The Tripod

Issue date: 4/22/03 Section: Arts

Karen bernard is not your typical dancer.

You never really know what to expect when you walk into a Seabury 47 show. Unexpected could be New York-based choreographer/dancer Karen Bernard's middle name (I haven't looked at her birth certificate, but I'm assuming her parents weren't that cruel). Therefore, Karen Bernard performing an excerpt from her longer piece "CAUTION/be careful of what you dream" in Seabury 47 last Tuesday night was a perfect fit. Bernard's performance that night falls into what I like to call the 'is this art?' category. Not that I believe Bernard's performance wasn't art (hell, in my book everything is art); I classify it as such because it's the type of performance 'pedestrian' audiences (to misappropriate theaterspeak) leave and then rush home to their dictionaries to look up 'art' to see if what they saw had anything at all to do with it. (You might think it doesn't, but after two years in the InterArts program I can say with some authority that it definitely does have something to do with art, at least in the minds of many people).

At this point, I've probably got you wondering what exactly Bernard did that could put her in the 'is this art?' category. But before I can start with what she did, I must first tell you a little about who Bernard is (at least on the surface) that would garner such a reaction from an audience not familiar with her work. Bernard will be the first to tell you that she's not what you'd think of when you think of a dancer. She's in her fifties and doesn't have the typical dancer body. Off the bat that would challenge some people's perception of dance enough to not label it as such. What made Bernard's piece interesting was that she not only didn't hide the fact that she wasn't a 'typical' dancer, she embraced it and made it a major theme running throughout her piece.

As the audience began filling the space, Bernard was already onstage warming up. By being visible from the beginning Bernard was able to familiarize the audience with her presence and prepare them (as if one could really be prepared) for her performance. Bernard looked like a vision of the typical housewife in her blue sweats, not what you would expect if you simply read her wide-spread dance credentials. She began the piece by talking to the audience about the difficulties in finding the best way to start a piece. As she spoke, she wandered the space almost awkwardly, as if she were uncomfortable in front of an audience. At first it was hard to tell if this was the 'real' Bernard speaking to us or a persona, but the question was cleared up (in my mind at least) when she wandered into what she called the perfect spot to start her piece and then snapped into 'performance mode' with the jerk of her head and a switch of the lighting. Bernard is a dancer who looks like a housewife playing a housewife who moves like a dancer moving like a housewife (whew!).

Continued...

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