Mall education: gloATL’s Bloom at Lenox Square
gloATL's performance invaded Lenox Square over Valentine's weekend. Photo by Mike Germon.
Black-corseted creatures wrapped in tulle, lace, and ruffles gradually wiggled their way through the mass of Valentine’s Day shoppers two weekends ago in the atrium of Atlanta’s Lenox Square mall. Titled Bloom, the three-night performance featured an impressive list of local contemporary artists: the dance project gloATL, Georgia Tech’s Sonic Generator, and Big Rube, an original Dungeon Family rapper/poet. Funded by Flux Projects, Bloom is the creative invention of Lauri Stallings, gloATL’s director and choreographer. From her first performances in Atlanta as resident choreographer of the Atlanta Ballet to today, Stallings has been pushing the limits of contemporary performance.
Like her previous performances, Stallings set Bloom in an unusual space: a shopping mall. Her choreography brings art into the real world. In Atlanta, she has presented work in locations from Little Five Points to Castleberry Hill to performances inside and outside the High Museum at the Woodruff Arts Center. In every case, Stallings has exploited the potentiality of the architecture and audience. The shopping mall is her most successful venue yet.
The choreography was site-specific; it even included the mall's many escalators. Photo by Mike Germon.
Suburban shopping malls are a post-World War II invention that mark the pinnacle of American capitalist culture. Developed as highly engineered utopian worlds created for a vehicular consumer, the length of the mall is carefully calculated to provide a comfortable stroll along each level. At each end, core mega stores with escalators facilitate a shopper’s continuous looping path. Like in theaters, the architectural priority is view. Typically, all stores face inward onto a common, open (preferably two-story) atrium with pedestrian circulation framing the edges. Storefronts are glass; boundaries are transparent, reinforcing the symbolic firmament of the shopping Wonderland. While shopping malls originally were isolated geographic islands for a narrow credit-card elite, the histogram of Atlanta’s mall-going public stretches much wider than any audience found at, say, either a familiar Atlanta Ballet or esoteric Sonic Generator performance.
Stallings knows all this. Instead of resurrecting ancient works of “classical ballet” for an insider elite, she brings a contemporary movement to the 21st century audience. In this way, she is completely modern, and she is serving and educating a wider cross-section of Atlanta.
Bloom began at the north end of Lenox Square with a single dancer riding the escalators in various frozen poses. As the crowd grew, another dancer joined her, then another, and they then slowly led the audience through the atrium, meeting more dancers and musicians on a central stage set at the bottom of a great staircase surmounted by a continuous balcony. By the beginning of the second piece, the large audience that had formed was blocking out a main dance area. But the dancers were not tied to this specific space or volume. They moved in, around, and through the audience. Viewers could hear them breathing and see the articulation of Stallings’ nuanced gestural choreography. For the first time all day, I noticed the people around me.
Photo by Mike Germon.
The work didn’t have a hierarchical focal point or range of view. Wherever you looked, or didn’t, there was a dancer. Stallings was intelligent about how she interacted with her audience—she grabbed their attention, familiarized them with her movement, and then brought them to a greater awareness of their environment and social circumstances.
As the work began to close, the dancers pulled the audience with them through the rest of the mall. When the dancers passed each store, they stared innocently, captivated by the goods on display. The shoppers were now watching themselves. The finale culminated with some of the dancers gathered around a bench at the end of the atrium. Curiously, repetitively, they asked the surrounding audience, “Did you find what you were looking for?”
I did.
Merica May is a graduate student in the College of Architecture at Georgia Institute of Technology. Before studying architecture, she danced with the Atlanta Ballet and the Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle, Washington.
i love it!! does she get permission for these performances? i would love it even more if she didnt!!
very very intriguing. i love how she used to high too. Its the most fun one can have in the richard meier atrium. The way the bodies move is unnatural, and make me feel more aware of my own body’s limitations.
great write-up. thanks
This was a terrific article and an excellent critique of the piece. Ms May’s closing line left me breathless and I agree entirely with her estimation of Stalling’s work.
nicely written article.
