Dance artist Maureen Fleming performs her new solo work, The Alchemist’s Veil, at La MaMa. Photograph by Emma Kazaryan. (Banner photo by Maureen Fleming.).
The Alchemist’s Veil, created, choreographed, and performed by dance artist Maureen Fleming, is a fascinating fusion of surreal movement poetry and spellbinding visuals, inspired by the paintings of renowned artist Georgia O’Keeffe. Part dance, part dream, part art appreciation, it’s altogether a showcase for Fleming, who is celebrating her 70th birthday this year and the 35th anniversary of her 1989 debut with La MaMa.
Drawing inspiration from Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings, Fleming creates slow-motion body sculptures in her butoh-inflected dances. Photograph by Maureen Fleming.
Fleming is well-known for the idiosyncratic flexibility of her body, a result both of her intensive training in butoh, the Japanese performance style involving slow movement (and often white makeup) and the after-effects of a childhood car accident in which she lost a disc in her spine. Fleming succeeded in regenerating the damaged parts of her body by repeatedly doing butoh’s slow, twisting movements. Over the years, they became her choreography.
The program begins on a high note with “Prologue: Selkie,” referring to a mythological creature in Scottish and Irish folklore that can shape-shift between human and seal form. In fact, when one first glimpses Fleming in a video projection on a huge screen, she is simulating a dive into a foamy ocean with her body-sculpting movements. As Fleming alternately disappears and resurfaces in the faux ocean before one’s eyes, she seems to be the very embodiment of the selkie, revivified for today.
Fleming’s mermaid-like image gradually is superseded by a video projection of violinist Tim Fain, playing Glass’s “Interlude from Violin Concerto No. 2,” entitled “The American Four Seasons.” This mini–violin concert adds a rich classical vibe to the show.
Although the multimedia video establishes the tone of The Alchemist’s Veil, the sudden materialization of Fleming in the flesh, suspended 15 feet in the air, ratchets up the energy in the show. Fleming, who often depicts coexisting levels of reality in her performances, does it again here, her live performance cheek by jowl with the videotaped one. Enhanced by Philip Glass’s recorded meditative music, Bruce Brubaker playing live on the piano, and lighting and geometric moving sculptures by Christopher Odo, Fleming’s husband, The Alchemist’s Veil invites viewers to go on a sensual journey illuminating mystical femininity across generations.
The show is full of surprises Rather than presenting O’Keeffe’s iconic paintings from the get-go, Fleming introduces the artist in a voiceover that captures O’Keeffe’s strong personality and quick humor: “I lived through two world wars, and Stieglitz.” She was married to the photographer from 1924 to 1946. Fleming found those words in C.S. Merrill’s book O’Keeffe when doing research on the artist. She felt they provided a connection between the selkie myth and O’Keeffe’s relationship with Stieglitz.
In the next beat, a digital rendition of O’Keefe’s painting “Abstraction White Rose No. 2” is presented on screen, and Fleming interprets it with her slow-motion body-sculpting, seeming to become the rose itself.
Fleming dances in the nude in The Alchemist’s Veil. Photograph by Emma Kazaryan.
The show’s title has a rough-and-tumble story behind it. Fleming suffered an eye injury in 2019 when the dancer who was rehearsing with her on his back tripped and fell over another dancer. Fleming landed on her eye socket, and though it was bleeding, she went on to perform, disguising her injury by putting red makeup on her other eye. Instead of abandoning dance forever after this unlucky episode, the experience made her question: What is the unbreakable essence inside each of us that the art of dance seeks to reveal?
In The Alchemist’s Veil, Fleming blends butoh-inspired movement and modern dance. Midway through Act I, for instance, she moves her body from a fetal position into an upright posture, with yards of diaphanous fabric blown by a wind machine billowing like a sail around her body.
If Act I is awash with birth and flowers in bloom, Act II immerses one in a darker world. It starts out with a simulated electrical storm and a glimpse of O’Keefe’s “Radiator Building—Night New York City,” painted in 1927 while O’Keeffe’s marriage was in free fall. To put herself in synch with this painting, the pliable Fleming moves her body into poses that suggest a person desperately tugging on a kite on a windy day. Indeed, it’s only the voice-over of the betrayed O’Keeffe, presented during the final piece, “Immortal Rose,” that packs a bigger emotional punch: ”Why do you lie to me?”
In spite of the fact that The Alchemist’s Veil is a series of images without a narrative, it’s a riveting solo work, a triumph for Fleming, who at age 70, is still going strong.
The production of The Alchemist’s Veil at La MaMa (66 East 4th St.) runs through Oct. 27. Evening performances are 7 p.m. Thursday through Saturday; matinees are at 2 p.m. Sunday. For more information, visit lamama.org.
Choreography: Maureen Fleming
Music: Philip Glass, Brian Eno, Tim Fain
Lighting & Visual Design: Christopher Odo
Sound Design: Brett R. Jarvis
Live Piano: Bruce Brubaker
Violin on Film: Tim Fain
