Hallelujah North Carolina: From the Piedmont to the Blue Ridge - the Raleigh residency

Lestat the Wonder Horse in performance during "Hallelujah" in Raleigh, N.C. Photo by Leigh Ann Wilder. View a slideshow from the Raleigh performance.

The Hallelujah Project: In Praise of Animals and Their People
Liz Lerman Dance Exchange
Stewart Theatre, North Carolina State University, Raleigh
April 20, 2002

Raleigh’s Hallelujah, "In Praise of Animals and Their People," attracted hundreds of animal lovers to participate in the project and attend the performance, presented by the creative partnership of North Carolina State University’s very active presenter, Center Stage, and NCSU’s College Veterinary of Medicine. The idea, said Center Stage Director Sharon Moore in the performance program, grew out of "a shared love for animals that crossed all boundaries. It promised the opportunity to celebrate the special place of companion animals in our lives and to work in a meaningful way with one of N.C. State’s premier colleges."

The piece involved 51 community performers from Raleigh (pop. 276,000) and the surrounding towns, including lots of children, a retired teacher, a veterinarian, a therapy-dog evaluator, wheelchair dancer Julia Leggett and the Carter, Larson and Snyder families. It also featured Abralins Olympia Star Gazer (Star Baby), a miniature schnauzer; Autumn Winds Semper Fi (Sy the Great Dane); Blake Acres Carley’s Chrissy and Mudge, English cocker spaniels; Jeanne’s Meg Ryan, a dachshund; and Over My Limit (Lestat the Wonder Horse), a bay quarter-horse gelding. This project was so wild about animals that the printed program offered short essays about their own pets by nearly every cast member. (Karen Juntilla: "I am tolerated by two cats. One is agoraphobic and the other has an eating disorder.")

Project leaders Michelle Pearson, Marvin Webb and Peter DiMuro of the Dance Exchange spent hours listening to people’s animal stories and visiting with the staff of the Vet College. Pearson and Webb made a special trip to the SPCA and talked with two women who have worked there for 12 years: the "front door lady" who handles adoptions, and the "back door lady" who handles euthanasia. "We heard tales of sacrifice and reward, animal rescues and personal revelations," said Pearson. "from people who would never consider themselves ‘creative’ or ‘artistic.’" That just goes to show, said Pearson, that personal passion can "bring individuals outside their day-to-day realm of activity, and bring them into the realm of performance." Pearson was impressed with the amount of responsibility taken on by the cast. "Folks sacrificed time away from biomedical communications, poultry health, turtle-team talk, elementary-school recess, high-school classes and senior-center activities."

There was a wealth of community events around this project, including an outdoor appearance by some of the cast during Open House at the Vet College. Somewhat overshadowed by performing animals, biological—experiment exhibitions (a cow with an observation hole built into its stomach), hands-on barnyard displays and a large number of dogs up for adoption, the dancers performed a short piece made of phrases they were working on, along with story fragments they had collected. Then they set out to gather more animal stories from open-house goers about instances of "sacrifice or reward."

There was even an opportunity for local animals to take part in the project: "A Dog’s Day" for "dogs and the people who walk them." My dog Woody and I took part in this adventure, an idea pioneered a few years ago in Maryland by Dance Exchange interns Alison Orr and Sarah Lowing Scott. About 20 people and dogs of every description showed up for this event in a grassy area behind the theater on Saturday morning before the performance. With our dogs on leashes, we were given choreographic phrases by Marvin Webb, which we practiced, then performed together to show tunes (Ethel Merman: "Wherever we go, whatever we do, we’re gonna go through it together…"). Things went fairly well and there were no fights. Woody, a dog who loves a job, liked it better and better as the rehearsal proceeded. He might have liked it even more if someone had remembered to bring the dog biscuits.

I have attended this event elsewhere as a spectator, and it’s not much to watch. There is the occasional human/canine team that works well together, but the general impression is that of a hilarious intraspecies wrestling match. Yet it’s great fun to do. "People worship their dogs," said Liz Lerman, whose dog was also in this dance, "maybe it’s not great dance, but it gives them something different to do together, and it makes them so happy."

