends the superficial tropes of political posters and dives deep into the heart of what it means to be human.
The first section of “Three Bagatelles” is titled “Bites.” Comfort describes the inspiration for the piece in her pre-performance talk for the Inside Out stage on July 28, 1999.
JANE COMFORT: 3 Bagatelles for the Righteous… and it was made in 1996. I was inspired to make it in 1994 when all the Republicans were swept into Congress and there seemed to be this mandate to 1) get rid of the National Endowment for the Arts, and 2) get rid of welfare and all these “welfare mother cheats”—they never said the word welfare without the word “cheat” associated with it… the gradual stripping away of the social net was really scary for me… So I made a piece of 3 dances and they are each made to sound bites of religious/political leaders from America. Part 1 is done to Newt Gingrich talking about the Contract for America; Part 2 is Bob Dole and Bill Clinton during their campaign. This was made right during the election. Part 3 is Randall Terry, Pat Robertson and Bob Dornan.
CYNTHIA WILLIAMS: The central structure and metaphor for “Bites” is a game of musical chairs. Comfort notes that finding a central structural metaphor is key for her as a choreographer, the pivot point around which the work revolves. The piece opens to reveal seven dancers sitting in a row of seven chairs lined up on stage left. They are sitting quietly, hands on their thighs, bare feet on the floor. A foghorn alarm sounds and they stand and begin a series of hand gestures in unison: they raise both arms in front of them and overhead, palms facing down. Their elbows bend, hands covering the front of their faces at eye level; the right hand gestures with flexed wrist out from the chin as if offering a kiss to an invisible partner… Other gestural motifs include a sudden hand slap from high to low, a sharp upward “touchdown” signal, a stylized, bent-kneed, goose-step-like walk, and a flat-back hinge forward from the waist that ends with a spinal ripple bringing them upright again. They traverse the stage from left to right, keeping their places in the line up. Most of the movement is two-dimensional: right angles, pivot turns, parallel lunges. We don’t notice that they have traveled across the stage until they swivel to face where they came from and their butts descend into chairs marking the stage right edge. All sit simultaneously except one whose chair was removed by an attendant. The unfortunate dancer sits on air, falling backwards to the floor. The audience laughs; she gets up and looks at the other dancers.
All join her standing and begin to cross the stage again with stylized leg kicks, sweepy arm and leg gestures, and flexed foot stepping. Single words and short phrases from.
CYNTHIA WILLIAMS: Each time the dancers cross the stage they find a chair has been removed from the line up, and each time a different dancer is left chairless. Broken phrases from Gingrich’s speech haunt them as their movement phrases change and disintegrate with precarious balances, fast foot work, and hunkered over postures. The competition for the fewer and fewer chairs becomes intense. Dancers pull other dancers from their chairs and fling them onto the floor; they scramble and scrabble in and out of unison in traveling patterns that feature flexed wrists, rocking weight shifts and stylized prancing. After several crosses, there are only four seats left and a desperate dancer launches herself to stand on a partially occupied seat, only to topple over sideways into their laps and be unceremoniously logrolled off their laps and onto the floor. Gingrich intones:
NEWT GINGRICH: Why are we here? To sweat and work… This is a contract…This is a contract…This is a contract with America.
CYNTHIA WILLIAMS: As the dancers struggle to repeat the original gesture and walking pattern and Gingrich’s words become more ominous “and you know that…and you know that in your town…and you know that people in your town that want to get off welfare and out of poverty have found it surprisingly easy to open their small businesses…” the choreographic order is shattered. One helps another dancer by carrying her piggyback, yet others steal chairs, fighting over them, and look away from the others. The alarm keeps sounding, Gingrich keeps offering unctuous advice “Think of America,” (8:04) “Think of America as a giant family,” “People were tired of big government…and trust broke down…they were worried about their safety…” The dancers are yelling at each other, circling the remaining three chairs in a predatory ring, until only two chairs remain. “This is the crisis of our entire civilization,” the alarm blares and all but one dancer runs toward the center of the stage and an explosion is heard. The dancers begin crumbling toward the floor in slow motion and ushers remove all but one chair on each side.
What we experience in “Bites” is one cornerstone of Comfort’s choreographic genius: a use of text that creates a non-hierarchical fusion between movement language and spoken words that transcends “dancing to text.” The interaction between movement and text is multilayered and thought-provoking. Rather than illustrating the text, Comfort’s choreography brings forward complicated questions that ask the viewer to dig deeper in their meaning-making. Comfort states.
