"Angel Reapers" at ADF

Simple Passions? 

Martha Clarke’s Angel Reapers at the Reynolds Industries Theater, July 5-7

The tension of line against curve. Hard-edged panels of light; rows of chairs, placed at right angles; a single file, stamping line of dancers crossing the stage.  And yet—the rounding of long skirts over hips; arms spiraling upward as the body twists; an ecstatic, rotating circle within a circle.  So much seems to hinge on opposing tensions in Martha Clarke’s new work in progress, Angel Reapers, a dance theater work about the Shaker community and its founder, Ann Lee.

Clarke’s dance work is set to a cappella Shaker songs sung by the dancers, and it is fortified with text by award-winning playwright Alfred Uhry; Christopher Akerlind lights the dance with simple, painterly strokes.  The dancers remind each other of the strict rules of their society (including celibacy), celebrate the chores they do to keep the group functioning, and confess their desires, their sins.  There is a loose narrative to the work, and characters distinguish themselves as the performance develops: Mother Ann Lee, the charismatic founder of the religious community, her brother William, a young couple that transgress the rules and are cast out, and a former member of the group who later denounces the believers.

The dramatic momentum of the work is really driven by the dancing and gesture more than the text.  Clarke works with a minimal movement vocabulary, mostly consisting of stylized pedestrian movement.  The dancers employ an assortment of hand gestures—sometimes clasping both hands at their chests, sometimes holding their palms upturned.  The women swish their skirts; the men hang onto their hats.  Walking patterns carve through the space as the dancers scurry, keep time, and sometimes tip and lean in a measured pass back and forth through the space.

At the heart of the work seems to be the tension between human and divine nature; the Shakers aspired to transcend—deny—their human passions, yet encouraged religious ecstasy in worship.  Clarke’s work seems to highlight the physicality of the community, emphasizing their humanness.  The singing moves the body, as air fills the chest, throats open, shoulders sway to the melody.  The rhythmic dancing this group does, patterned clapping and stomping, pitching forward as they circle the stage, is all imbued with the body’s weight, sound, pulse.  Even the work that was so central to the Shaker community—sowing seeds, washing dishes, mending clothes—requires sweeping arms, dexterous fingers, strong backs.  Certainly the worship depicted here is a full-bodied affair, complete with convulsions, energetic spinning, and even collapse.  At the end of the dance, Mother Ann Lee’s brother William confesses the inner turmoil he feels, with the soul of an angel and the body of a man, and begins to undress.  For a brief scene, he joins the other men, who enter stripped bare, and they trace a hasty spiral of turning leaps before exiting again—it is clear that these are men, not angels.

It is this tension—human versus angelic—that begins to break apart the community in Clarke’s work.  From the straight-backed, angular posture of the beginning, the dancers begin to yield, to curve away from (and towards) the touch of others.  They begin to lose the order that characterizes the beginning of the dance as their bodily desires are not always denied.  The last scene seems a fractured portrait, no longer a unified, supportive—if rigid—community, but one with deep, internal fissures.  The chairs are no longer in straight rows, but scattered in small groups around the stage; some chairs are empty, as members have left the group.  Mother Ann seems uncertain, as if questioning her own resolve.  And yet—the group hums, a droning, spreading hum, as the lights fade, still finding unity (and maybe even the Divine) in their merging voices.

Anne Morris