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Choreographer Ani Taj spent her formative years doing what many aspiring dancers do: studying ballet, tap, jazz and contemporary forms, and eventually pursuing jobs in musical theater, with the hopes of one day dancing on Broadway.
Two years ago, she did, in fact, make it to Broadway, where she worked with choreographer Sam Pinkleton to create a dance track for “Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812.”
While Ms. Taj recalls that it was a great experience on a very special show, she has long felt that, as an art form, dance has the potential to play a much larger and significant role in people’s lives.
“Something changed for me after college, when I spent time in Brazil and fell in love with the kind of dance and music I encountered there,” explained Ms. Taj in a recent phone interview. “Instead of having to be initiated into the New York City Ballet elite audience, everyone there had a relationship to dance and music.”
In Brazil, she realized that people of all ages know how to samba and are thoroughly educated in the history of the country’s folkloric dances. But, beyond that, Ms. Taj found that it was the deeply ingrained relationship Brazilians have across the board with dance that truly impressed her.
“People here feel alienated if they don’t know how to read dance. It can be alienating at fancy establishments or in the downtown scene,” she admitted. “But so much of dance is universal and body to body. In music videos, there are many styles of dance, and even ‘Dancing with the Stars’ has whetted people’s appetite for dance.
“How could I create an environment to give people access to the same information—the dance narrative?” she asked. “We have dance in our history, and our cultural and national narrative, but something happened where things splintered apart. Now we have sexy backup dancers in music videos or highbrow ballet or post-modern work downtown. But there’s not much in between.
“We felt there should be something in between for people.”
With that mission in mind, in 2012 Ms. Taj founded The Dance Cartel, a company composed of dancers representing a range of ethnicities, experiences, backgrounds and artistic styles. On Saturday, August 25, The Dance Cartel comes to the Southampton Arts Center to present “Wet Clutch,” a drive-in dance experience choreographed by Ms. Taj, who also serves as The Dance Cartel’s artistic director.
As a dance piece, “Wet Clutch” sets out to examine the cultural mythology of movie heroines over the last four decades of American film—and turn it on its ear. The show will include high-energy dance sequences by the company, original sound and video design and, toward the end of the show, a live set by the group’s collaborator DJ Average Jo, in which the audience is encouraged to get up and join in the dancing.
In another unique twist, “Wet Clutch” will take place not in the Southampton Arts Center theater but outside, on the lawn, where the whole performance is designed to evoke the experience of a drive-in movie theater—from the big screen playing movie clips, to a handful of cars on the lawn that will act as life-size props. Populating the “drive-in” will be the dancers themselves, whose movements are designed to re-invent and re-imagine the famous characters shown on the big screen.
Ms. Taj explained that the idea for “Wet Clutch” grew from the fact that in recent years, she has frequently found herself leaving movie theaters angry or disappointed about the way in which females are portrayed in big Hollywood films. She notes that in some films female characters don’t have a name, while in others they are hyper-sexualized. Then there are the women who cling helplessly to superheroes throughout the film, or those assigned the singular task of finding a husband by the closing credits—and, across the board, she realized that most of the women she sees on screen are white.
“In the early 2000s, after feminism, women were supposed to have a place in the world,” Ms. Taj said. “But I remember movies in the ’70s where female characters were more articulately drawn and conceived.”
So Ms. Taj went to her company of dancers and asked them to name their favorite female film role models and heroines from the 1970s through the 1990s. “Who do you imagine yourself becoming, based on what you’ve been fed?” she asked them.
The resulting discussion yielded a range of opinions and influences about women on screen that have been incorporated into “Wet Clutch.” Ms. Taj said the referenced movies run the gamut, from “the ridiculous to actually good films.” Along the lines of the former is “Barb Wire,” a 1996 film in which Pamela Anderson plays a super-sexy, gun-toting bounty hunter.
“It’s absurd and begs the question, ‘Is this a heroine?’” Ms. Taj said.
Also represented in “Wet Clutch” is Sigourney Weaver’s portrayal of Ellen Ripley, the protagonist in the “Alien” films, Angela Bassett from the 1995 cult film “Strange Days,” and Tina Turner’s performance in the 1985 film “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.”
“We also looked at Faye Dunaway in ‘Network,’” Ms. Taj said. “She’s a complicated character. She lays down the law with her staff and is a heroine who’s so strong and tough she’s not allowed to have a personal life.
“Those are the main ladies we look at, but many others find their way into the piece,” she added. “The idea was to pull from these archetypes, and there are seven core films we’re really looking at while using others as touchstones.
“We’re exploding apart and redistributing the vocabulary form. We’re experimenting what it’s like to try those characters on by bringing the heroines off the screen and into the space with you.”
While portions of the show have been workshopped over the course of the last few years, the first fully realized production of “Wet Clutch” came in September 2017 with a one-time concert performance at the Seaport Music Festival in Lower Manhattan. The Southampton performance represents only the second time the full production has been offered.
Ms. Taj noted that “Wet Clutch” is designed to emulate the kind of cross-pollination that she sees happening in many artistic fields these days and it represents an ambitious departure from what has traditionally been offered in dance. The diverse cadre of Dance Cartel dancers are also encouraged to bring their own experiences and perspectives to the piece. As a result, she finds “Wet Clutch” to also be highly social, not unlike a party.
“It’s occasionally highbrow, occasionally lowbrow, yet crafted with moments of spontaneity where the audience dances with us,” she said.
Ultimately, the goal of the show is to encourage audiences to think differently about their relationship with dance. Because going to the movies is such a universal American experience, Ms. Taj finds the use of the film motif in “Wet Clutch” to be helpful in making dance more accessible to those who may question their understanding of the form.
“Even if people haven’t seen the movies, these characters are in our archetypal experience,” she said. “The show is not just designed for women or a certain kind of audience. Our goal is to make it accessible to everyone, and we’re all trying these characters on for size by asking, ‘Who am I allowed to be in this world? What are the stereotypes and what can we shed?’”
And the drive-in part? Well, that’s just plain fun.
“When you hear a car rolling by and the music is cranked up, I always want to know where those people are going,” Ms. Taj said. “There’s also the thought of the car as simply being a means of agency and autonomy in America.
“It’s exciting to pull the drive-in form into this piece … just like a nostalgic movie.”
The Dance Cartel presents “Wet Clutch” at the Southampton Arts Center, 25 Jobs Lane, Southampton Village, on Saturday, August 25, at 8:30 p.m. Admission is free.
on Aug 16, 2018