Initially 2000 Questions was to be a performance for the first fundraiser for the newly
incorporated Watchface, with some aspects of its content developed and agreed upon at
that time. Once a proposal to create and perform the piece for Serious Fun! at Lincoln
Center was accepted, other parts of the puzzle became clear. It was to be the first half of a
double bill at the festival at Avery Fisher Hall with the dance-centric expectations of the
curator and time restrictions (ten to fifteen minutes). The short amount of time necessitated a
compact vision of the material. The directors/performers, Chazz Dean, Kurt Fulton, and Melanie Monios, also wanted the piece to be powerful, intense, and evocative, making best
use of the time, placement on the program, and venue. There was also the added
expectation created by the fact that the piece was being billed as the collective’s
“Commemorative Reunion,” and would likely be the final performance under the Watchface
name.
Already established in the unrealized project was the point of view – visions of the year 2000
through the individual and global contexts of the present day. Now that the Lincoln Center
performance was an approaching reality, Chazz, Kurt, and Melanie were tasked with
developing the ideas for the fundraiser into an actual performance.
The contemporary world situation was examined through the spheres of lifestyle, religion,
economics, politics, and society. The main building block of these sections was the
Remblem, which had become a signature technique of the group. It’s fast-paced, rhythmic,
and humorous presentation of ideas was typically a big crowd pleaser. The inclusion of
recent Harper’s Magazine ironic statistics from their “Harper’s Index” placed the
performance firmly at the start of the final decade of the twentieth century, as did the
questions of the title – queries that expressed current concerns by asking how things may
have changed in our world by the year 2000. “Will the Supreme Court outlaw abortion by the
year 2000?”
The Remblems were created to illustrate the designated five divisions of current culture. One
person created the phrase that embodied the concept; a second person would then create
the movement to accompany it in four or eight beats. All seven original members of
Watchface contributed. Remblem assignments Examples of concepts for each section:
Lifestyle –
Desire for leisure and luxury
Awakening of body consciousness/fitness
Eating out often
Religion –
Religion as impediment to progressive thinking
Dogmatic extremism
Religious fanaticism and its attendant hypocrisy
Economics –
Debt as a way of life
The forgotten migrant workers
Marketing through packaging (Spiffets and SnakPaks)
Politics –
The need for nationalized health care
AIDS-rationalized homophobia
The assault on free expression
Society –
Global warming
American ignorance
Insects could rule the world
The completed Remblems were then organized into the sequences for Lifestyle, Religion, Economics, Politics, and Society.
Remblem performance order for Lifestyles
Remblem performance order for Religion
Questions about the future were submitted from Watchface at large – some sincere, others
sarcastic or cryptic. Chazz, Kurt, and Melanie chose their favorites as they did with the
statistics from the Harper’s Index. These were then organized into the two statistics and three
questions sections. A recording of Melanie reading the three questions segments,
accompanied by portions of moody movie scores, was played over the action. For the two
statistics sections, Chazz (accompanied by a patriotic march) and Kurt (with Americana
banjo music) recorded one each.
Examples of the diversity in the questions:
Where will we fight our wars in the year 2000 and by what methods?
How will we watch TV in the year 2000? Will we read?
Will the US make it to Mars by 2000? Will anybody care?
Will unattractive sports tennis shoes still be in fashion in the year 2000?
script for Questions II
Statistics (from the “Harper’s Index”):
An average of 16,000 Americans are injured by chainsaws each year.
An average of 112,000 are injured by clothing.
23% of Americans say that the government should ban antiwar demonstrations.
An American eats an average of 28 pigs in a lifetime.
Of the solar panels installed on the White House roof by President Carter, none exist
today.
script for Statistics II
The staging for the questions sections was based on found photographs from newspaper and
magazine editorial and advertising spreads, chosen for their various representations of the
current state of humankind – from a family BBQ to the arrest of demonstrators to a strip club
audience. Under Melanie’s narration, the three performers recreated the group poses,
moving from one tableau to the next, layering the contemporary images with the questions
addressed to the impending millennium.
The choreography for the statistics sections was extrapolated from movement phrases taken
from Bodies In Space exercises based on their texts. The performers developed their own
passages for each and, when combined and expanded with the others, these became the
dances for Statistics I and II. These compositions veered away from the group’s more typical
gestural movement style and were influenced more by traditional dance elements. Because
of the emphasis of the festival, the three directors felt that the movement needed to be
enhanced more than usual for this engagement.
The five Remblem sections alternated with the two statistic and three question units, their
content dictating their position to build to a final impact.
2000 Questions began with a countdown, not to the year 2000, but to 1991, the date of the
performance, where the look toward the future took place. It ended with the most universal
and personal question, “How old will I be in the year 2000?” And the easiest one to answer.