I'm Right! You're Wrong!

Author: Ilsa Shea and Grace Duggan

"I'm Right, You're Wrong," a Big Action Performance Ensemble (Big APE) multimedia production performed twice this weekend in the Mahaney Center for the Arts, was an exposition and exaggeration of the vulnerable parts of us that we conceal and will away: mania, hysteria, spasmodicism, panic, exhaustion, depression. Visiting Assistant Professor of Dance and Big APE Artistic Director Tiffany Rhynard's focused on "taking away the cultural façade," one which she feels we have been conditioned to put on. "We as humans are so groomed, so socially cultured to present a façade. It's not okay to do things in public we do as humans," said Rhynard.

Rhynard, who originally studied metalwork and thought she would be a jeweler, founded Big APE earlier this year. The entire company - James Gutierrez '07, Luisa Irving '07, Adriane Medina '08, Yina Ng '09 and Simon Thomas-Train '09 - is made up of current students or recent graduates of Middlebury College. The interests of Big APE lie in exploring human vulnerability and ethical dilemmas, with aims at de-marginalizing the contemporary dance world, affirming Rhynard's claim that "I don't make work for dancers."

Collaborating with dancer/new media artist Marlon Barrios, and Jennifer Ponder, Middlebury's lighting designer and technical director, Rhynard realized an environment in which improvisational software manipulated the performers' movements and, conversely, the performers' movements influenced the environment.

Said Rhynard, "[Dance] has the potential to really move people. It's a very powerful medium…So many serendipitous moments emerged that I didn't plan."

One such moment came when Gutierrez and Thomas-Train shouted "Come on!" to audience members in different flanks of the performance space's L-shaped seating arrangement, demanding them to cheer. So enthusiastic were audience members' yells that when Ng authoritatively voiced, "You can be quiet now," I was overwhelmed with embarrassment, and stupefaction. They had provoked enthusiasm in me suddenly and intensely, and it was instantly silenced. Ng then commanded, "Subject one, subject two enter the space, approach each other, identify yourself." A fight ensued in a simultaneously comedic and violent manner of eight- and ten-year-old brothers playing at dinosaurs. Was this at the same time? Irving's back to the audience, with her mouth tensing, chewing and miming enigma, was projected on the wall in the back of the performance space. This was set in an environment reminiscent of a criminal warehouse interrogation scene, an atmosphere created by lighting and projection elements.

When prompted by Ng's resounding command to "do what you think is wrong," Gutierrez and Thomas-Train then groped and molested Irving. Gutierrez's consequent physical paralysis explicated the manifest trauma of ethical transgression. Irving, wearing one red pump and repeatedly falling to the ground was expressive of the destabilizing, debilitating effect of sexual abuse. Ng responded to Irving by yelling, "Trying to stand on one leg, everyone stands on two legs…You like it. That's why they touch you like that."

Talking about the Big APE company, Irving stated, "We created a world with the piece." Medina echoed these sentiments when she pointed out that the piece "was not just dance. The movement is important."

"'I'm Right, You're Wrong,' is about relationships, society, community, [and] self…coming up against yourself and coming up against each other," said Rhynard. "It's an exaggeration, distorting, distracting…[it's] not a prescription for how it should be." The intent, Rhynard stated, was to invoke self-reflection, an emphatic articulation of the animalism of humanity and human relationships through a performance with the audience playing an important role as part of the experiment.