The Aesthetic Pull of Destiny

Though he went to art school and studied painting and
sculpture, Walter Dundervill says that he first discovered his interest in
dance during high school, and it’s never been far from his life since. As time
went on, he gravitated toward dance while continuing to develop his visual arts
expression in related ways. “I moved to New York to be a painter, and I just
kept taking classes at dance studios,” he explains. “Then I ended up performing
for people—and dance became what I did, instead of visual art.” As those who keep
an eye on the city’s smaller dance venues know well, Dundervill has been making
a distinctive impact in recent years.

This week, he returns to Dance Theater Workshop, where he
has twice before presented work on shared programs, with his largest ensemble
so far, Aesthetic Destiny 1: Candy Mountain, a new full-evening work for a dozen performers. A fantasy
narrative that interweaves three actors with nine dancers, it has strong
connections to last year’s Dear Emissary, performed last March at the
Chocolate Factory.

“There’s a fractured drama that took place in that show, and
we’re kind of continuing it: the same exploration, and the same dynamic between
those three people,” Dundervill says. “The drama itself is ambiguous. It’s not
exactly a sequel; it’s more like a continuation in terms of a series—like a
series of paintings or sculptures. So it’s related to the last piece, but it’s
not necessarily continuing it, in terms of content.”

His tale of how the title evolved has its own elements of
fantasy narrative. “The phrase ‘Candy Mountain’ came into my head, and I kept
trying to push it away. Then on our first day of rehearsals, I was going to a
studio with two dancers, and on the floor of the building’s vestibule, there
was a pile of mail. On a magazine cover, a woman was smiling maniacally and it
read: ‘aesthetic destiny.’ At first, I thought it was some weird cult magazine,
and then I looked closer and realized that it said ‘aesthetic dentistry’! One
of my dancers had looked down and misread it the same way, so by the time we
got upstairs to the studio, I thought that was the title of the piece. I
thought, if this is a series, then this is Aesthetic
Destiny 1.”

Dundervill creates his own costumes and sets—and has also
designed for others, notably the set for Tere O’Connor’s Wrought Iron Fog—and
his visual arts inclinations inform and influence his performance pieces. “I
became aware that my approach to making work wasn’t just dancerly and
choreographic, but was also rooted in a visual art sensibility. So I wouldn’t
just see the movement, but the whole stage picture: costumes, sets, lights,
everything,” he says. Several of his works have evoked the late 18th-century
period that has long fascinated him. “In those pieces, I was raising questions
for myself, investigating why I was drawn to the French Revolution era—trying
to re-create costumes from that period as a part of that process. In this new
piece, I felt like I was going into a world of fiction and fantasy, instead of
going so much towards history. By stepping away from this distinct historical
referencing in this piece, I’ve gone more into layering colors and shapes—in
both the costumes and the sets that I’m making.”

As with Dear Emissary, Dundervill is creating sets
out of cardboard, “but this time they’re more geometric, colorful abstract
forms. There’s less of a specific relationship to something historical, and
more of a personal investigation of manipulating the forms, for my own
purposes.”

Dundervill supplements his income by working as a landscaper
and freelance florist, and has found intriguing connections between all his
pursuits. “Those two parts of my life have grown together over the years.
They’re all about constructing things. From working as a gardener and a
florist, I’ve learned so much practically from those kinds of projects that
carries over into making dances,” he says. “I understand how to deal with
material, and delegate tasks. And a lot of the work that I do in the ‘event
world’—where you set up big projects that get taken down the same day—has freed
me up to feel completely comfortable with building things that I destroy. It
means that if I’m building things in the process of making a dance, and have to
let go of them at some point, I won’t have much of a problem with being able to
do that.”

Aesthetic Destiny 1: Candy Mountain

Feb. 16-9, Dance Theater Workshop, 219 W. 19th St. (betw. 7th & 8th
Aves.), 212-924-0077; 7:30, $20.