Never Stand Still at Jacob’s Pillow

Jacob’s Pillow could be thought of as a Tanglewood for dance.  Nestled in the Berkshires, it hosts some of the world’s top troupes for workshops, master classes, and site-specific commissions.  Many of the regular visiting artists discus the institution’s significance and perform to appreciative audiences in Ron Honsa’s Never Stand Still: Dancing at Jacob’s Pillow (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

In the dance world, the choreographers and dancers who have developed new work at Jacob’s Pillow are about as big as it gets.  The audience is told as much by an authority like Bill T. Jones, who serves as the film’s narrator.  We also hear from luminaries, such as Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, and former Balanchine prima ballerina Suzanne Farrell, now leading a company specializing in mounting her mentor’s lesser known work.  However, some of the freshest commentary (and performances) comes from MacArthur genius, dancer, and clown: Bill Irwin.

Never Stand Still is a pretty straight forward performance documentary, punctuated with appreciations for the institution founded Ted Shawn at the Hawthornesque New England farm.  That does not provide much drama or controversy to analyze, but for dance connoisseurs, it delivers the goods.  Farrell’s company is indeed present preparing a new work, but arguably the most striking (and appealingly rhythmic) performance is Gamaka, an extended solo piece by Shantala Shivalingappa. 

A master of Indian Kuchipudi dance, Shivalingappa was also a featured dancer with Pina Bausch’s company.  The film’s producers are no doubt hoping some of Pina’s specialty box office gold rubs off on it.   While nowhere near as visually arresting as Wim Wender’s remarkably crafted film, Never Stand Still's standard 2D serves the choreography well enough.  Yet, like Wenders, Honsa also has the good sense to largely step out of the way of the impressive performances.

Those passionate about dance should be delighted with Never Stand Still, while those less steeped in the art should find it a pleasant and accessible horizon expander.  Eventually, it should fit nicely under the auspices of either Great Performances or American Masters on PBS, but it deserves a respectful theatrical audience in the mean time.  Recommended for refined viewers, it opens this Friday (5/18) in New York at the Quad Cinema.

BWIFF ’11: Goldstar, Ohio

Ohio is a state ruled by football, high school, college and professional, largely in that order. For the most part, they are people of faith, who support the troops and their neighbors. That sense of community also entails a shared sense of loss when several members of reserve unit based in small town outside of Cleveland suffers heavy casualties one awful day. The experience of witnessing and receiving news no relative wants to hear from uniformed officers is captured in the monologues of Michael Tisdale’s short film Goldstar, Ohio, an alumnus of the G.I. Film Festival, which screens at the Blue Whiskey Independent Film Festival in Illinois this Saturday.

In accordance with procedure, when two Marines arrive to make death notifications, they first stop at the office of Police Chief Jeff “Goob” Garver for an escort. This is now required for their protection, after several surviving family members have physically lashed out at similar messengers. They would not divulge the names involved, only their destination addresses. Of course, in a relatively tight knit community, it was not difficult to figure what was happening and who was affected.

Goldstar carefully avoids addressing any of the political issues surrounding the Iraq War (or Afghanistan for that matter). However, it indirectly refutes Oren Moverman’s defamatory The Messenger. Marines assigned to bereavement duty are always the most disciplined of the Corps, rather than the drunken basket-cases like Woody Harrelson’s character. Yet, the military never appear directly in Goldstar.

Drawn word-for-word from interviews conducted by Tisdale, Goldstar is about sudden grief and acute empathy. As wrenching as the family’ stories are, Garver’s monologue is perhaps more moving, because it reflects feelings that are truly humane. It also helps that Tony award winner Bill Irwin portrays Garver with finely wrought sensitivity and intensity, while also perfectly capturing the halting cadences of an interviewee. Indeed, Goldstar has a rather big name cast for a short film, including another Tony winner, Mercedes Ruehl, who is brings devastating gravitas as grieving mother Adriana Rock.

Despite the monologue format inherited from the film’s stage roots, Goldstar is very cinematic thanks to the rich warm look of cinematographer Mark Schwartzbard’s lens and NICKCASEY’s surprisingly effective incidental score. It is definitely worth seeing regardless of one’s opinions on the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Libya. It screens this Saturday (7/23) at the Blue Whiskey Independent Film Festival in Palatine, Illinois.