Performance
The Instinctual Dance of Stair Walking
- By Janice Ross
If there is a single object that sets the body dancing, it is a set of stairs. Domestically, functionally, theatrically, stairs allow the body to partner with itself and move through space with a rhythm. It’s not clear precisely when stairs began to creep into the dance vocabulary of Anna Halprin—but for the visitor to the Halprin home an encounter with stairs is immediate and the impression lasting. Entering a home by stepping under a staircase sounds like the opening line of a fairytale. Indeed, walking through the front door into the Halprin house in Kentfield, and stepping directly under the home’s floating interior staircase, was both ordinary and exceptional. Ordinary because, after all, it was the front door, and exceptional because one was standing under a staircase that seemed to hover in the air. If this was indeed the front door, the mini foyer was...