Composing in the moment "Critical State" a dance, music and video performance

"Thinking outside the box" has to be one of the most tired clichés in the English language.

You can add "breaking down barriers" and "pushing the envelope" to that list - but, trite or not, the clichés are all true. There's no finite edge to the creative mind.

For the business start-up, it's that innovative idea no one's heard of. For the painter, it's that unique form that catches the eye.

For Polly Motley, it's "composing in the moment."

"I'm interested in what the mind is doing, and what the body is doing" when it's creating, says the Stowe dance guru.

Motley often breaks the mold, but for the past week, she's been working on an ambitious masterpiece, the culmination of years of work in a number of mediums.

Her materials? Dance, video and sound. Her canvas? The small-town architecture of the River Arts Center at 74 Pleasant St. in Morrisville.

On Sept. 2-3, Motley and a cast of seasoned performers will paint the interior of the historic structure with carefully choreographed dances, video monitors and background music. The installation will also showcase a host of interactive features designed to blend the traditional perception of audience and the performer.

Titled "Critical State," the event is aimed at pushing the limits of contemporary dance.

"I've done traditional dancing," she says. "I wanted something more personal - something that had a more direct relationship with the audience."

About the view

Motley is no stranger to the more abstract realms of her medium. Classically trained and old enough to remember the heyday of post-modern dance in the 1970s and '80s, she has both mastered the rules and broken them.

The inspiration for her current work goes back to one evening in the late 1980s during a performance in Aspen, Colo.

"I was doing one of these athletic, multi-directional dances on a stage," she recalls. "I realized the audience was only getting a frontal perspective and I thought, ‘Well, how crazy is that? If people are only sitting (in one place), how are we going to give them a perspective on the dancing?'"

Over the years, she's taken a number of approaches to solving that problem, in the vein of what she calls "contemporary dance."

In 1998, she teamed with Vermont video artist Molly Davies to craft "Drawing From the Body," in which audience members watch her dance in front of a camera in one room, or while viewing the feed in another.

Nine years later, she produced "Go Tell Aunt Rhodie," donning a Renaissance-inspired dress and scaling three different-sized ladders. Audience members watch the performance from multiple angles, like a living sculpture.

For "Critical State," she's taking those ideas to another level.

The cast

Motley has assembled an all-star collection of regional and foreign artists for the installation, which was largely composed over the last week.

Dancer Joyce Lim of Malaysia will bring her expertise in Noh theater, a traditional Japanese style.

Three members of New York's Trisha Brown Dance Company - a legend in the post-modern dance world - will make the trek: Diane Madden, Cori Olinghouse and Stacy Spence.

Jeremy Olson, a dancer with a degree in physics from Harvard, of all things, will also be on hand.

"All of these performers are choreographers bringing their own choreography to the piece and allowing it to change and harmonize with the greater whole," says Motley, who herself will be performing during the installation.

Motley describes the philosophy of the dances as improvisational, but stops herself.

"What I prefer to say is ‘composing in the moment,'" she says. Much of the dances will be structured beforehand - the amount of time for each dance, the movements, etc. - but the components are open to interpretation and expansion.

Key to the atmosphere will be Davies, Motley's collaborator on "Drawing from the Body."

"It was the video artists, not the dancers that inspired me," in the '70s and '80s, Motley says, citing Joan Jonas, Vito Acconci and performance artist Chris Burden - best-known for crucifying himself on a Volkswagen Beetle in 1974 - as influences.

For "Critical State," Davies is mixing live and recorded video of the dancers on various monitors and projectors around the building, which are effectively the only visual element of the piece besides the dancers.

Motley wants to keep the building as bare as possible to emphasize the performance, and make creative use of lighting.

She also enlisted Brooklyn-based sound experimentalist Samual Harr to compose music and "soundscapes" - collections of sounds from rural and urban environments - for the show. Harr will take a unique approach to backing up the dancers, using various speaker sizes and even hiding speakers in kitchen drawers.

One idea Motley has is a downloadable playlist of the music, and what she calls the equivalent of a "kissing booth" for the audience and dancers.

It would work like this: The booth would have two Apple iPod players with a set of music on them. An audience member would pick a song to listen to on a set of headphones, then the dancer would play the same song through his or her headphones at the same time and dance to it, meaning the performer and the audience member are effectively insulated in the performance.

The relationship between the performer and the audience will be a crucial part of the experience, she says. By viewing the dancers from separate angles and walking through the building at different times, the audience effectively dictates what the experience is.

She's even providing digital cameras to audience members, in hopes they'll be enticed to get closer to the dancers than they normally would.

"I think it can be quite daunting for audience members to get close to performers," she said. "But I want people to get close, I want people to stare."

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Admission to "Critical State" is $20 or by donation. Performances are Sept. 2 and 3 between 5:30 and 8:30 p.m., followed by a question-and-answer session.

People are also invited to watch the artists set up the space and rehearse during the day Aug. 29 through Sept. 1.

Check the www.riverarts.org for details as the performance dates approach. Well-behaved, quiet children are welcome. The work is funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, Vermont Arts Council, and the Vermont Community Fund.