Ecstatic action

Carrie Hanson has her work cut out for her. The choreographic force behind the collaborative known as the Seldoms, she usually devises abstract pieces to be performed in unusual locations; last fall it was Giant Fix, presented in the empty pool in Hamlin Park. But with Odd Fellow, premiering at the Dance Center of Columbia College on March 30, she’s not only working in a regular theater, she’s getting more literal, too.

Although the title of the piece references the Independent Order of Odd Fellows—a fraternal organization founded in England and established in Maryland in 1819—and uses some authentic Odd Fellow robes, it also draws from the history and practices of the Shakers and Mormons, among others. Hanson was doing some reading on Mormonism when she acquired the Odd Fellow robes, and the piece grew from there. Insular, strange, and even frightening to outsiders, the sects and societies that run through American life have certainly been targets over the years, but Hanson notes, “We are not trying to bash faith or religion as an organizing force.

“These folks were recent converts and pioneers, and so I’m trying to work with image-driven movement, which is not where my strength lies,” Hanson says. “But I’ve realized that people latch on to things that are really imagistic. You can make all this complex choreography and they’ll remember the moment—well, in Giant Fix, it wasn’t even a dance moment. We rolled these beautiful wooden balls up and down the pool and the sound of it was amazing. People loved that. So, in making choreography, you have to have strong evocative shapes or actions that are packed with meaning for people. That’s what I’m trying to weave throughout Odd Fellow. But there’s the danger of becoming too literal and pantomimic.”

Created with her longtime colleague Doug Stapleton and performer Pete Carpenter, Odd Fellow uses text and dance to explore the fever of fraternal orders, utopian communities, and religious revivalism—known as the Second Great Awakening—that gripped the U.S. as the nation struggled through its adolescence in the mid-19th century. And while Hanson and her crew have incorporated text in their work before, it usually functioned as a kind of parallel expression with the movement existing independently. This time, words and gestures fuse to tell a story.

In developing the text and context for the piece with Carpenter, Stapleton sought to transfer the third-person voice of history to a first-person voice that could comfortably inhabit the stage. That effort led to the development of a split character named Thomas—enacted by both Carpenter and Stapleton. “We’re kind of these itinerant angels/salesmen/preachers who comment on what we see going on around us, looking for someone who’s going to be our ‘odd fellow’—the one who’s going to receive our vision and guide that vision along,” Stapleton explains.

The ecstatic, revivalist religious movements in the U.S. were popular among pioneers who were staking out new lives in the American West. Quiet, devout church worship just didn’t provide the kind of faith needed to cope with the high idealism and danger of frontier life. In making Odd Fellow, the Seldoms question the zeal of these lifestyles. “When you’re in the moment, you don’t see the limits,” Stapleton says. “When does the utopian vision become so oddly strange that it fizzles out on its own, or falters when faced with day-to-day living? How can you exist in a state of hyperawareness, a state of vision?”

Religious revivalism seems to lend itself to dance. As Stapleton says, “A distinctive characteristic of revival [ecstatic religious sessions] was that it was a bodily experience. People really did fall to the ground or start running around [when they felt the spirit]. What was interesting to us about that in terms of choreography was, What does a body look like when it wakens to a call?”

Odd Fellow will be performed along with Hanson’s work The Waiting Hours March 30 to April 1.