Title: Opener
Duration: 12 minutes
Premiere: April 9,1976, “Bicentennial Celebration,” Barnard College Gymnasium, NYC, NY
Performer: Jessica Fogel
Music: Collage by Ross Rhodes of Americana music, including distortions of Anita Bryant singing “This is my Country”; a recording of Jessica Fogel age five singing “America the Beautiful” made on a recording machine in NYC ; a layer of Charles Ives (maybe his “The Unanswered Question.”)
Description: A damaged video of this performance was located in the Barnard College archives. At the height of the Vietnam War, our country celebrated its bicentennial in numerous ways. In this dance, which was a part of Barnard’s bicentennial celebration, I took a rebellious view of our imperialist country. I wore a leotard and a royal blue short skirt, reminiscent of a skating skirt. The music collage I created with Ross Rhodes was political in its distortions of patriotic music and an eerie mix of Charles Ives with my childhood recording of “America the Beautiful.” I began the dance planting four small American flags in a small square in the center of the vast gymnasium space. Gradually, I pushed the boundaries of the flags outwards, in an expanding rectangle. As I moved the flags outwards, I performed a militaristic phrase with combat crawls and lunges, which included a slow motion gesture of an army salute, my hand moving through a “Heil Hitler” gesture before reaching my forehead. Eventually, I got onto a heavy wooden rolling cart to navigate the large gym floor space, using the cart’s handle like a barre, cheerfully performing a penché arabesque attitude as I glided across the space to plant the flags at the four corners of the gym floor, traveling like a triumphant skater on a rink, my skirt fluttering in the breeze. Skater Dorothy Hamill reigned high at this time, and I had her haircut to boot. But the floor space was not enough. I left the cart to climb up into the audience bleachers, where I planted the flags in the two high corners audience right and left. Next, I returned to the gym floor, and gestured to the running track above, where I had planted four assistants, who held or placed four flags on the corners of the track above toward the end of the dance. I may have ended the dance with the slow motion salute.
Selections from these two albums were used in the music collage for Opener.