JANE COMFORT: One of the defining things about my work is the interaction between movement and text. I often use movement to subvert the text, so you might be hearing very nice things on stage and seeing something not so nice.
CYNTHIA WILLIAMS: The dancers’ increasingly frantic struggle to claim their chairs, exist as a community, and compete for dwindling resources is juxtaposed against Gingrich’s platitudes and assumptions of who the “we” are. The racist subtext of his Contract for America can be heard clearly at the end of the piece where he warns of the barbarism, chaos, and tragedy that will befall America should welfare reform fail.
Newt Gingrich: As you watch the evening news tonight…as you see the barbarism of Bosnia…snipers shoot children on the street…as you see the devastation of Somalia…the human tragedy of Rwanda…as you watch the chaos and poverty in Haiti…recognize that if America fails our children will live in a dark and bloody ground.
CYNTHIA WILLIAMS: Against these dire warnings, dancers are crawling, collapsing, stumbling, running and trying to crowd onto the last remaining chair—some helping each other, some arguing, as the lights fade and we hear one dancer say “I got you,” providing some hope in the darkness. Comfort has exposed the ugly consequences of a politician’s soaring rhetoric and provided us with the reminder that despite the fear and mistrust of the “other” that is encouraged by politicians, we are human beings. Comfort forces us to confront the dangerous edge that othering creates, and engages us viscerally in the struggle.
Responding to questions from the audience at the Jacob’s Pillow Inside/Out showing of Three Bagatelles for the Righteous and excerpts from S/He, Comfort commented on her Southern upbringing and gradual shifts in awareness.
JANE COMFORT: I grew up in Oak Ridge, TN which some of you know was part of the Manhattan Project…where they helped build the bomb. When we were growing up we were told we were heroes…It wasn’t until we were all grown up and went [away] to college we realized there were other opinions out there…The town was filled with scientists from all over the country, physicists who were brought in for this project, so it wasn’t your regular Southern town, to say the least.’
My parents were Southerners. I remember getting a lecture from my father when I was in high school that I wasn’t saying “I” correctly like “I like that”; I was saying IE. He said there’s not 2 vowels in I it’s “I” (Ahh). “You sound like a Yankee.” Most people in Oak Ridge didn’t have accents; my parents did but we were surrounded by TN, Knoxville and a different attitude.
I do remember in high school I had a good friend who had read “Black Like Me,” –is that the one?—the book about the person who has the pigment change—and she was so moved by it…She was so moved that she wrote him a letter and said what can I do to help and he said Talk. Just get together blacks and whites and talk, (43:44) I think that was our senior year in high school and so…this was like ’63 and so we asked black friends to come—and we were friends with—and we had these talks and I was shocked at how angry they were…
We gradually became more and more aware. I really was naïve…I thought these black friends of ours were…I thought I knew them and I realized I didn’t. Then I went to school in North Carolina and it was in Greensboro and they just had the lunch room sit ins that spring and I went to school in the fall…I could have ignored it. I could have worn A-line skirts…I did join a sorority…I did want ? [?] but I don’t know why I had a very…my father was very critical and I was punished a lot and I think there’s a part of me that has a reaction to the misuse of power.
I would say that my 8th grade year I spent every weekend being grounded…not that I didn’t push it…obviously, but there’s some kind of gut reaction I have to the misuse of power.
My mother hoped I’d be a debutant…I was a debutant! The Dogwood Ball in Knoxville. I have both sides going on.
CYNTHIA WILLIAMS: In the third section of Three Bagatelles for the Righteous, titled “In the Garden of Abundance,” Comfort again utilizes a juxtaposition of text and movement: sound bites from religious leaders Randall Terry, Pat Robertson, and Bob Dornan, fluid, lyrical dancing by her ensemble, and an undercurrent of a gentle, Gamelan-like percussion score by the composer/musician Klimchak. Comfort explained:
JANE COMFORT: The 3rd section goes to sound bites that are fairly offensive. I’m not sure what…goes to more of the fear and loathing that the farther right holds for people who are different…
That quote that you heard…Bob Dornan who was a representative from California…defeated in the last election and demanded a recount…He said in a campaign speech “don’t use the word gay unless it means “Got Aids Yet.”
CYNTHIA WILLIAMS: The sexist and homophobic statements of Terry, Robertson, and Dornan are chilling, and listening to their words decades later I am struck by how their words could have been spoken today, with the emphasis on patriarchy, the Christian State, and attacks on homosexuals, feminists, abortionists, and “activist judges.” The juxtaposition of the movements’ cascading flow and gentleness, the lulling on-goingness of the dancers’ gestures and complex spatial patterns that ebb and flow into ever-changing relationships, is in strong contrast to the ugliness of the words and the venomous perspective they imply. It’s almost too much to embody simultaneously—the generous beauty of the dancing and the smug and vitriolic statements of these men—I want to tune them out and revel in the dancing, but Comfort’s sound bites are an earworm that I cannot avoid.
