"The Day" isn't long, but it is boring

Beiser and Whelan’s Boring Day

This review is an abdication, of sorts.  The internet, and YouTube, in particular, are a double-edged sword for cultural critics.  Describing abstract artistic concepts in words is futile on many levels since what is being expressed on the stage is that which cannot be put into words.  But now that we can in many cases simply give the reader an audio or video link, the value of our opinion plummets; most people feel perfectly comfortable coming up with their own reactions. 

So when I pronounce that I found last weekend’s production of “The Day” at the Kennedy Center a crashing bore, I will also, in fairness to the nine artists involved, point you to a short trailer about the show in case you have an opportunity to see it for yourself. 

This multimedia work was conceived by cellist Maya Beiser to flesh out two pieces written for her by composer David Lang; one from 2016, the other in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 (Beiser and Lang were both in NYC when it happened).  She brought in dancer Wendy Whelan, choreographer Lucinda Childs, and designers Sara Brown, Dave Cook, Joshua Higganson Natasha Katz, and Karen Young. The resulting hour-long show “explor[es] the way we remember our lives, as they are running away from us,” followed by “a meditation on the eternal, post-mortal journey of the soul as it separates from the body” (according to Beiser’s program notes).  

In Part I, Lang searched social media and the internet generally for the phrase “I remember the day I,” collected hundreds of lines that completed it, arranged them in alphabetical order, recorded two female speakers reciting them, and then composed music to run under it.  In this case “music,” would have to be very broadly defined; for a half an hour, Beiser played six notes of the D minor scale in seemingly random order and no discernable rhythm (on very rare occasions sneaking in a B-flat). Someone with one year of cello lessons could’ve played it equally well. 

While this was going on, Whelan struck various poses and performed steps half-way between mime and modern ballet using various abstract props.  Once in a while, she seemed to be reacting to or expressing one of the lines of text, but since they came in a continuous flow, things tumbled over each other before anything could coalesce into a coherent effect.  Projections behind the artist included extreme close-ups of parts of a cello and other abstractions.   

Thirty minutes of this, with no real beginning, middle, or end, was tiresome to say the least.  One strained in vain to discern connections between what was heard and what was seen, to find some arc in the music or the steps. 

Part II was more complex musically (though not tonally), as Beiser accompanied several pre-recorded tracks of her own. The overtracking, though, brought up another perhaps unwelcome notion; why did we need a live performer at all?  Her live part sounded no more important than the pre-recorded tracks, and she of course had to strictly conform her playing to them; why not just save money and do the whole thing canned? With the layered musical lines necessarily requiring a rhythmic framework, the music -- minimalist though it was – also engendered more formal, familiar steps from Whelan.   

So here, somehow, less was more; without any text to follow, however pretentious, Part II was more like a normal modern dance performance. Childs’ vocabulary was now familiar, invoking Robbins and Balanchine, and Whelan dispensed with props and just danced.  There was more busyness in the projected images behind the performers; an image of the World Trade Center’s transit concourse had ghostly figures moving across it, and at the end of the piece, two long white swaths of fabric hanging down from the rafters descended slowly to the floor; a bit obvious, no?

Any multi-media work such as this invites all sorts of criticism; everyone sees different things.  But the underwhelming applause that Saturday’s performance drew suggested to me that others agreed the artists were trying too hard. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=267&v=UgdfIwsiu90&feature=emb_title

Above photo: Maya Beiser and Wendy Whelan in The Day. Photo by Hayim Heron, courtesy of Jacobs Pillow.