I do wonder however. . .(do take in mind, I did not see this performance. . .no way in hell I wanted to be at lenox on V-DAY! I might rather prefer a dance on a monday evening at the mall when it’s more spacious)
was this “artwork” at all critical of consumerism? or was this just totally fun, light entertainment to celebrate shopping? “bloom” is such a positive word, so non-committal content wise . . . and the event was planned to coincide with Valentine’s Day weekend, a major commercial holiday. although it’s admirable to engage non-art audiences so directly in such a non-fine art place, this “art” simply seems like another event to promote the buying of things. other than to inspire and enliven the mall atmosphere, what questions were raised? I mean, dancers didn’t poetically wear rags or beg for change or show any of the reality of recession. . . did the mall itself help to sponsor this? did they have to approve the content first?
anyhow, some out there might get a kick out of reading eggtooth’s rant on the subject, as he did attend the event: http://everythingburnsaway.blogspot.com/2010/02/trying-to-do-eggtooth-in-for-myself.html
Nobody will enjoy reading eggtooth’s rant.
nice writing merica!!! I wish I could have seen it…I also wonder if they got permission to do this dance or just did it
Merica’s evocative writing makes me wish I had been there! Great job.
Following up with Karen’s comment, I read and found Eggtooth (although I am tempted to use his real name since he did grant of understanding of his writing by using comprehendable sentence structure) pretty on in parts of his own critique. One thing that he wrote in his post, a call to action almost, is one that I think Atlanta should hear more frequently is this:
“It is really unfortunate. I understand the intent and am supportive. I simply feel that, in order to actually culturally stir things up-art is going to have to reach into that deeper more confrontational reservoir. This age moves fast. It’s collective memory has seen a great deal and requires more. Reaching into the reservoir that is more direct and unedited, realizing how pure the message needs to be. To actually make change, that is. To not be just some happy gesture. It not only has to say direct things it has to be direct about it….that seems so obvious.”
He is ABSOLUTELY right. I am incredibly supportive of Flux Projects and am so hopeful that they do fulfill their mission of “challenge artists to make exceptional, surprising work that inspires Atlanta and fosters an awareness of the richness and diversity of the city’s creative culture.” But, I would like to see them really push some buttons. Go outside of people that haven’t been doing pieces all over Atlanta.
The second project that Flux has funded, Mike’s Drive by Brett Osborn and Michael Brown, is one that is way overdone in my mind. I have seen it around and about for the last year and a half and frankly wasn’t that impressed the first time. While Stallings is great and has been a huge asset to the Atlanta community, I’d like to see us bring in NEW artists doing even more experimental work before we burn out on the GloATL projects.
I hope that everyone does read Eggtooth’s post. While I don’t always agree with him I do think that he is an important voice to consider. He is one of the few that make us question the things happening in Atlanta right now, and that kind of self-critique can only help build us into a stronger and more adventurous arts community.
Susanna – I agree about “Mike’s Drive.”
lauri understands the importance of engaging a larger audience. it is easy to make work for your colleagues. laurie isn’t an adolescent creator (ignoring/disregarding the part of the world of which she doesn’t approve). she is using atlanta’s popular environment, their vehicles of moving/consuming, their ‘frame’ for her art. i agree, it is sometimes frustrating to see how carefully she places and calculates her work. but at the same time, it SO refreshing to see someone working at her caliber and intelligence. i like that she is playing in the active game.
My cousin belongs to gloATL and I’ve seen firsthand their incredible work ehtic. I wish I could have seen BLOOM. Thankfully it’s captured so well in photos and text. Great work all!
thanks much kt and sd (as in susannah darrow not the other sd)
this performance belonged to the mall. and the holiday weekend.
may-this showing had to adhere to pragmatic expectations. the calculating and game playing remained within this and served as a torniquet. art is and can be bigger than this. it often needs to be idealistic as it remains focused on its path (and goals, i guess).
speaking of idealistic-i consider anyone showing work in atl a colleague(“approved” of or not-).expectations are applied from there.
this show did not fulfill the supposed goals stated in flux’s mission statement. it was sanctimonious.
and silly looking.
[...] Burnaway.org. It is nice to see our education at work in the local community. Merica May || Mall education: gloATL’s Bloom at Lenox Square Jeff Sauser and Josh LeFrancois || John Portman: Hand of the genius? + Chevron: The next [...]
The review is so enticing, I am devastated to have missed this singular performance!