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“In Zen they say: If something is boring after two minutes, try for four minutes. If it’s still boring, try for eight, 16, 32, etc. In the end one discovers that it’s not boring at all, but very interesting.”
It is one of 90 stories, each one minute long, in “Indeterminacy,” the note John Cage first recorded on an album with pianist David Tudor in 1959. At La MaMa in the East Village on Tuesday, veteran city artist Paul Lazar, along with six special guests, told many of these stories — “I didn’t like a few,” Lazar said at the start of the show. a choreographed dance while completing a random sequence, non-random series of gestures and steps.
The story “If something is boring” came halfway through, and when the work was done, it returned to my consciousness, “Cage Mixing Marathon“It finished sooner than I expected. With the stories given, it was completed in less than the 90 minutes advertised. But it was also the kind of performance that rewarded patient attention, in a way, the longer you watch, the greater your capacity to keep watching.
Or maybe I expected more. Lazar – a co-founder, with choreographer Annie-B Parson Great Dance Theater — He has been performing “Cage Shuffle” since 2017 and the setup is simple, with easy familiarity that lights up the entire evening. A headset feeds him a mix of Cage’s stories, so he never knows what’s going to happen, but the order of the dance he choreographed with Parson is fixed. Movements that seem mundane include a wavy elbow, lowering one knee, fingers touching the soles of the feet.
In the spirit of chance that has shaped much of Cage’s work, the resulting alignments between words and action are accidental, and noticing them becomes a game of sorts. On Tuesday, these included stroking the breastbone to the “free your soul” line and shoes rubbing the floor until “feet were slightly off the ground.” The misalignments were as delightful as the casual, slow-paced pivots in a story about Cage’s grandmother who punctuated a dramatic question: “John, are you ready for the Lord’s second coming?”
For this “marathon” version with more stories than ever before, Lazar recruited a cast and crew of writers to support all the treasures of New York’s experimental dance and theater scenes: Jess Barbagallo, Patricia Hoffbauer, Jennifer Krasinski, Brian Rogers and Sheryl Sutton. From their seats on the stage, around the red-ground square that centers the action, each one draws attention for a single story and gives Lazar a chance to rest. Parson also briefly participates. It was at this point that I found myself waiting for more: It seemed unusual for each of so many distinguished guests to contribute – in ways other than silently observing – only once.
His interventions brought welcome variations in timing and energy beyond the pacing changes required to adapt each story, however alarming, to the one-minute gap. Others began to get comfortable with it as the material fitted Lazarus like a worn pair of slippers—to the point where he could subtly over-comment. The freshness of discovery cracked in Barbagallo’s hilarious, poignant presentation of a story about an Aunt Marge (“You know, I love this machine more than Uncle Walter”); In Krasinski’s bright, sharp alertness; In Hoffbauer’s mix of focus and frenzy. Sutton and Rogers sat down as they talked, giving calm but lively, underrated notes.
When they all started to act together at once, I waited for another phase of the work to start, and my interest increased. It was actually an end – a return to a different kind of awareness after being lost in the passing minutes.
Cage Mixing Marathon
Saturday in La MaMa, Manhattan; lamama.org.
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