39 Microlectures in proximity of performance by Matthew Goulish provides some insight into the collective mind that governs Goat Island. When describing the group's first creative steps, he quotes a litany of demands compiled by Yvonne Rainer. "NO to spectacle no to virtuosity no..." The group adopted this attitude towards their own creative process. Goulish writes, "We admired these words. They encouraged us to avoid almost everything." What does it mean to deny virtuosity in art and how does this denial manifest itself in performance?
As a dancer and choreographer, Yvonne Rainer interrogated virtuosity in dance by mingling everyday gesture with codified, highly performative dance movement. This contrast troubled the relationship between performance and its content or, according to Peggy Phelan, the relationship between spectacle and spectator. In Feminist Theory, Poststructuralism and Performance, Phelan writes that the work of Rainer was "redesigning the relation between self and other, subject and object, sound and image, man and woman, spectator and performer." By incorporating non-performative action into her work, Rainer broke down the wall between herself and her audiences. This demolition and 'NO to virtuosity,' was, as Phelan suggests, a remarkable catalyst for the reorientation of historic relationships inherently preserved in the performance situation.
In It's an Earthquake in my Heart, Goat Island succeeds in mingling the performative body with the daily body. Tightly choreographed physical action is abstract, repetitive, and so steeped with intention that the spectator is drawn toward the intellectual safety of interpretation. In contrast, the poverty of costumes and set pieces, and the intimacy of the performance space can be alienating. Little plastic fans on the lapels of the actors or a giant plastic hand on a stick are banal and cheap. They are theatrically impoverished, daily things that don’t offer easy stimulation. The spectator watches fellow audience members from across the stage as they squirm in their boredom. Goat Island, in this way, says 'NO to interpretation' by saying 'No to entertainment.' see clips (back-to-back)
dumb type differs from Rainer and Goat Island in their use of virtuosity. According to their website, the group and their cross-media creations are rebelling against political apathy in Japan and the conflation of art with entertainment. The group uses virtuosic dance, expensive technology (pH) and grand scale composition (OR). Sexy costumes amplify the attractiveness of the performers. It may be the same force of status quo that distresses dumb type, Rainer and Goat Island but dumb type, in contrast to latter two, dumb type does not rebel by denying virtuosity.
When dump type incorporates virtuosity into their works, what do they loose that Rainer and Goat Island deem precious? I think that a performance that denies virtuosity makes unique demands of its audience. When Yvonne Rainer incorporated non-performative body motion into dance choreography, she woke the spectator from the pleasant safety of the reality / nonreality construct. Goat Island's adoption of this performance mission, although taken somewhat out of context, has a similar impact. dumb type, in contrast, uses grad spectacle to disturb the status quo. This identifies the paradoxical role of virtuosity in performance. I see that dumb type's virtuosity allow their audience some safe, intellectual respite behind the 'forth wall.' In pH and OR, dumb type does not deny virtuosity in order to probe the spectator / spectacle relationship. With this inattention, they are made vulnerable to subjectivity. At times, they risk becoming mere phenomena for the pleasure - albeit thoughtful pleasure - of the audience. NO to virtuosity isn't a refusal to entertain, it is a refusal to disengage from an exploration of the spectator / spectacle relationship.