Photo of the Schindler House by Joshua White
The Schindler House in West Hollywood, California was an experiment in living as much as the Philip Johnson Glass House or the Farnsworth House or the Eames House, though each one was a temple to a wholly different experiment.
Rudolph Schindler Courtesy of Architecture and Design Collection, Art Design & Architecture Museum, UC Santa Barbara.
Pauline Schindler by Dorothea Lange UCSB
Viennese architect Rudolph Schindler and his American wife Pauline, disciple of the labor and left wing movements of the '20s and '30s, were partners in establishing a home environment that could accommodate personal and communal space in one integral whole. Activist Pauline was architect Schindler's most ardent client and got her parents to help fund it. Pauline's social philosophy depended on nature, simplicity and communality and was shared by the Chaces, another progressive couple.
Courtesy Schindler Family 1923 in the courtyard
With four separate studio spaces, each could have his/her own realm, plus a sleeping porch. The kitchen was communal. The wives would alternate so they'd have respite from household duties. They were vegetarians, practiced yoga, nude sunbathing: the Schindler-Chace foursome was determined to live their dream.
UCSB Collection 1924
Pauline established a salon, a left wing mecca for the LA avant garde. Schindler was notoriously unfaithful and Pauline was challenged despite her immersion in progressive theory. Once children -- and lovers -- came into the picture they eventually divorced. Years later however, Pauline returned to live in the house with Schindler when other partners had come visibly into the picture.
Brennan Gerard and Ryan Kelly in the Schindler House gardens
Into this space, sacred to architecture and history buffs alike, came Gerard & Kelly (Brennan Gerard and Ryan Kelly) who have collaborated since 2003 on project-based installations and performances to address questions of sexuality, memory, and the formation of queer consciousness and their new piece, Modern Living.
LA Dance Project in Modern Living
The duo felt that although the Schindlers were heterosexual "we thought of this as a queer experiment in living" says Ryan Kelly. The communitarian architecture is really challenging what is a family, what is a partnership. Even today we build homes around master bedroom, a single couple."
LA Dance Project in Modern Living at the Schindler House
LA Dance Project (Benjamin Millepied's company which is still doing splendidly even though he is in Paris) collaborated with Gerard and Kelly to achieve this communal vision and the Schindler modernist vibe has been remarkably transmuted into a three-hour-long dance piece which unfolds sequentially and simultaneously in the diminutive house. The choreography, organized around the theme of time, the clock and domesticity is wholly analogous to the original architectural concept, since Schindler based the house on a "pinwheel" plan.
LA Dance Project in Modern Living
The notion of the 12 hours of the day informs the rhythm; hence 12 movements per 9 dancers. In the kitchen at noon, upstairs later on, outside, in between. "Everyone has an internal clock" says Kelly. "What does 12 feel like to you?" Moreover, the piece highlights something dancers deal with all the time: they have to count. What we see up on the stage is often a highly complex technical system of dancers counting to themselves as they are often counter to the music and to each other. The choreography here highlights the fact that we are all, in a sense, running on our own internal clocks that are not always in synchronicity. Despite the customized architecture, he Schindlers' clocks clearly often were not.
LA Dance Project had only 2 1/1 weeks of rehearsal with Gerard and Kelly, earning the "Certifiably amazing" compliment Kelly pays them. "We had never worked blindly like that before, we always cast our pieces. It's so rare to have performers as intelligent in their bodies as in their minds".
LA Dance Project in Modern Living
James Fayette, LA Dance Projects managing director added, "They had ownership of it. They created a lot of their own phrases, it was more of a partnership. They participated in the choreography, that's why it was able to come together."
This piece will be performed at the Glass House in May and it is worth the trip to New Canaan (when you can also take in the new Sanaa River House if you have not seen it) It will be interesting to see how it is reconceived there as the spaces are not at all alike. Though the houses are both deemed modernist, they have a completely different footprint and energy.
The whole notion of dance and architecture in tandem is intriguing practitioners like Gerard and Kelly, LA Dance Project, Jonah Bokaer and others who are exploring site specific dance creation as a relatively recent subset of dance. Even the NY City Ballet did a dance and architecture project a few years ago. Stay tuned for more about this mashup of genres.
LA Dance Project in the Modern Living finale in the Schindler Gardens
As it was, the dancers brought forth a perfect warming counterpoint to the gray and unseasonably chilly post El Nino weather. I feel sure the Schindlers would have loved it.