Dancing My Language

In Chicago I've found a new art form, one that both crosses traditional boundaries and adds an unexpected twist. This great city, where I've been visiting, is well known for its patronage of the arts; so perhaps I shouldn't be surprised to find something new here.

Downtown Chicago has Millennium Park, with outdoor exhibitions of large-scale public art, many of them interactive in some way, many also incorporating media in unusual contexts. For example, there's Crown Fountain, which features two black glass slabs (bringing to mind 2001: A Space Odyssey), each fifty feet tall, and facing each other at either end of a two hundred-foot reflecting pool, where children of all ages splash about in the shallow water. Water also streams down the slabs' surfaces, forming a misty curtain over the giant faces that form and gaze out and disappear on the glass. Some of the faces are famous (Marilyn Monroe), and most are not; but they're all current or former Chicagoans, and they're all fascinating. The faces are mobile, not static; they smile, wink, grimace. But often the movements are almost imperceptible; they're not performing.

You can stay on the sidelines, as I did, watching the faces and people frolicking in the fountain area. Or you can go in and play in the shadow of giant watery faces. And every now and then, when a face opens its mouth, a gush of water shoots out from the mouth for a few moments. When you tire of watching, you walk on to the next astounding, thought provoking, beautiful/weird object.

Chicago doesn't support only the visual arts. This fall there's a Humanities Festival promising improbably serious lectures, panels, and workshops on humor by such luminaries as Los Angeles' own Matt Groening and Sandra Tsing Loh. All events in the two-month festival are either free or extremely low cost. And, of course, Chicago supports music. Over Labor Day weekend, when I'm in town, the Chicago Jazz Festival is in full swing. It is at one of these concerts that I encounter the new-to-me art form.

Since discovering jazz at age twenty, I've attended lots of concerts and other live performances. They're usually musically satisfying; but unless you're a musician, the best way to listen is often with your eyes closed - the better to be transported from the mundane setting into your private fantasy world. This night in Chicago's Grant Park is different.

My companions and I have gone to hear the rather avant-garde bassist William Parker perform with an octet. They're doing a tribute to Curtis Mayfield - remember him? - soulful purveyor of such sixties and seventies classics as "Superfly" and "So In Love". As it promises to be that cerebral brand of jazz, I'm prepared to lower my eyelids.

The group is already cooking when we arrive, a little late for the free event. (I, for one, had been in no hurry. After all, who would expect a free festival of jazz musicians to be running on time at the end of a long day of performances? Apparently, in Chicago they do run on time.)

I've been eager to witness the collision between the Mayfield soul-oeuvre and the jazzy out-there-ness of Parker and his group. What will happen? Will the songs be recognizable? Will the musicians rein in their improvisations to suit the tunes? And now it seems they've compromised: each song starts with the familiar groove and a female singer feeding us lyrics ("Oh, what's so funny 'bout peace, love, and understanding"), while a deep-voiced speaker rumbles through recited streams of consciousness that I don't recall from the originals.

The vocalist is also a wonderful dancer, in a loose-limbed modern African style. But for most of the concert my eyes are glued to the far right of the stage, where a black-clad figure of ambiguous gender performs something I've never seen before. She - for that seems to be the proper pronoun - is an American Sign Language interpreter; but she is not so much interpreting the music as inhabiting it.

She's translating the words, of course, into that beautifully expressive physical language; but she's also conveying the music, the various instrumental parts, with her body. She steps and sways to the beat - not dancing to the music exactly, rather being moved by it. Her lower body carries the percussion and bass line; her upper body, the horns.

When the song's melodic line and lyrical content have been spelled out, and the musicians unleash their explosive improvisations, the interpreter launches into expressive imitations of their exultations - bursts of air trombone, air trumpet, air guitar all make brief, impressionistic appearances. Her black-clad body seems to move in eight evocative directions at once, and yet it is all the absolute soul of minimalism. Never does she let exuberance overtake her professional execution of the job. I am spellbound, as are my companions, and - I'm betting - much of the rest of the audience.

Have you ever seen an ASL music interpreter? Is this a standard sub-specialty of the career? How would someone come to be doing this work? I'll confess, when I spotted her up on stage, my first thought was "that's kind of silly" - ASL musical interpretation! Now I want to evangelize for this performance art form, for that is what it is.

Dancers: learn ASL!
ASL translators: get your groove on!
Everybody: come on, let's pass legislation requiring every musical performance to incorporate ASL interpretation. It will enrich music for you - whether you can hear or not.