The first time I saw the work of Trajal Harrell I stomped out in a huff muttering about the waste of public money and is this what the art of dance has come to. But perversely I was drawn back for more of its weirdness, and after The Köln Concert I am relenting. The guy might be on to something.
A middle-aged, Yale-educated African-American with a melancholy air on stage, Harrell should probably be classified as post-post-postmodernist. In any case, don’t expect meaning to emerge clearly or logic to govern the movement he creates. His territory is queer in every sense of the term, dippy-hippie in spirit, and aesthetically far to the left in its rejection of order or hierarchy. Yet it is also open-hearted, innocently comical and slyly beguiling.
The Köln Concert uses music improvised by the great jazz pianist Keith Jarrett on a legendary occasion in 1975, with a first section given over to four Joni Mitchell songs – three from the album Blue, plus her jazzed-up version of ‘Both Sides Now’. Describing what ensues may sound Pseuds Corner daft, but perhaps that is part of the game.
During the first three Joni songs, seven figures (including Harrell himself) outlandishly dressed in non-binary clothes, half-rags half-fanciful John Galliano couture, sit on small benches and wave their arms around repeatedly, responding to the music in the casual manner we all adopt in the privacy of our own fantasies. For ‘Both Sides Now’, a man sashays on tiptoe round the stage in a fur coat. Others follow suit. There are no emotional overtones: it all seems completely pointless, and almost apologetically humble – nobody is claiming to be a technically expert dancer.
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