Title: In Black and White
Premiere: Summer 1976, Palmer Auditorium, Connecticut College, American Dance Festival, Young Choreographers Workshop, directed by Lucas Hoving
Performer: Jessica Fogel
Character of the photographer: Raymond Fournier
Music: Authentic Sound Effects by Jac Holzman, Volume 7
Costume: Jessica Fogel
Description:
In Black and White grew out of the terror I experienced as the victim of a robbery on the upper West Side of NY in November 1975, during which I was followed into a building, stripped, gagged, tied, and held at gunpoint. I developed the dance in a workshop directed by Lucas Hoving at the American Dance Festival in 1976. I subsequently performed it many times, including on Dance Theater Workshop’s Choreographer’s Showcase in October 1976. The dance is a metaphor for being a victim and taking revenge. It is set to a soundtrack of sound effects of different kinds of gunshots. At the beginning of the dance, in a series of stop action poses, I make a ceremony of unsheathing a record from its cover and placing it onto a portable record player in the downstage right corner of the stage. I set the needle down to a blast of gunshots played at full volume. I proceed to go through a series of terrified runs and repeated falls to the ground and a phrase of frantic looking behind my back, choreographed to the different rhythms of the gunshots. The dance played with the metaphor of photography, where "shots" are taken of a subject. Within the dance, a photographer emerges from the audience shooting flash photos of me in my terror, like a media-hungry journalist. First he is tentative, and then he picks up his pace and aggression. The audience is very annoyed with him, thinking he is a real photographer at first, and then eventually understanding he is a part of the dance as he moves through the audience and enters the stage space. In one part of the dance I pose more provocatively for him like a fashion model, but then that escalates back into a kind of terror. Eventually, in rhythm with a military marching call on the sound track, I resolve to take control. I approach the record player and lift the needle and place the needle down on the ending circle, listening to it go around and around, chin in hand, pushing my head to the left in rhythm with the repetitive sound. Finally I put the needle arm back in its cradle. I stand and take off my white wraparound dress, under which I am wearing a black unitard. While shedding my dress, I pick up a scissors hidden by the record player, and begin walking and cutting through the stage space in geometric right angle pathways, moving toward the photographer, eventually coming face to face with him. I cut off his black clothes and he is revealed in white underwear. I cut off the camera from the string around his neck and exit the stage, leaving him running in place on stage in fear as the lights fade. The first part was called "Negative" and the second part, "Development" as in the reversals that occur in the development of a black and white photo. Performing this repeatedly helped me shed the terror and provided a framework that resonated beyond the incident. A minister who saw it asked me to perform it for his Gramercy Park congregation as an allegory of good and evil. In the height of the 1970s second wave of feminism, it was also viewed by some as an image of female agency. After the summer premiere at the American Dance Festival, I auditioned tfor and was accepted o be included in a Choreographer’s Showcase in a shared evening at Dance Theater Workshop. I subsequently performed the dance frequently, and it put me on the map early in my career.
Program, American Dance Festival, Summer 1976
Dance Magazine review, by Linda Small
Dance Magazine review by Barbara Newman
