Deborah Hay, queen of improv

I first saw Deborah Hay in the early 1980s, at the now defunct Yellow Springs Institute for the Arts in Chester Springs, Pa., where she and the composer Pauline Oliveros were collaborators. I was impressed by Hay's slight dancer's body (she still has it), which contained her steely purposefulness. Since that summer, whenever the subject of improvisation and experimentation in dance come up in conversation, I invoke Hay's name as the mark to hit.

In the '80s, choreographers and composers began giving dancers and musicians verbal or written imagery to bring out their improvisatory talents. One of those was Oliveros— who, while composing The Well for the Rélâche Ensemble, gave simple one-word instructions like "Soar." And the musicians did.

Hay might give a command to "Rock without rocking," or simply ask, "What if?" In place of clear boundaries, her subtle choreographies are shaped by airy parameters that billow in and out, allowing her work to either overflow or be contained, according to the interpreter of the moment.

Male bird, female bird

In Melanie Stewart's 2009's nEW Festival work, I'll Crane for You— which Stewart worked on with Hay in Scotland— the "Blood on the Table" demanded by Hay was there in a tour de force that was fresh and sexy to the point of being raunchy. But last February in Phoenix, I saw a completely different version of the same dance by Will Bond and realized that the spine of this dance lies in its intensity, focus and fearlessness.

Bond, an actor who founded the SITI Company, is not a dancer but a compelling mover; he kept an erect port-de-bras, crouched deep, relevéd high, stretched his arabesques out to their furthest extremes, sang Japanese/German and African sounding words, waddled along, and flared his fingers into claws for scooping.

Each version featured birdlike costumes. Stewart's, by Heidi Barr, was soft, wren-colored, strapless and beautifully feathered in earth tones, but its slippage left the "bird" who was wearing it seem extremely vulnerable to a wardrobe malfunction.

Bond performed his version in a marvelous feathered cap and plenty of red in his costuming, just as a male bird might look"“ the more flamboyant of most avian species. If Stewart was the tender bird of the night boudoir, Bond was the bird of prey searching the dark forest floor for a victim.

Gawky schoolgirl

Last May, Nicole Bindler danced I Think Not, another one of Hay's choreographies. To judge from her beige costume— short skirt, sweater and shiny shoes— Bindler's version expressed the gawkiness of a young schoolgirl. She twisted herself into awkward shapes that often made her fall and always made her look grotesque. Yet there was something strangely touching in this dance of anti-beauty.

Hay was in Philadelphia in November for a mini-Deborah Hay Solo Festival that began with weeklong workshops at the University of the Arts and ended with a weekend of performances of her choreographies presented by The Fidget Space in partnership with Mascher Space Cooperative.

As in the past, some of the performers were drawn by the kind of freedom that Hay allows to interpret her choreography. Grace Mi-He Lee came out of retirement for the festival to perform Hay's 1997 work, VoilÓ . In the process, she gave me a new opportunity to appreciate Hay's method.

Longfellow's line

In 1999, I had watched Mi-He Lee dance a version of Hay's Boom Boom Boom, with Lesley Elkin. (A film version of the same dance by Hana van der Kolk, shot on the Brooklyn Bridge by Jesse Johnson, was shown as a festival entr'acte.) At that time, I was underwhelmed when Elkins and Mi-He Lee, dressed in a war bonnet and feathered headband, ended the piece by reciting the first line from Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha: "By the shores of the Gitchee-Gumee."

But that was before I saw how all these variations on given themes worked like musical scores intended for interpretation.

More than a decade later, in VoilÓ , Mi-He Lee wore a pseudo-cowgirl outfit with peeks of turquoise chiffon and a cowboy hat as she hip-hopped along, cantered and galloped in hilarious ways. Now her mastery of herself and of the material shone through and left us with no doubt of her intentions. With no music, Mi-He Lee conveyed her humor through incongruity and with such a light touch that it made me wish she'd come out of retirement permanently.

On first glance, lewd

Karen Schaffman and Eric Geiger performed Hay's 1999 work Fire and her 2010 piece, And Art And Life. Geiger comes out in a workman's blue jumpsuit, porn-star black mustache and black-rimmed glasses, and silly red scarf tied around his neck.

Pretty soon, he shucks the jumpsuit off, leaving only black briefs and socks. He eases his sinuous torso in movements that, under other circumstances, would seem lewd and suggestive. But here it's a magnificent statement about the sensuousness of the male body. He and Schaffman exchange clothing for the second piece, perhaps enlarging the statement to gender identity.

In her way, Hay has contributed much to rethinking dance and performance. After many years of seeing and feeling the diversity of her influence, I realize what may be the overriding message of Hay's work: the profundity of subtlety. ♦


Pauline Oliveros will appear at International House in Philadelphia on January 13 as part of Bowerbird's "Cage: Beyond Silence" events through January. For details, click here.)