War Nerves (The Constant Movement of Arms)
is cut in two, his upper body chased continuously by his lower self. Julius Webster
and Toyoji Tomita, puppeteers, Dance Theatre Workshop, NYC, 1985.
Video: MAFISHCO archives. back
About the work
The second part of War Nerves, “Canto 45” (1985), stages Ezra Pound’s Canto 45 as “The Constant Movement of Arms” in a choreographed hybrid of American and Italian sign language. Words such as “usury” and “paradise” were not part of the everyday vocabulary of American sign language but were common in Italian sign language. The dance is broken up by a puppet play in which Mussolini, cut in two, must chase after himself and never is made whole. The song’s serious content and catastrophic consequences are at odds with its musical setting as a children’s song. The idea arose from the controversial post WWII interpretation of Ring Around the Rosie, a children’s nursery rhyme that was linked back to the Great Plague of England in 1665. Pound’s 1936 canto, written on the heels of the Depression, sounds the alarm that the tyranny of the economy is the primary determinant of culture, politics and morals. The poem’s first line maintains traction today as it anticipates the 2008 bank foreclosures of homes in the U.S., with consequences worldwide. An excerpt can be heard below in the audio example.
Credits
- Choreography: Margaret Fisher
- Music: Robert Hughes
- Performers: Janet Jaffe (1983, 1986), Margaret Fisher (1983, 1986, 1989), Melinda MGee (1985), Marla Carlson (1985, 1986),
- Camera, Lighting: Frank Wing
- Set Design: Jerry Carniglia (1985)
- Costume: Jacqueline Humbert (1985)
- Projection systems and gizmos: Toyoji Tomita
- Projectionist and puppeteers: Toyoji Tomita, Julius Webster (1985), Domenica Kriz (1987)
Reviews
- “Limited Space cramps Fisher’s exhilarating style,” Janice Ross, The Tribune, August 10, 1985 “Fisher, the second artist in Kala’s summer performance series [Seeing Time Festival], creates mesmerizing theater works – dense layerings of stories, visions and subplots.... Over the last several years, as Fisher has grown as an artist, her theatrical images have increased in complexity and depth. Both “AG Nature” and “Antebellum Bedlam” entail rich mixtures of surrealist sets, props and symbolic costumes, Robert Hughes’ pulsating music and Fisher’s own witty and idiosyncratic choreography.”
- “Multicultural Mystifications,” Anthony Reveaux, Artweek, August 24, 1985. “The first piece [at Kala’s Seeing Time Festival] was War Nerves, featuring Marla Carlson’s precise and delicate charm—part robot, part Japanese doll. With legs twittering, she moved her arms in a semaphorelike calligraphy while her head movements were articulated by a square mortarboard hat. Jacqueline Humbert’s costume included a red-ribbed apron that Carlson opened and closed with seemly grace.... Those bilingual, signage-fluent members of the audience who have traveled in the high cantos might have been able to read the code. For the rest of us, there was no way we could know what meaning was intended. No matter; as with opera, it is the form that endures, and as visual theater, War Nerves succeeded.”
- “Margaret Fisher in Three Pieces,” Wynne Delacoma, The Chicago Sun-Times, March 1, 1986. “It may be one of the stranger evenings you’ve spent in the theater. But anyone hungry for highly crafted art should head over to MoMing Dance & Arts Center tonight or tomorrow. Thanks to MoMing’s membership in the National Performance Network, California-based Ma Fish Co is in town. Thursday’s performance was a glimpse at a surreal universe too seldom glimpsed in Chicago’s mainstream theaters.”
“In ‘War Nerves’ from ‘Ag Nature,’ Marla Carlson, model-beautiful, wearing a red-and-yellow foam mortarboard hat sat on the floor amid flickering TV sets. Starting very slowly, she eventually worked herself into an arm-whirling, torso-twisting frenzy.”
Audio
Canto 45 of Ezra Pound, set to music by Robert Hughes. Sung by Brenda Chandlers, Robin Roy. Recorded in Lake Placid, NY. Purchase
Ezra Pound reading from Canto 45. Caedmon Records, recorded in Washington, D.C., June, 1958. more at pennsound...
Performance History
- Preview: Lake Placid Center for the Arts, Lake Placid, NY, May 21, 1983.
- Premiere: Tokyo American Center, Tokyo, Japan, October 7, 1983.
- General Electronics Systems, Inc (GESI), Berkeley, CA, February 28, 1985.
- Premiere: American Theatre Lab / Dance Theatre Workshop, NY, March 14-15, 1985.
- Kala Institute’s “Seeing Time Festival,” Berkeley, CA, August 1-3, 8-10, 1985.
- MoMing Art Center, Chicago, IL, February 27-28, March 1-2, 1986.
- NEOFEST Performance Art Festival, La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla, CA, June 14, 1986.
- Center for the Performing Arts, University of California, Davis, CA, February 15, 1987.
- Teatro L’Avogaria, Venice, Italy, March 3, 1989.
- Mue Danse Festival, Musee de L’Art Contemporain, Montreal, Canada, March 10-12, 1989.
- Video Screening: Image Forum, Tokyo, Japan, 1984
- 16mm Film: “Under the Bull’s Eye,” produced by International Performance Network and MAFISHCO, 1987.