The dog dance was preceded by a storytelling event especially for dogs. We all sat on the grass and listened to storyteller Jon Spelman (Lerman’s husband) tell our dogs four shaggy yarns. The program had a definite trajectory, from fairy tale to folk tale to a gory Gothic fable about Spelman’s dog being cut in half lengthwise and stuck back together, rear to front. The humans laughed, but I had to cover Woody’s ears for that last one.

I go to such lengths here because the heart-warmth generated by these community events is an essential part of "Hallelujah." Philosophically, aesthetically, the profile of this performance initiative is almost unrecognizable inside the formal dance world. Instead of chilly distance, alienation and abstract befuddlement, "Hallelujah" gives rise to belly-laughter, tears, lasting friendship and an almost undying gratitude produced by Lerman’s generosity of spirit. This generosity guides her choice of ensemble members, staffers, presenters, publicity, documentation – literally everything even remotely connected to the art itself. When Lerman says, "It matters who’s on stage," she refers to the importance of the decision-making process in this kind of work. It also matters where the stage is and who is in the audience and how all that happened in the first place.

My colleague Bob Leonard has observed that this approach, common among artists committed to working in communities, amounts to an aesthetic. He refers to the aesthetic of Roadside Theater of central Appalachia, whose overriding goal is to bring working-class audiences into the theater and make high-quality, challenging work they will find value in. To accomplish that goal, the artists must find material that is worthwhile to such an audience. They must choose to show it in a place where that audience is comfortable and advertise it in a way they will respond to. And the artists must interact respectively with that community in every way they can. This is not "style" or "outreach." It is literally part of the architecture of the artwork itself, and that makes it all art. Because the Lerman artists care so much about the outcome for participants and audience, every single decision is part of the art-making, from the first phone call that sets the whole process in motion to the discovery of partners to the recruiting of community dancers to the way it looks on the stage to the last e-mail exchange with a project participant. It is all part of the art. Including dog dances.

Many of the local stories collected in the project found their way into the performance. There was the story of the team who rescued North Carolina animals stranded by Hurricane Floyd, when animals were banned from emergency shelters. ("There were 100 pigs on the roof of a barn!") There was the story of Nero, the police dog who took a bullet and lost a leg. ("Dogs come with three legs and a spare.") For Lestat, the horse with a leg injury that would not heal, his "horse-crazy" human walked him three times a day for 16 months.

I was disappointed, however, in the rendition of these stories, which were edited down to such a degree that most of the narrative was lost. Having heard a couple of them in rehearsal, I knew what was missing. The story of Lestat the Wonder Horse and his long ordeal, during which he taught his human (to quote from his Web site) "so many lessons about patience and acceptance and strength … He made me slow down and watch the sunsets and rainbows on our daily walks" was reduced to a couple of phrases. I was reminded of the question that came up in Minneapolis about the truncation, even deconstruction of the narratives collected from the community, in favor of the choreography.

We did see Lestat onstage, along with local dogs who performed on seesaw and rings. We were treated to the Lerman company’s lovely repertory animal piece, also titled "In Praise of Animals and Their People," in which strong parallels are drawn between training animals and training dancers. This includes performance by local children, and the touching story of passing of the Lerman family cat, danced by local fathers and their daughters. In fact, this was one of the more delightful "Hallelujahs," but like many others, it gave short shrift to narrative; the balance of the evening was consumed by human choreography. Granted, this was a dance event, but I felt sad for my companion, who had traveled 50 miles to the performance for the stories, and is not a dance fan. In a pre-performance dialogue with 20 audience members, Lerman asked them each to say whether they came because they were animal lovers or dance lovers. The animal lovers took it hands down. This was one occasion where the formula was more appropriately less dance, more narrative (or at least more animals).

This program included the Dance Exchange company in "Dances at a Cocktail Party," "Body Maps" and "Anatomies and Epidemics," discussed in the story of the Asheville residency

Linda Frye Burnham is the co-director of the Community Arts Network.

Original CAN/API publication: January 2003