Memoirs of the Sistahood
Reviews & Previews
Memoirs of the Sistahood Chapter Two: House
Becky Valls and Marlow Fleming (onstage), Kara Ary (video)Barnevelder Theatre
Friday, October 15, 2009
By Nichelle Strzepek
Members of a large Catholic family who experienced childhood in southern Louisiana during the 1950s, sisters Becky Beaullieu Valls and Babette Beaullieu build upon a rich soil of memory for their
dance theatre collaborations, Memoirs of the Sistahood. Nearly two years after the debut of Chapter
One, the duo has delivered their second installment, Chapter Two: House. A video recap opens the show. Even to the uninitiated, however,
the visual prologue is nonessential. This production is sufficiently distinct. Like a house, it is intelligently designed with pattern, substance, and mortar structured around a supportive
framework.
Of course, every house needs a hostess. In a vintage cinch-waist dress, narrator Kathy Hallmark delivers an introduction with the saccharine, matter-of-fact tone of a 1950's television housewife.
"All houses are dwellings," she quotes Paul Oliver's reference book on vernacular homes throughout the world, "but not all dwellings are houses. To dwell is to make one's abode: to live in, or at or
on, or about a place." Like Oliver’s book, Chapter Two:
House, examines different types and ways to dwell.
Becky Valls; Photography by Deborah SchildtValls
glides between choreographic modes as easily as one might move from room to room. She begins with a minimalist, pure movement approach, then displays skillful confidence as the work shifts to
burlesque. In Act I, which examines dwellings as structure, Valls shows restraint, choosing not to hide or overdress the circles, lines, and spatial devices that form the skeleton of her
choreography. Later, Busby Berkley inspired formations give way to a lively mambo, danced by sepia-toned housewives armed with cornflake boxes and kitchen gadgetry.
Veteran performers, including Valls herself, anchor the company. Dancers, Toni Leago Valle, Jenny Dodson (formerly Magill), and Joani Trevino are consistent in their actualization of Valls' smooth,
expansive movement style, and they transition easily to comedic and presentational delivery.
Clearly, the collaborators are all on the same page with House. Deborah Schlidt’s dreamy film
collage weaves in and out of the action as naturally as any performer making an entrance. Images of various types of dwellings, from hovels to tract houses, segue to demolished and water-logged
homes. Reclaimed by nature with the brute force of Hurricane Katrina, these homes (or ones like them) may have given up parts of themselves for repurposing in Babette Beaullieu’s found object
sculpture and set pieces. Dancers first appear in costumes the color of clay and mud. Attentively designed by Cherie Acosta, these basics are detailed with netting and natural fabrics that echo the
weathered patina of the doors, windows, and boxes Beaullieu has fashioned to represent the family homestead. Among these pieces, a playful dinner scene and a bed of sleeping children are given a hazy
luminescence by lighting designer Kris Phelps that recalls precious home movie footage of the Beaullieu family.
It all works together, even as these collaborators rather craftily bring their 1950s backdrop to the forefront. I Love Lucy clips play dreamily as the childhood game of playing house transitions effortlessly to a satiric portrayal of real life domesticity. Text from Housekeeping
Monthly's "The Good Wife's Guide" illustrates the expectations and constraints placed on women saddled
with running a home. Fifties era musical selections such as the Dean Martin classic, Sway, fuel the wry comedy which
culminates in a kitschy "mobile home" show. The dancers flaunt their best runway sashay in a segment that in lesser hands could have capsized the production.
The milieu of 1950's iconography remains upright however because Valls and Beaullieu, with their collaborators, thoughtfully maintain a through line. It is no small feat to coalesce this array of
concepts. Chapter Two:
House reaches coherence because the team has built a solid framework and follows-through with strong
images and clear ideas. The enchanting and harmonious collaboration brought the audience to their feet on opening night.
Nichelle http://nichelledances.wordpress.com
Memoirs of a Sistahood - Chapter One
Diverseworks
December 7, 2007
By Nancy Wozny
I thought childhood was pretty much about learning to tie my shoes, getting along with a slew of people who all have the same nose, and generally speaking, growing up. After seeing Memoirs of the Sistahood – Chapter One, a new work by sisters and collaborators Becky Beaullieu Valls and Babette Beaullieu Wattigny, I see childhood in a whole new light—it's about gathering material, for what else, a smashing show. All that time the Beaullieu sisters, Beth, Becky, Babatte, Bonnie, Bitsy, and Barbara, where trying to make it to church on time, they were really rehearsing. And what a rich soup of material sisters Valls and Wattigny have to play with, growing up in a Catholic family in Louisiana during the 1950s.
The Beaullieu sisters create a dreamscape with Wattigny's sculptural pieces that transform into portals for Valls' dances. Using decorative back porch doors, intricate narrow closets that resemble medieval alter pieces, and rustic window frames, Wattigny colors and covers the stage with entrances, exits, and hiding places. They serve to let the performers weave in and through their own whimsical logical time line and completely free us from any linear narrative. Glorious stage pictures elegantly frame Valls' dances.