BOB DORNAN: Don’t use the word gay unless it’s an acronym that means Got Aids Yet
The nonsense of the separation of church and state. Abortionists should be whipped to death God created Patriarchy. It is a patriarchal world, it always has been and it always will be. It is a patriarchal world no matter what all the whining feminists say.
The rise of homosexuality is a sign that society is in the last stages of decay…the last stages of decay…the last stages of decay…
CYNTHIA WILLIAMS: Viewing Three Bagatelles for the Righteous demonstrates that while the impetus for Comfort’s choreography is often rooted in a particular time and place, in this case, the Culture Wars of the American political landscape of the 1990s, the issues she addresses are persistent and the themes and ideas resound today. Despite pressure from critics and friends to soften the language she uses in her pieces, Comfort has followed her heart, confronting the issues straight on. Speaking about the antecedents for S/He and Three Bagatelles for the Righteous, Comfort recounted her worries about Deportment.
JANE COMFORT: When I did the piece I was telling you about—the racism—I was really scared about that piece because we were using language and what language means. We were using really bigoted language and I was just so scared ‘cause I had a critic say to me “Can’t you change that language? To something more politically correct?” And I said the whole piece is about language. Why would I do that?
I was so focused on getting in trouble or how the piece would go…it never occurred to me…and when it was over at PS 122 people stood up and cheered. And no one stands up in downtown. They don’t give standing ovations. I was just stunned I couldn’t even smile. I was standing there just in shock.
CYNTHIA WILLIAMS: Comfort notes her interest in politics and her desire to confront sexism, racism, and homophobia. Deportment (South) and Deportment (North) prompted her to a deeper study of gender performance and in 1995 she created S/He, a multi-section piece that has gender reversal as its central core. The most compelling section of S/He is the last section: the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill hearings, cast across race and gender by Comfort.
In Comfort’s version of events, the Senate Panel is composed of four black women who step, sing, and gesture; Clarence Thomas is played by a white woman and Anita Hill is played by a white man. The reversals in race and gender, combined with Comfort’s use of gesture, adroit manipulation of text, and shifting vocal and movement rhythms, provide a compelling counter-narrative to the original hearings.
The section begins with dancers entering from the upstage wings singing “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” The Senate Panelists do a step together, step, stop pattern moving side to side behind the table; they drum on the table with their fingertips and take turns swearing Thomas and Hill in, and asking each for their statements.
The questions come straight from transcripts of the 1991 hearings. Comfort creates visual interest through the ever-changing rhythms, vocal tones, and movements of the Panel, and in the gestures of the two respondents. Comfort explained that the Panelist’s movement came from Stepping, Gumboot, and Black fraternities; Comfort collaborates with her dancers frequently to create movement and vocal harmonies that express the content of the piece and the embodiment by that particular individual.
When responding to the Panel’s questions, Thomas and Hill mirror each other’s gestures. This juxtaposition of text and movement is interesting in that both make the same gestures even though it’s only Hill who is speaking. Does this suggest surveillance by Thomas or an attempt to look empathetic? The gestures underscore the words in unexpected ways—rather than being an obvious illustration of the words, they create an inner narrative, a secret code for Hill’s testimony. Hearing Hill’s testimony being given by a white man is destabilizing, and forces us to listen in a new way and to hear the public narrative differently. What we might have subconsciously dismissed as a Black woman’s account of events suddenly has new gravitas—aren’t we conditioned to accept the White male narrative as truth? Do we now have more empathy for her as a white male? Does his position of power bolster her words? Comfort’s choreography causes us to question our understandings and positions.
Comfort employs shifts in rhythm and vocal tone throughout this section, and the genius of that is seen most in the actions and sound of the Panelists who shift vocal harmonies and movement styles like chameleons.
The role of the Panel during the first half of the piece functions as a Greek chorus: they inquire, comment upon, and respond to the action. During Hill’s testimony, they are stepping side to side, patting and slapping their sides, shifting slightly towards and away from Hill, and punctuate their stepping movement with a quick arm circle that goes overhead as if tossing salt over their shoulders. After Hill’s testimony, Stephanie McKay leads the group in a melodic call and response rap that questions Hill’s complicity in the relationship.
