Review: “Red Landscape: Georgia O’Keeffe in Texas 1912-1918”

An artist in the public eye is more accessible today than ever before. Every detail of one’s life is up for examination. This often cuts through the process of two-way exchange, or the mutual art of seeing, which, in the words of legendary painter Georgia O’Keeffe “takes time.” Known for magnifying the mysteries and anatomical motifs of floral subjects, O’Keeffe and her four years living and working in Texas were the inspiration for Open Dance Project (ODP) Founder and Artistic Director Annie Arnault’s Red Landscape: Georgia O’Keeffe in Texas 1912-1918. Through sold-out performances at the Rice University Moody Center for the Arts, Arnault invited audiences to meet the artist as a young bookish girl, a vulnerable visual arts student, a principled artist, and an adventurous teacher — but also as an anxious sister debilitated by headaches and confronting the emergent conflict on the precipice of World War I. 

Founded in 2015, Open Dance Project works to restore and reveal new ways to empower artists and audiences on a common ground. With all its innovation in designing an experience for participants, dancers, and audience members to engage with and walk through, Red Landscape enlarges the art of human connection with no special equipment. This is what O’Keefe practiced in her work, as one scene highlights. “I’ve known it all before. I wonder if I’ve read it,” wrote O’Keeffe as she is portrayed staying up late lost in reading Goethe’s Faust. Art does this for us; allows us to know those who came before us and left a piece of their life, heart, mind, and passion behind. This artistic ancestry is what Open Dance Project revives.

Immediately blurring the bounds between life and performance, the show’s start would have been difficult to discern from check-in’s end had it not been for ODP’s Interim Managing Director Elissa Turner, who guided the audience from the Moody Center waiting room outside the theater’s double doors with a swift welcome and introduction to the twelve-scene act. Either you knew what you were getting into or you did not — you were involved and invited to participate. The rules were simple: the dancers might give you a prop to hold or lead you somewhere, but you must not touch or move items from where they are intended to be. Through the doors, a new world beckoned. 

By the entrance, Arnault rose from the floor behind an intricate open-plan dollhouse, swaying as the young Georgia O’Keeffe would have. Speaking about the shadow of childhood jubilantly, she continued dancing to gentle guitar music, part of an original score by Winter Barn and Paul Beebe, as participants began to disperse around the labyrinthine room. Subtle signals such as changes in lighting or sound hinted to audience members that another scene was unfolding somewhere within the room. Bedroom, arts studio, meadow, canyon, and more — the set was manipulated by company dancers with the audience milling around; impressive, given not only the attention Ryan McGettigan and Lauren Davis paid to set design and props but also the pathways dancers improvised around the audience to stay on time and in tempo.

In another scene entitled “Art Is Dead/The Sun Has Set,” O’Keeffe’s discontentment about dwindling reason and passion in philosophy and art during the American industrial movement mirror modern-day artists fighting a consumer-fixated economy. Crucial to ODP’s mission, the impersonal sheen of art created solely for consumption is entirely deconstructed during each performance. There were multiple instances of audience/dancer interaction, such as when a viewer had to move out of the way of a dancer or the dancer took a flower from the hands of a viewer. This removal of the “fourth wall” separating action on stage from effecting audiences beyond insists on the antidotal advantage art in this dimension has as opposed to digital means of entertainment. That sense that someone is too close, that the walls are moving around you — that does not translate to viewers via screen or stage. What immersive dance theater does through meticulous set, prop, and dance choreography is ultimately involve viewers in the movement to a degree they are invested in that meets the engagement of the dancers.

As Red Landscape illuminates, when O’Keeffe moved to Amarillo, Texas to teach at a public school, she imagined staying longer than four years, painting fiery sunsets and wide open skies while leading West Texas State Normal College’s new Art Department. Yet as World War I drew nearer, O’Keeffe worried for her younger brother Alexius (Alexis) Wyckoff O’Keeffe (1892-1930), who was drafted to fight in Europe as an officer in the 32nd Division of the US Army. “Zimmerman Telegram” is an inventive reimagining of the official 1917 appeal from Germany to Mexico to join the fight for victory in return for the promise of Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. It was this telegram that spurred the USA to enter World War I and youth like Alexis to join the effort. As she sensed her neighbors’ investment in pro-war nationalism rather than her dreams or fears, she could not stay for long.

A dedicated scene, “There Was a Younger Brother,” memorializes O’Keeffe’s goodbye to Alexis as he was shipped off to war from a Texas military camp in November 1917. The longing in the dancers’ choreography foreshadows Alexis’ death 13 years later. Only then were scientists and doctors publicizing the harms of mustard gas exposure — determined to be the cause of Alexis’ deteriorating health and young death. O’Keeffe was outspoken about this to prevent other young boy soldiers from suffering, and as revealed in the same scene, the painter also condemned ethnic slurs targeting Texas’ large populations of German and Mexican immigrants. That same year, O’Keeffe’s emotional painting “The Flag” was targeted by neighbors in Canyon, Texas as a direct violation of the Espionage Act of 1917 and kept from public view until 1968. Not long after these challenges surfaced, O’Keeffe left for New York. Red Landscape ends with O’Keeffe’s desire to return to the arts community of New York, which she ultimately could not find anywhere else. 

Importantly, O’Keeffe was not anti-war or anti-American, rather her letters and telegrams reveal her deep love and grieving for her younger brother. It is the collision of art and life experiences, full of inevitable passion and loss, that remind us what art is for and what wars are worth. Arnault and Open Dance Project’s work to revive O’Keeffe in her darkest period brought her back to Texas.

***

Red Landscape concept and choreographic direction by Annie Arnoult. Original score by Winter Barn and Paul Beebe. Created and performed by Open Dance Project ensemble members: Joshua de Alba, Lauren Burke, Sonia Engman, Atticus Griffin,  Madelyn Manlove,  Cameo Renée, Jaime Garcia Vergara, and Brenden Winkfield.  Set by Ryan McGettigan. Props and scenic painting by Lauren Davis. Lighting and projections by Bryan Ealey and Tiffany Schrepferman. Sound by Edgar Guajardo. Costumes by Ashley Horn. Production Management by Christina Maley. Stage management by Mary McNeely. Photos by Lynn Lane. Graphic design by Abby Flowers.

Open Dance Project’s distinctive performance style creates memorable, immersive experiences that break down conventional barriers between artists and audience members to make dance more accessible and meaningful for both. Collapsing the distance between the subject and the stage through critically acclaimed immersive performances and a commitment to education, ODP’s programs simultaneously demystify dance and make dance matter. Learn more about Open Dance Project and their new season here.