When the Spirits Moved Them, They Moved at Ryan Lee Gallery is not strictly a dance piece – it is an art installation – but I am including it on Listed because it explores many issues which interest me in dance.

The project emerges out of a 19 hour dance performance in the Meeting House of a Shaker village in Pleasant Hill, Kentucky. The installation condenses this performance into a 22 minute 3-channel video coupled with a series of photographic pairings of the dance and landscape in the adjacent gallery. The project’s impetus comes from the ecstatic Shaker meeting tradition, in which Believers sing and dance for hours on end to empty their minds and bodies for possession by the Spirits. In its original form, as I understand it, Believers used exhaustion as a way to help them lose control of their consciousness and reach a spiritual state.

In the choreographed translation of this experience, we see the dancers start in the clear early morning light, their costumes crisp and clean, their faces blank, and their movement deliberate. The videos on either side of the central dance performance show the surrounding landscape in mirror reflection. As the camera slowly pans across a stone wall, the landscape seems to breathe in and out, bracketing the dance in the center.

The dance reaches its peak at the height of the day. There are audience members who lend their energy by clapping along. The choreography shifts between synchrony and improvisation in an intricate weave.  But there are still another 9 hours to go at this point, and this is where the project comes to life. The dancers get tired, the audience members leave, the choreography loosens up. We see the dancers struggle through the repeated sequences of the dance. They smile. They exchange looks. Even the videography becomes blurry and we feel the person behind the camera struggling to keep up. In the original Meeting, participants used exhaustion to help them lose control. Here, the dancers fight to maintain control in spite of exhaustion.

There are many moments of beauty in this piece, and it is pleasurable just to sit and watch the video, letting the serenity of the Shaker environment wash over you.  The project has a considerable stillness despite the frenetic dancing. Duration is slowly marked by the change of light, the moving shadows, the wrinkles of the linen clothes on the dancers.

But for me the piece is really about this struggle for self-control (in the face of religious ecstasy).  What does it look like to lose control?  Ghani and Kelly show us, but in minute increments. It is enjoyable to see these lapses, to see slivers of the personalities of the dancers who seem to appreciate the absurdity of their task, as well as its aspirations. In the end the choreographic narrative reins the dancers in, and disperses them around the space, posing with blank faces restored, the ecstatic moment a dream.  Culture, in this case, has restored order and we are left with an empty room and mixed feelings of relief and regret.