![]() As the piece progresses, Wilber continually exploits this dynamic, sending the performers into embraces carefully choreographed to reveal the perfect absence of affection. But of course they don’t–they can’t, not with those other guys there. The boy and the man have demonstrated how they would look if they desired affection from each other. It’s a moment of extraordinary intimacy, as if each expected the other to embrace him. But at the critical moment, when you might expect six-shooters to fly, Stumm and Simonds stand motionless, their faces inches apart. The man in front–the hypermercurial Michael Stumm–leans forward, points a menacing finger at the boy, Kevin Simonds, and says, “I don’t suppose there’s any way we can work this out, Kevin.” Then the men and the boy slowly close the gap between them, as though preparing for a shoot-out in an old western. The three men stand opposed to the boy and carry themselves as though they were about to draw weapons. We first meet all four as they stare one another down in a bright walkway of light. They flail about in an abstract, lyrical playground, dressed in blue jeans, white dress shirts, and black bow ties and more often than not carrying bouquets, a band of errant suitors courting their own lost selves. ![]() Over the next 55 minutes, Wilber puts her men through a series of clownish routines that highlight the split in their personalities. This tension between inner and outer selves is the essence of Getalong Little Doggie. The boy, on the other hand, seems lost in a deep internal reverie. They’re not fighting or dancing they’re just going through the motions in an emotionally dead spectacle–but a spectacle nonetheless, all hollow bravado, all outward display. It shows the torsos of two shirtless men colliding over and over again in a semiaggressive, semiplayful way always their gestures are without purpose. It’s as though the boy were performing a silent elegy, reaching out for an unattainable male ideal with an archetypally feminine flower.Īs the boy continues, a black-and-white film is projected on the rear wall, as far from the boy as possible. His posture is one of deep melancholy, and he mutters something inaudible. The boy pulls one of his flowers from the bunch and draws it slowly back and forth across the screen as though outlining the facial contours. He’s illuminated only by the image on the screen, a tight close-up of an upside-down male face. The piece opens with a young boy in an empty room sitting before a television monitor, holding a bouquet of purple flowers. In performance, that sense of pity is unmistakable. In press materials, Wilber says the piece is “about men and how they struggle to get through their lives,” suggesting that they’re pitiable tragic figures. Rather Wilber attempts to muddle its definition, showing us a side of maleness that’s ridiculous, charming, pathetic, and powerfully sad. Performed by three men and a 12-year-old boy, Getalong Little Doggie never criticizes or condemns masculinity. ![]() Her hour-long Getalong Little Doggie is rich with the ambiguity, ambivalence, and irresolution sorely absent from so much similar work. But I want to hold Dolores Wilber’s performance piece close to my heart.
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