Behind the Scenes with Tere Mathern Dance + Minh Tran & Company

“It's the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.” —John Wooden

Angels & Devils in the Details
by Austin Buchholtz

Three new works by well-known Portland choreographers Minh Tran and Tere Mathern created enough buzz to sell out all five of the intimate shows at the World Forestry Center. When I arrive to see them, I hear from insiders that even friends and family of Minh had to jump through hoops to get last-minute tickets.

The dance floor is set in the round, an intimate treat for the viewer but notoriously disorienting for the performer who normally relies on the clear cardinal points of the proscenium stage and the private solace of the wings. The audience is packed and ready.

In Tere Mathern's Pivot, we find ourselves to be visitors to a turning world of lines and snappy live sounds. A cluster of six female dancers begin by leaning toward each other with interlocking arms walking slowly around a center axis. Mounted above the dancers is a sculptural mobile with four pivoting arms from which cloth hangs at varied lengths, weighted by garlic bulb shaped ornaments. Three dancers drop to the floor and roll out, only to grasp the ornaments and quietly crank the structure around the space. Soon, the cluster bursts into a limber, quickened flock. Large and graceful sequences are peppered with small gestures between dancers: pushes, nudges, tugs or even the yanking of arms. These ladies are human and divine.

Minh and Tere join forces in their pas de deux called Twine which begins with them in sleepy horizontal movements wearing eye-catching net-like tops. From their primordial state they emerge upright and together, now swiping the air where the other happened to be a moment before, a missed target. Moving symmetrically around the floor, even when facing opposite directions, they remain uncannily in synch, sensing each other's footfalls. From across the stage they turn their heads slowly toward one another with meditative poise, then advance like shooting stars.

In Kiss, we discover the tender, vulnerable side of Minh Tran, who many of us know as entirely extroverted with a ready smile and an infectious laugh far larger than his small Vietnamese frame. Instead, Minh's face is serious throughout, as focused as the rest of the company. One walks blindfolded toward the edge of the floor only to be caught and rerouted by another. In one instance, Minh is lifted off the ground by others and tantalized with an almost-kiss. Later, they strut illuminated pink paths wearing ripped shirts with printed gay culture lingo, such as Lesbo, Top, or Butch. Kiss reaches a climax when Minh re-enters for a solo all but naked in a wireframe tutu harnessed with leather straps to a shiny black dance belt. Here is the Minh Tran the Portland dance community knows and loves: confident, fluent, a fountain of joy. He ends the piece alone by blowing us all a two-handed kiss.

Later that night at the home of White Bird board members Nancy and George Thorn, I get to speak more with the choreographers.

I ask Tere Mathern about dancing with Minh. Not surprisingly they instantly read one another's moves and know what to do, even when occasionally finding themselves in places on stage different from how they rehearsed it.

As for Tere working once again with composer Tim DuRoche, they quickly found a common framework for Pivot while allowing for improvisation. Indeed at certain points in the piece, musicians are assigned particular dancers to watch, anticipate, and accent. One of many conundrums for the set involved figuring out where the musicians would fit near the stage so that they could see each other, the dancers, and not be in the way of the audience. Tim also created an hypnotic live percussive ambiance for Twine, which was then remixed live by Heather Perkins; subtleties layered on subtleties.

Tere's only instructions for PNCA professor David Eckard for building the mobile set was that she wanted it to be moveable in order to change the architecture of the space, a changing landscape. He fit it so exactly to the space that it really cannot be easily mounted anywhere else without major modifications. Ah—sculpture as time-based art.

Costume designer Paloma Soledad, winner of the 2009 Portland Fashion Week Emerging Designer Award, is wonderful to work with, Tere says. "She has bold ideas, great focus, and is entirely dependable." While Paloma had many of her own ideas, she also took the set as a reference which you can see in the form of points in the shapes of the Pivot costumes. For the mesh in Twine, featured on the cover of Just Out, she adhered threads to a sticky surface, sewed the joints together rather than weave them, then somehow kept it all from tangling.

Minh Tran granted Paloma creative license as well (while allowing him final say) as long as she used for Kiss the colors red, white, and black. She proposed that he dance his solo in the wireframe tutu, which he found to be quite suitable. Glam rock hair and Chinese opera eyeshadow for Kiss were her ideas too. Red eyeshadow was difficult to find though, since none of the standard American companies carry it yet.

I ask Minh about the subject of Kiss: coming out of the closet. He says many people have asked him to choreograph about the topic over the years, but this is really the first time he has touched on it. His coming out story could be told from many angles since he is not only gay, but Asian, and foreign-born, a "triple-minority." He laughingly says it could have easily grown into a two-hour show with all his "dirty laundry." And instead of focusing on possible alienation from one's own family or culture, he wanted to dig even deeper to the most universal aspects: overcoming vulnerability, growing proud, and ultimately flourishing. A kiss can after all evolve from taboo, to political statement, to gesture of love.

I find out that the rumor about this being his last major performance is in fact true. Perhaps we can forget that detail and hope for a second final farewell tour.

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Austin Buchholtz is a graphic designer, writer, and certified instructor of Ballroom and Latin dance. Austin was White Bird's Director of Audience Services from August 2001 to December 2003.