June 9-15, 2005

dance

nEW, But A Little Old

It's not clear where we are in Paule Turner's Touched, his tormented self-analysis of being "a gay African-American performance artist." nEW Festival presented Touched as the latest of three installments, yet last January's DanceBoom! called it a final installment. Whatever else this explosion of nudity, obscenity, righteous anger and pure movement is about, it's not intended as a linear theatrical experience. Yet each version hits the same creative wall: When everything shocks, nothing does.

Much of the blurred background video (Iraqi beheadings to sexually explicit acts) was included last January, as was the F-word shouting contest. By now, anyone familiar with earlier versions knows the dancers will be totally nude, and how (especially with the shaved heads and bodies) this depersonalizes rather than heightens their individual impact.

His nEW video additions were, frankly, old — Vietnam, Stalin, swastikas. Slicing up a chicken carcass and tossing the body parts around was new, but raised the question, why? Shooting a blank gun into the audience caused a frisson, but, again, why? Basically, we get it, so Turner blunts his impact by hammering out so much unfiltered, unedited violence and rage. (Speaking from a straight-white-female gender viewpoint: Why is the sole female dancer the one who cleans up after the guys?)

Paule Turner/court, June 4 nEW Festival, Arts Bank

—Janet Anderson