“And all around the air was heavy with the scent of boiling cane,” wrote Jean Toomer in his 1923 novel, Cane. “It drenched the men in a circle seated around the stove. Some of them chewed at the white pulp of stalks, but there was no need for them to, if all they wanted was to taste the cane.”
Starting April 20, Sheafer Lab Theater will transform into Toomer’s cane fields as part of a simulated environment for CANE. Inspired by the novel, CANE is a fusion performance that combines dance, technology and audience engagement to explore the black histories in the South.
“This interactive cane field emerged as a 21st century analog to Toomer’s literary storytelling,” Thomas DeFrantz, professor of the practice of dance and African and African American studies and CANE director, wrote in an email. “The interface and production reimagine the act of telling stories about African-American life in theatrical terms.”
Just as Toomer was inspired to write Cane after a trip to Georgia in 1921, DeFrantz too was inspired by cane fields. “The cane field acts as a character in this piece, and it has its own stories to tell about what happened before, and how we remember our past,” DeFrantz said of the simulated environment of CANE. Just as history holds the capacity to create and destroy its own characters, the cane fields serve as a place of both creation in sowing and destruction in reaping.
The simulated environment of cane fields also incorporates live performances by world-renowned dancers, audio narratives of former slaves and audience interaction via Wii-mote.
“There is so much complexity within a piece like Cane that it seems right and proper to engage more than just the eye on the page to bring the dynamic of the book to an audience beyond the solitary reader,” said production dramaturg Jules Odendahl-James. “By situating the physical dancers within a digital field of cane, the dance work is able to fulfill a new dimension of Toomer’s narrative specifically by allowing multiple mediums to collaborate in the storytelling.”
CANE not only pays homage to Toomer’s novel, but also creates a space in which history can be realized. The simulation of cane fields in relationship to the other elements helps to frame a mediated history realized through the performers.
“Of particular interest to [DeFrantz] was the physical movement in harvesting sugar cane, as that might inform the choreography,” said Odendahl-James. “The bodies and movement of dancers is its primary vocabulary.”
Tanya Wideman and Thaddeus Davis, creative directors of Wideman/Davis Dance, choreographed the movement. According to DeFrantz, “they work with highly articulate physical gesture that underscores relationships and human emotion like that of [Cane].”
The performance includes the physical presence of the dancers as well as the digital presence of the voices of memory. Through technological processing, the audio narratives are able to interact with the live performers and soundscape. In addition, the audience is able to manipulate the visual materials through a Wii-mote.
“We developed the interfaces to try to ask questions about how environments hold history,” explained DeFrantz. “We live in a multi-modal world that includes all sorts of simultaneous media experiences. Our opportunity in the Trinity school is to work across disciplines—African American Studies, Dance, and Information Processing—to create unique theatrical experiences.”
CANE is a landmark project of interdisciplinary collaboration, one that demands agency from the audience. The interactive immersion of CANE prompts the audience to reflect on how history is realized—not solely in textbooks, but in the spaces it inhabits.
“I hope the audience will take a moment to rethink how environments hold history and how spaces help us remember things we thought we had forgotten,” reflected Defrantz. “These stories help us rethink our shared histories, and reimagine our relationships to one another.”
CANE will be premiering Sat., April 20, at 8 p.m. For more information and showtimes, please visit its website: http://sites.duke.edu/cane/
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