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Performance artist Claire Porter relies on choreography and stand-up comedy in Portables, but no music.
By CHRISTOPHER BLANK
© St. Petersburg Times, published October 5, 2000
You'd have a tough time finding Claire Porter in the Yellow Pages. Her act might be under "dance" if she didn't talk so much. It could be under "theater," but the movement is too exact for earthly actors.
Maybe under "choreography."
Her one-woman show this weekend at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center certainly is choreographed. But even then, without music or rhythm, the usual tools of the trade, what can you call it?
Porter, who lives in New Jersey, pairs the physicality of dance with the wit of standup comedy. Influenced by theater as much as by dance, she intertwines precise movement with an economical helping of spoken text. She rarely uses music.
For this performance artist, the work has opened new possibilities in movement. Porter acknowledges it is a difficult task for many dancers to grasp.
As a frequent lecturer and guest professor on college campuses, Porter has seen the mixed reactions of students when she first lays out her ideas.
A year and a half ago, she visited the University of South Florida and remembers the wary looks on dance students' faces when they were told at the auditions they would have speaking parts. Words bring out the hidden actor in the dancer.
"Sometimes I had to tease it out of them," Porter remembered. "I had to bring out their personalities slowly. They had to be more dancers than actors, though."
While her work with ensembles has taken students to new levels, Porter is best known for her solo work, the signature vignettes she performs in this weekend's program, Portables.
These pieces -- some of which have taken more than a year to hone -- are the backbone of her work. Audiences can expect something unique.
Porter first included text in her act in a piece called Lecture. She intended to choreograph the movements of a professor at a podium, but as the character developed, she realized, "He just needed to say something."
So she wrote a lecture on the subject of repetition. Had the audience not reacted so fondly at her first informal performance, Porter's career might have been vastly different. But the connection she felt -- a connection she had never experienced in the quiet fishbowl of traditional dance -- inspired her to explore the idea.
She hasn't ruled out music completely. In a piece called Piano, she intended to perform live music. But while waiting on copyright permission to play the tunes, she decided to go without it. The piece is now performed as if she is a concert pianist, and the piano hasn't arrived for the show. Porter said she still hears the music in her head.
The music became an internal subtext, part of the extensive background notes she makes with each vignette. She joined the New Jersey Weather Club while working on a piece about a forecaster. To learn about the digestive system -- which she explores onstage -- she spent time with a gastroenterologist.
More than being found in the Yellow Pages, Porter uses the Yellow Pages, and the hilarious result is the choreography of life.
Claire Porter's Portables runs 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 4 p.m. Sunday at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center's Off Center Theater. Tickets are $15.50. (813) 229-7827.