Multiple Personalities: an evening of dance by Christopher K. Morgan
Music Center at Strathmore
Bethesda, Md.
May 23, 2010
By Lisa Traiger Dancer/choreographer Christopher Morgan is a shape shifter. “Multiple Personalities,” his recent concert of choreographic works crisscrosses genres as easily as a smooth, flat stone skipped across a glassy pond. A modern dancer, he effortlessly tackled a balletic pas de deux, a hip hop number and a traditional hula. Although that extreme variety sounds suspiciously like a Dolly Dinkle recital, Morgan displays choreographic intellect in each of the genres he assays, resulting in mostly full-bodied artistic works that interplay narrative, movement ideas and a not insignificant trace of humanity.
Currently rehearsal director at CityDance Ensemble, one of the Washington, D.C. region’s fastest growing and most successful contemporary companies, Morgan’s evening of works fits neatly into the intimate CityDance Center studio/theater at the Music Center at Strathmore. Opening with a traditional hula song and chant, expanded with a personal story -– a nod to Morgan’s time spent working with Marylander Liz Lerman’s text-based choreographic endeavors -– the evening also featured a contemporary ballet mostly danced on pointe; a freewheeling modern number with allusions to clubbing and high fashion; and, the program’s strongest and most personal piece, “The Measure of a Man,” a testament of the artist coming to terms with his masculine identity.
In 1987, San Francisco choreographer Joe Goode managed to rattle staid sensibilities in the dance world and beyond with the premiere of his gay-identity piece, “29 Effeminate Gestures.” Goode intended to tear down stereotypes with his uber-masculine persona fraught with a series of feminine, read "gay," gestures. In his butch demeanor he even used a chainsaw to chop up a chair on stage, then mumbled, over and over, “He’s a good guy. He’s a good guy,” as if saying it would make it so. Goode tried to convince himself that he could somehow possess the masculine mystique: that John Wayne tough and independent streak and the notion that real men, of course, shed no tears. The work “29 Effeminate Gestures” examined what happens when one suppresses one’s nature -– Goode’s feelings, and his femininity, couldn’t be contained. Five years after Goode’s work premiered, scholar/critic David Gere called his study one of “heroic effeminacy.” “29 Effeminate Gestures” became a defining work for a generation of gay men, dance artists or not, who struggled with their identity and coming out in a then more socially and politically hostile decade. Today, at least in many areas of our nation, gay is virtually the new black. If a movie or sitcom doesn’t contain some sort of swishy, gay character, a butch neighbor, or the friendly lesbian couple down the street, well, then how current could it possibly be?
