Virtuosity fulfills a specific function within concert dance. It taps into a dominant narrative arc of adventure and drama, the age-old sensibility that correlates spectacle with story, empowering audiences from the general public to derive meaning from what unfolds. The use of language, especially plain language, also softens the ineffability of dance’s most uncertain edges, providing touchstones of familiarity that give way to interpretation. 

On September 27, Deborah Hay took the stage at BodyVox Dance Center in an event co-presented with ProLab Dance to offer a lecture followed by a dance performance. Hay’s dancing illuminated the ways that her decidedly minimal aesthetic, a la the 1960s postmodern dance movement, contained the timbre of virtuosity — that is, dedication to practice that touches audiences — and her lecture furthered access into her process of dance-making.

Prior to this evening, Hay had spent the week working with a cohort of movers — including many local dance artists — in an intensive dance workshop that also took place at BodyVox, organized by ProLab Dance. Hay’s performance and lecture represented a culmination of sorts.

To introduce the evening’s affair, Laura Canon, artistic director of ProLab Dance, took the stage. Canon spoke about her encounter with Hay earlier in her artistic life, and how Hay “blew the lid off” her ideas off her notions of dance. Hay then took the stage, speaking in a candid, gracious, and playful way about her connection to Canon and to Portland, as well as her own artistic career. Her lecture did not orient toward any particular outcome, but, rather, felt like holding several facets of her life up for examination, a study of interconnected relationships told through story.

Backed by a rich blue screen the color of twilight, Hay stood at a brown podium. She wore flat pedestrian shoes, cuffed khaki pants, and a black long-sleeved button-up shirt with slits in the sleeves, causing it to drape gracefully over her arms. Her soft white hair fell over one shoulder in a braid. She began by speaking about meeting Canon 27 years ago in her home town of Austin, Texas, and reconnecting with Canon over various artistic processes over the following few years.

Hay invited Canon back onstage to unbox a costume, which sat near the foot of the podium. She explained that she commissioned Canon to make this “post-apocalyptic” costume during their early years of knowing one another, for a dance called O Beautiful. Canon held up the costume — a punk early 2000s look complete with platform shoes, a mini-backpack, and a mesh top — before being cued by Hay to return to her seat. Hay explained that this costume did not work for the dance, and that she returned it to Canon with the suggestion that it, as a piece of her archive, would be “worth something” one day.

Hay then gave an example of what she meant, a gentle flex of her artistic prestige: one of her books, now out of print, could now be purchased to the tune of $3,000 on Amazon.

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She spoke about her artistic process, how she treats her body as a teacher, and thinks about herself at a cellular level  —a notion that staves off her creative fatigue. She spoke about the “ever-expanding universe” and “centerless phenomenon,” explaining that her proceeding dance took inspiration from the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes. I got the sense Hay was trying to convey something deeply felt about her experience of movement; something that, try as I might, I would never be able to fully grasp.

Hay asked for assistance removing the podium from the stage, and she stepped into the depth of the space. She put her arms over head, reaching, and sending her eyes out toward the audience.

I noticed her comportment, her profound presence sculpted through the years of training that she had referenced earlier during her lecture. She had trained with her mother, a dancer, in Brooklyn, New York, before traveling into Manhattan for professional instruction. She became involved with pillars of post modern dance: the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and also the Judson Dance Theater. As part of the latter, she and her colleagues questioned what is a dance, and who “could” and who “couldn’t” dance. 

This struck me as a familiar and muddy sentiment, for most if not all post modern dance elders who enter the canon to the degree that Hay has seemed to have one thing in common: a deep commitment to their physical practice. Post-modernism may appeal to the everyman, but it is actually a hook into the field of dance — a field where investment of time and energy is paramount in spite of scarce resources to support it.

The symmetrical architecture of Hay’s hands resonated with me. She began to sing, a set of tones or language I could not recognize — if it was a language, it sounded Native in origin. She shook her hands and brought them over her head in a manner that caused me to consider my existing references for this movement, its possible relationship to a specific traditional vernacular I could not place. This moment of presumed abstraction ran a bit too close for comfort in its referential aesthetic, and I wished for more context. 

Hay continued in this way, dancing through moments of stillness with an almost meditative quality, and then driving into use of various sound tones — low or soft — sounds which could be but also might not be language. 

She shifted her pelvis and knees side to side. She pinched her fingers together with a deliberate air. She crossed her hands in front of herself. Her movements, though not unexpected, read as peculiar and coming from a place of curiosity. She continued to look at the audience from time to time, and I imagined all of us performing our presence for her in those moments.

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During her prior lecture, Hay mentioned being curated into the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art’s Time-Based Art Festival in 2004, where French presenters saw her work — a pivotal moment that led her career to Europe, a land of more arts funding. During her offerings onstage, I found myself thinking about the ever-constricting economics of the field of dance, the possibility that the Time-Based Art Festival, or any United States dance festival for that matter, may never be the mythical portal to international opportunities for American artists again if resources continue to dwindle.

Hay concluded her performance by facing away, looking down, and then breaking the spell of her dancing by shifting toward the audience to thank us. She brought clarity and focus to the space, unmistakable virtuosity honed through a long career of commitment to her movement. 

Hay’s reflection and demonstration of her research gave me renewed interest in willingness to conduct my own thought experiments. For instance, I pondered, “What if I could write this review in the way I truly want to?” Of course, the conventions — of dance, of writing, of anything — once learned, cannot be erased despite every desire to shed them. Thankfully, the ever-expanding universe still teases potential for infinite growth into all that is yet unknown, prompting a question for our era: Who will grow, and how?