Dancing with Anna Halprin + John Jasperse

Portland Monthly's Culturephile, with the tag-team of Anne Adams and NY Times critic Claudia La Rocco, has had a great TBA festival.  La Rocco's familiarity with many of the performers and even specific shows has added a level of depth to the "coverage ecology" this year that has been welcome, and that's in addition to her keen eye and careful way with a sentence. And I'm always interested in Adams' take on things, speaking of keen eyes and active minds.

I wish the next line was: "But I come to bury Culturephile, not to praise it." Because the set-up is perfect. But no, I simply wanted to introduce la Rocco (and point you in her direction) so that I'd feel better about repeating one of her observations about the little Anna Halprin "Event" at Lovejoy Fountain last evening. Here's a video (rather long, 16 minutes) that features Halprin talking about her long career in dance:



The happening wasn't widely advertised, and it's entirely possible that the number of dancers (20? 30?) exceeded the number of spectators.  Mostly it was a guided investigation of the fountain, designed by Anna's late husband Lawrence -- the dancers walked and shuffled and waded in and around the water and the falls, singly then in pairs and small groups. The dancers (too many to name, of course, but including Linda Austin, Cydney Wilkes, Tere Mathern and Mike Barber) were rather sedate to begin with, but gradually became more and more expressive and idiosyncratic as time passed.