There’s good reason tomake happiness, here and now, a subject for art, as Wild Space Dance Company isdoing. Speaking of Happiness is thetitle of an all-new, full-length performance premiering at the Milwaukee Rep’sStiemke Theater April 22–24. It’s team-choreographed by the impeccable foundingdirector of Wild Space, Debra Loewen, and two talented company members, MonicaRodero and Dan Schuchart, whose skill at choreography became apparent to me inlast fall’s “Performance Art Showcase” at the Milwaukee Institute of Art &Design. Rodero and Schuchart joined Wild Space eight years ago while finishingundergraduate dance degrees at UW-Milwaukee, fell in love, and became a couple.For them, life and dancing are intertwined at every level.
Although the otherdancers sometimes look to Loewen as leader by habit, Rodero and Schuchart havehad an equal hand in creating this work. It began with self-questioning, Roderosays. “We asked the dancers, ‘Are you happy?’ ‘What makes you happy?’ Thedancers had to join the conversation, not that we have come to any consensus,”she says.
Loewen mentions thatthey could have taken a “populist” approach and worked, for example, frominterviews with people outside the group. She says they’ve chosen the harderway by posing and answering some of their own questions about human relationsand community.
The three devisedscenarios for improvisation by the dancers, weighed results, made tough editingdecisions, and gave sequence and shape to what excited them. Some belovedmaterial was cut because it had no place in the final structure; other materialwas preserved in fleeting images, ideas that pass in seconds. On viewing adraft of the finished piece, lighting designer Jan Kellogg compared it towatching a carousel in which the figures passing in the foreground suddenlyreveal themselves before vanishing around the curve.
HappinessAs Obligation?
Speaking of America, Rodero, who was born in Spain, spoke ofAmerican culture’s claim on the right to be happy, and a corresponding burdenof obligation to be happy. Loewen describes an experiment in which two groupslistened to a recording of Stravinsky’s dissonant masterpiece The Rite of Spring. The first group wasinstructed to enjoy it; the second was given no instruction. The secondreported a happier experience.
Speaking of the lastdecade, Schuchart noticed that the amount of writing about happiness hasincreased dramatically, confirming its growing popularity here as a theme. Someof this writing has influenced the work. For example, Daniel Gilbert’scelebrated book, Stumbling on Happiness,presents research that shows that unhappinessis far more often the result of inaction than of any actions taken in life.It’s what we don’t do that we tend to regret. It’s a compelling thought thattranslates well into dance: All movement is happier than none.
Schuchart pointed to abeautiful, perhaps life-changing, distinction drawn by Daniel Kahneman, apsychologist and Nobel Prize winner: that between “being happy in your life, and being happy about your life.” Rodero referred toresearch showing that happiness increases with a rise in annual income, butonly up to $60,000. After that, you don’t get any happier, no matter how muchyou acquire. Those results seem significant. (None of us could personallyverify them.)
“Happiness exists, butit’s so fluid, brief, fleeting,” Rodero says, “that it’s almost better to thinkof it as something else.”
Loewen notes that ourexperience of the present only lasts from three to seven seconds. “After that,it’s history; and the question becomes, does the memory match the experience?”
