At a discussion before the premiere of two new works by Jodi Melnick, fellow dancer and choreographer Kyle Bukhari proposed that Melnick’s dance was a form “between writing and speaking,” which blew my mind and also made perfect sense. The two dances she presented, Solo, Delux Version (choreographed in collaboration with Trisha Brown) and One of Sixty-five Thousand Gestures, reflect her unique style, which some of her colleagues there characterized, with admiration, as one that combines precision and force. These qualities, when coupled with her lithe, almost spectral physicality, make her a remarkable presence.
The postures Melnick captures have the specificity of letters in an alphabet, and her movements have the mesmeric, fluttering quality of an old-fashioned train station destination board. But I can’t help understanding these two dances, and dance in general, as a form of theater, and the movements of the body as drama. The image I’ll take from me is one from early in Gestures, when Melnick, dressed in khaki cargo pants and a silver foil hoodie, lies on the stage and drags herself across it, from front to back, lit by acid-yellow footlights. I imagine she’s somewhere very remote – on the cratered surface of the moon or deep in the desert. There’s heroism in each inch she creeps forward and fear in the solitude. Suddenly Melnick stops, lifts her torso off the ground and reaches far forward with one arm, for something or someone she will never reach. At this moment the dance doesn’t seem like a form of language but like something wilder and greater, something that can’t be fit into language. If Melnick’s choreography lies between writing and speech, her performance exceeds them.