Valls crafts her choreography from a fluid post modern dance style, while also playing off recognizable gesture and everyday actions. As each sister enters from one of Wattigny's colorful back porch doors in a slow motion dirge, they carry a sculpture crafted from nature on their backs, as if to resurrect something from each of their pasts into the present. One carries a collection of sticks, another a vessel, symbolic of traveling through time, each with a distinct gift. One ensemble section completely conjured the tight living quarters six sisters must have survived. Valls herself danced a sweet duet with Mechelle Fleming. One wonders if Valls here is a time traveler and is dancing with herself.
All collaborators contribute to Memoirs' sense of wholeness. The sound score combines eerie tunes from Dead Can Dance and the like with Misha Penton's ethereal instrumental pieces. Kris Phelps' lightening emphasizes private spaces and a suitably dreamy atmosphere. A video montage by Deborah Schildt also hopscotches through time, landing on memorable moments, birthdays, holidays, vacations, giving us a glimpse of family record without a litany of actual events. Costumes by Valls and Wattigny draw from Louisiana folklore, 1950s fashions, and southern debutante glamour. On a post-show close inspection, one costume reveals a trim of doll parts, and other junk drawer delights. Both costumes and sets hold their own as an installation piece as well as a performance. In fact the piece concludes by the performers bringing all the visual elements together for one last look, a final tableau.
The capable performers included Kara Ary, Mechelle Flemming, Jennifer Magill, Stephanie Rodriguez, Joani Trevino, Toni Leago Valle, and Corian Ellisor (as the solo male child). Valls and Wattigny made smartly positioned cameo appearances as well.
A few bumps down memory road included: an occasionally overly cluttered stage, abrupt and long blackouts, and some sheer practical concerns about moving such intricate and complex objects on and off stage.
There are many lovely elements to this work, but chief among them is the pair's commitment to telling a new story rather than falling into the dreaded page-from-our-journal- autobiographical-syndrome. There's little attempt to use personal history as just that, the truth. Memoirs of a Sisterhood – Chapter One derives much of its drive from mining the power of memory alone, most specifically the embellishment of imperfect recollection. Memory is a dance, an art in and of itself. Memory can only be a creative act. When we remember we re-create; Memoirs enlists this process exactly.
A scene with all seven children waving from a speeding boat proved my point about the meaning of childhood. They are waving at us from the past, as if in that actual moment, they all knew that it was a keeper.
I doubt I was the only audience member who wanted to wave back in thanks for the Beaullieu family coming into my life.
The Times-Picayune Thursday, March 26, 2009
'Sistahood' exhibit returns to its roots
Beaullieu sisters focus on '50s in La.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
By Linda Dautreuil
There is a buzz about a performance launched late last year in Houston that's making its way to New Orleans this spring. "Memoirs of the Sistahood - Chapter One" is coming home to Louisiana.
The performance is the first in a series of collaborative works between sisters Babette Beaullieu, a sculptor and teacher in the St. Tammany Talented Arts Program in Mandeville; Becky Beaullieu Valls, a performer/choreographer living in Houston; and independent filmmaker Deborah Schildt of Alaska. "Chapter One" focuses on the female archetypes of 1950s Louisiana and the six Beaullieu sisters: Beth, Becky, Babette, Bonnie, Bitsy and Barbara.
Based on the experiences of growing up in a large Catholic family, the series fuses individual artwork created by the artist-sisters with childhood "sense memories," original music and film. Central to the interactive stage setting is Babette Beaullieu's life-size altar boxes of wood and organic materials representing the complex personality patterns of family.
The sculptures appear onstage to house the dance performers and are exhibited after the performance for audience viewing.
Recognized most recently for her exhibition, "Hidden Spaces: Mixed Media Sculpture" at the Shaw Center for the Arts in Baton Rouge, Babette Beaullieu is known for her use of found materials to create large-scale three-dimensional sculptures and wall reliefs.
She built the six altar boxes for Chapter One with recycled materials found on the streets of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
Windows, doors, wood and architectural details came from torn down buildings and trash piles. Beaullieu notes, "I built a box, not really thinking at first which sister I was trying to represent. Halfway through the construction, I began to sense a specific energy, how it felt to be with that sister. I could hear our conversations. I think of these altar boxes as spiritual totems that are also universal archetypes."
When Chapter One premiered in December 2007 at Diverse Works Art Space in Houston, critics may have expected a sentimental memory play, but the visual and kinetic storytelling drew rave reviews as new material rather than simply reminiscences of the past.
The Contemporary Arts Center will present "Memoirs of the Sistahood, Chapter One," with interactive sculptures by Mandeville visual artist and teacher Babette Beaullieu April 4 at 8 p.m., onstage at 900 Camp St., New Orleans.
Tickets for the general public are $20, $18 for students, and $15 for seniors. For more information, visit www.cacno.org.
Published on NOLA.com Wednesday, March 25, 2009 1:22 p.m.
Published in The Times-Picayune Thursday, March 26, 2009
Print