Dance premiere in Zurich: “Deathbed” by Trajal Harrell
Dhe black American dancer-choreographer Trajal Harrell, born in 1973, has been with his ensemble at the Zurich Schauspielhaus since 2019. At the weekend he presented the world premiere of “Deathbed” in the brightly neon-lit hall of the Zurich Kunsthalle, a piece as sad as saying goodbye to a deceased and as beautiful as a ritual of remembrance. What sounds so difficult – a dance piece is intended to commemorate the Afro-American choreographer Katherine Dunham, who died in 2006 at the age of 96 – takes place over 75 minutes as simply as it is impressive. “Deathbed” has nothing lexical, the work, more about Dunham Finding, beyond the good text of the program booklet, is none. Harrell’s play leaves its audience wanting to see Dunham dance, to hear her speak. This is an effect of the piece.
The starting point is different. Harrell had visited Dunham shortly before her death and later felt great regret that he had not asked her many questions. “Deathbed” is actually about this loss, about this grief, about situations in which, as one thinks in retrospect, one did not act or speak adequately. A story, a life comes to an end, a frozen moment arises in your memory, which you bring back to mind again and again, which doesn’t let you go, which allows feelings of shame and sadness to rise. Harrell has cast that experience and those feelings into a serious, truly meaningful piece. To experience how this energy of dealing with the past, of reflection in movement, in ritual dances and actions, spreads in space is deeply touching and incredibly beautiful.
You leave yourself to the events
One absorbs a lot intuitively, leaves oneself to what has happened, simply imagines along with the dancing movement. The musical collage is cut at times as abruptly as if you were playing songs to a friend to evoke shared memories, beats of Sade’s “Smooth Operator” or a re-sung version of Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide”. Eight legless piano benches upholstered in brown or black leather serve as tables for the dancers kneeling in front of them. As if for a Japanese tea ceremony, they settle down in the square and begin exhibiting objects: one brushes, the other perfume bottles, a pair of Gucci slippers, a small gate made of cleaning sponges. The audience sits on large floor cushions along three walls. Against the fourth wall is a plywood room divider behind which the dancers change and a small changing room.
It all starts with Harrell’s signature move, the voguing, the models’ parade walk. Harrell’s fabulous costumes, pieced together from vintage fabrics, get their own show. But that is already dance, already choreography, already a requirement: Do not think of the dance history of postmodernism as a white narrative focused solely on the Judson Church, but consider how in the Harlem Ballrooms of the 1970s the queer community found itself in precisely this style expressed and found.
So the piece flows on, picks up the voguing again, transitions into sequences that lightly jumped along with waving fabrics, then withdraws again. Everyone collects their objects, carries them away, spreads them out again. You have to repeat to understand. The piece, too, begins at the end as a loop from the beginning, without a break, without applause. Trajal Harrell sat on the long side between the spectators on the floor, sometimes going solo on the dance floor, once on his knees, on the pillow, showed a dance of the arms. Even such a moment for the man to see him again remains. It becomes clear how cleverly reflection is made into art here. “Deathbed” goes far beyond questions of the tortuous paths and buried sources of Afro-American dance, its Caribbean roots, its possible influence by the Japanese Butoh. This is also due to the outstanding dancers, none of whom will be forgotten.
There is a very simple form of racism, Katherine Dunham said in 2002 when the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival recorded one of the “Pillow Talks” with her: “ignorance”. Rarely has it been so nice to learn something important.