Moving freely

GET BACK Performers in parades hold things up.

In the ostensibly liberal New York art world of 1965, Anna Halprin’s Parades and Changes was banned for nudity. Had the work been obviously titillating, it might have won winks and nods, but the simplicity of the naked bodies was interpreted by some as aggressively antisocial. Absorbed in a multitude of unnameable tasks with random objects and garments, the unclad artists engaged in surreal fashion-show scenes, attacked giant sheets of brown paper and performed intricate ensemble sections (including a rhythmic stomp in a variety of shoes and boots).

Despite, or because of, the ban, Parades became hugely influential almost entirely by reputation. Now a new version of the work is on tour in major cities, taking the MCA Stage on Thursday 5. The remount was spearheaded by French artist Anne Collod, who is familiar with the process of reviving dances “that are supposed to be past, old, dead,” she says. In 1993 she began an eight-year project dedicated to the resurrection of avant-garde landmarks, such as Continuous Project/Altered Daily by Yvonne Rainer (1970). She also has restaged early-20th-century dances by Doris Humphrey and Kurt Joos.

Collod once aspired to be another kind of researcher: She studied biology and environmental science before turning to dance. She says meeting Halprin (born in Winnetka in 1920) gave her new insights about her path: “Until then I didn’t really know what was pushing me into dance,” she says. “But ecology is the study of dynamic balances between living systems, how things are transformed by their surroundings, and how living objects change and evolve.” Collod says both dance and ecology are about how we deal with our environment, be it human, emotional, natural or artificial: “It’s still behavior within landscapes.”

Collod, with Halprin and the dance’s original composer, Morton Subotnick, spent four years on the revival of Parades. Collod also enlisted a team of contemporary dance luminaries, including Boaz K Barkan, DD Dorvillier and Alain Buffard, to rebuild the work from archival materials scattered throughout the U.S. and Europe. parades & changes, replays debuted at the 2008 Lyon Biennale.

“Our research was a process of trying to understand what was necessary to keep”—exposing the body was, unsurprisingly, deemed integral— “and what could and should be changed,” Collod explains. “Anna, Morton and I had discussions at the outset to establish our guiding principles. Back and forth, between France and Anna’s place [north of San Francisco], we had to keep meeting to see what was heading in the right direction.” The process unfolded between Halprin and Subotnick’s memories and their current creativity, “today’s eyes looking back on their old creations,” Collod says.

Long-dormant dances are notoriously difficult to re-create. Adding to the complexity in this case was a method revolutionary at the time but now commonplace: Rather than learning steps, dancers execute instructions in a manner of their own choosing. “This is a new group of dancers and artistic collaborators, so the reinterpreted version will reflect their own aesthetic preferences,” Halprin says.

“Sometimes movements [dances from the past] that haven’t had many chances to express their artistic strength simply have more juice and power in them than pieces that are only concerned with questions of the moment,” Collod says. “I’ve found a journey in time that changes my vision of what the ‘present’ is.” Halprin adds, “I am happy to say that the discriminating use of nudity no longer is considered indecent exposure, nor does it call for arrest.”

Collod and Halprin’s completely legal parades & changes, replays visits the MCA Stage Thursday 5, Saturday 7 and Sunday 8.

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