sarma

I spend two evenings at La Mama watching the superficially anarchic Grand Union and come away absurdly comforted -thinking that if I stuck my head out the window and yelled to the street below, "catch me", maybe, just maybe, someone would.

The Grand Union is, of course, Trisha Brown, Barbara Dilley, Douglas Dunn, David Gordon, Nancy Lewis, and Steve Paxton. And everything they do is thought up on the spot: the swingy, slouchy dancing and bright "routines"; the improbable group feats; the tender body-against-body work; the saucy one-liners and dead-pan dialogue; the singing; the clothes-play; the satirical, in-passing references to theater, dance, movie traditions.

It's easy to remember a Grand Union performance in terms of its highlights and its low points or to talk about one performance that "worked" and one that didn't. But I find that the most important thing the group's performing does is to articulate for us, in a particular way, the shifts of equilibrium, the spurts of directed tension, the changes of focus that we're all constantly engaged in -alone or in groups. The particular way the Grand Union does this emphasizes -I can't think of a pithier word- coping. I like to watch the way a Grand Union person will try to see through something he or she has started -patiently, at times gallantly, even though whatever it is may have become unwieldy or painful- but then finally, drop it without regret. I like the way they all help each other out of difficulties or lend their weight to accomplish some group purpose, or the way they fit themselves into something that may not be their bag. In the deepest and best sense of the word, they are polite -however vigorous, raunchy, aggressive or noisily eccentric they may allow themselves to get.

I've seen improvisational work in dance and in theater and been turned off by a lot of what I've seen. But although the Grand Union may at times become "self-indulgent" (a critic-ese expression usually meaning that the performers explored an event for longer than you wanted to watch them explore it), they avoid a lot of improv pitfalls. They don't try to top each other or break up each other's acts under the guise of providing contrast; they don't always play copycat as a means of arriving at group unity; they don't play the lout the way some actors do when improvising, making every word and gesture a potential for confrontation.

The Grand Union copes, not just with their possibly cumbersome tasks, but with the weight of our boredom. I don't mean that in low moments they start throwing themselves round to keep us entertained, but that they make us feel that we're all locked into this (this what?) together; we have as much a stake as they do in the turn of events. This art presents so vividly a semblance of the pattern made by our own daily indecisions and little triumphs that it's possible to watch almost on tenterhooks -applauding "wise" choices, lamenting lost "opportunities", waiting to see who is the early bird and who the worm.

The performers seem to have long, hungry memories. A phrase spoken, a gesture made during a Grand Union performance goes down in history, and may be repeated or developed much later in the evening by someone else. Everyone seems fiercely sensitive to these thematic possibilities. For instance, during the March 15 performance at La Mama, Lewis, doing some rather abandoned quasi-ballroom dancing (lifts and all) with Dunn, asked solicitously "Is this your first time?" A little later, when the two of them sauntered hand-in-hand up to a group of hardworking others, someone asked them, "Is this your first time here?" Yes, they admitted, and walked around taking in the sights.

Oh boy, memorable moments. Lewis standing for ages way at the back, up on a little stage, with a blue blanket over her head and finally (in a propitious silence) asking in her high quavery voice, "Am I doing anything important?" Everyone attempting to help Trisha Brown mount the business half of a broken stepladder, which was being held up on Paxton's feet (he lying on his back). David Gordon playing emcee to a rapidly burgeoning monster-virgin routine he has discovered ("And now ladies and gentlemen, the only known version in which a trio of virgins attacks a monster"). Dunn holding Paxton in a fireman's carry after a long fruitless drill with Trisha Brown as sergeant ("When I count to five, I want everyone to face your hometown"): Dunn to nobody in particular, "Is this what it feels like to be in the corps?" Paxton, some time later still draped over Dunn's shoulder, "Is this what it feels like to be a star?" Dilley and Dunn exploring a long and beautiful nuzzling sort of dance on the floor and then Dilley lying there shuddering with laughter while Dunn, as polite and attentive as a doctor in the jungle, squatted by her and attempted to tell her how he had mastered the problem of laughing during performance. The three women dancing with desperate grace in an elusive little follow spot. And more.

The March 15th performance was by any standards a brilliant one; all performers high on collaboration. The March 16th one kept getting snarled. For one thing, David Gordon arrived with a stick in his hand and wearing an elaborate costume that suggested a Biblical patriarch; this made for some grand comedy but also, of course, limited his flexibility for a while and determined the ways the others wanted to relate to him. Yet his decision to appear in the trappings of a mournful Bedouin was a perfectly valid and potentially potent Grand Union thing to do.

I've heard of people walking out during flagging moments in Grand Union performances. I couldn't bear to do that. I'd have to wait and see how they got out of their predicament. And whether it was a predicament or just a change in the weather.