STEPHANIE MCKAY [and group]: Dirty…But you didn’t quit…Disgusting…But you didn’t complain….You said you felt so embarrassed… But you didn’t quit…. Poor baby!... But you didn’t complain… You said you felt so ashamed… But you didn’t complain.
CYNTHIA WILLIAMS: When Clarence Thomas gives her statement, the Panelists are standing tightly together, stepping in a three quarters arc, their hands across their chests and waists. As Thomas speaks the text that has become part of our popular culture narrative (racist, bigoted stereotypes; high tech lynching) the Panelists/Chorus is chest-thumping, finger snapping and side stepping in an increasingly faster rhythm. In this way, Comfort underscores the way Thomas has shifted the conversation from gender to race—her Panelists are asserting their power in confident and masculine ways. By invoking race, Thomas managed to assert his position as one of the boys…Thomas’s words, when spoken by a white female, cause us to further question how we position ourselves in response to his text.
JANE COMFORT: Throughout the history of this country language about the sexual prowess and size of sexual prowess of white women has played into racist bigoted stereotypes that are almost impossible to wash off. These are the most racist bigoted stereotypes that any white woman will face.
This is a circus. It’s a national disgrace. And from my standpoint as a white American, as far as I’m concerned, it is a high tech lynching for uppity whites who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you. You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the US Senate, rather than hung from a tree.
CYNTHIA WILLIAMS: Comfort’s choreography for the Panelists moves them from neutral questioners who primarily comment on the action to becoming active antagonists. They move out from their place behind the table and circle Hill’s chair, making guttural sounds, clapping and snapping at him. During some questions they grab his clothes, sit on his lap, and make slapping motions at his head. From this point, the piece takes a dark turn.
CYNTHIA WILLIAMS: The Panelists drag Hill off his chair and toss him on the floor stage left. They stand over him as he cowers and start a militant dance around him as he sits on the floor. Their movement is menacing: quick time, strong weight punches, pirouettes, wide-legged stances and arms pumping overhead. Hill cowers and protects himself, first curling into a ball with his hands tightly clasped around his knees in a sitting position, then on his side on the floor in a fetal position. They begin tearing his clothes off while shouting “Huh,” and “Hah,” at him, accompanying their frenzied dance around him by whooping and hollering as more of his clothes are torn off. When he’s totally naked they scream at him. One Panelist humps him while the others cheer and then they toss him stage right towards his chair. They stand, adjust their clothes and congratulate each other, saying phrases like “good job.”
The violence of this scene is stunning. We understand on a somatic level the pain and injustice Hill endured, and are doubly affected given the parallel to the treatment of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford at the Brett Kavanaugh hearings of September 2018. In this way, Comfort’s choreography transcends the fleeting pop-culture moment of any particular story, and reveals the racist, misogynistic, and deeply ugly beliefs and behaviors of many Americans. In this section of S/He and in other pieces that comment on social injustices, Comfort encourages us to share her outrage, and to join her in resisting the forces that divide us.
Jane Comfort is frequently described as a political choreographer, and critics either praise or object to the political perspective they perceive. In this sense Comfort is situated in a lineage of modern dance pioneers who were noted for their rebellious, individualistic, and expressive art making that sought to prove that dance could be more than entertainment, more than visual spectacle. Comfort’s choreography often grapples with perceived injustices and frequently questions the status quo and power, gender, and racial inequities. Here too, Comfort carries on the tradition of the artist as a voice of social conscience, finding through art a voice of resistance, a call to action. Comfort’s choreography asks us to locate where we are, what we believe, and to consider the world critically—and to engage with dance as an act of engaged citizenship with the world. In Jane Comfort’s choreography, the personal is political and the work reflects and refracts social values through movement, text, sound, and metaphor.
Jane Comfort has persisted since 1978 in making work that speaks truth to power, and in so doing, has created a portfolio of dances that challenge, engage, and often deeply move her audiences. As Comfort herself said:
JANE COMFORT: I think everybody has a heart and there’s a lot of heart in my work, so I hope that’s what people recognize…and respond to.
[Music begins, composed, and performed by Jess Meeker]
NORTON OWEN: That’s it for this episode of PillowVoices. Thank you for joining us today. On behalf of Jacob’s Pillow we look forward to sharing more dance with you through the films, essays, and podcasts at DanceInteractive.jacobspillow.org and of course through live experiences during our Festival and throughout the year. Special thanks to the NationalEndowment for the Arts for helping launch this podcast series. Please subscribe toPillowVoices wherever you get your podcasts and visit us again soon, either online or on site.