P.S. 122 Field Trips visits Wadsworth

Tuesday, April 9, 1996

By Colette Jue

Daily Bruin Contributor

Danny Hoch, a 25-year-old solo performer from Queens, insists
that there is no definite message in his work. He’s just trying to
get people to listen.

"I can’t really say there is a message," Hoch says. "That’s sort
of a negative way to look at an artist’s work. All I know is that
people come out of my shows and tell me what they get from it."

Hoch, along with the rest of the performers in P.S. 122 Field
Trips, will be on stage this Friday at the Veterans Wadsworth
Theater. Other performers include dancer/choreographer Molissa
Fenley, comedian Reno and multimedia artist John Kelly.

P.S. 122 Field Trips is a touring project from New York’s
Performance Space 122, committed to supporting New York artists and
dedicated to bringing its audiences a diversity of cultures, ages,
points of views and sexual orientations.

Located in a former public school, P.S. 122 was founded in 1979,
and since then has achieved national and international recognition
as an innovative performance organization. "I would call it the
alternative performance mecca of New York City," Hoch says.

"People aren’t familiar with alternative performances. They’re
not used to seeing one person on stage doing a dance, or they’re
not used to seeing a comic that’s very lewd but yet political at
the same time in the way Reno (another member of the group) is, or
they’re not used to seeing someone like me play different
characters and play a lot around with language. But I think things
will be a little different in L.A.. We’ve had a lot of successes in
universities. Young people are more open to what we’re doing."

Dancer/choreographer Molissa Fenley, who will also be performing
Friday says, "It’s been kind of fascinating to be backstage with
people of all different thinking and opinions and points of view.
Danny Hoch is a theater actor doing character monologues and Reno
is a provoker about social issues. John Kelly is a singer and
dramatic artist and I’m a dance choreographer. It’s an evening of
four very different mediums put together. We don’t have much in
common except that we all are very committed to our works.

"What I present is a very serious dance art piece. It’s a very
different feel from what the other artists are doing. What I do is
a very contemporary dance.

"It’s like you enter this dream world. The images that arise
from it are perhaps suggested from the dance, perhaps suggested
from the music, perhaps suggested from the kind of serenity of the
piece."

Fenley attributes her unique dancing style to the fact that she
has been exposed to so many different cultures. Born in Las Vegas,
she grew up in Nigeria, moved to Spain and later returned to the
United States.

"I lived in Nigeria for 10 years as a child, so a lot of my
development years were in an open jungle environment," Fenley says.
"I feel that my use of space has to deal with a kind of
openness.

"The human form is unbelievably suggestive of all sorts of
cultures, all sorts of feelings, and I just feel that it’s very
pure. As a viewer watching a dancer, there’s a real sense of being
able to identify with that person because we’re all one person.
Watching one body in space is sort of like watching yourself in
space and then watching everybody else in space. It’s a sense of
universality."

Since 1988, Fenley has been performing these kinds of highly
personal solo works. "Dancing and performing is really in my blood.
I’m not happy unless I’m doing it. Since I’m a choreographer, the
art reflects the person ­ what the person is thinking or
feeling."

The first part of Fenley’s work, "Regions," which she will
perform this Friday, was created when she was confined to a
wheelchair after she injured her knee last year.

"Now that I can do 10 times more than just be in a chair, it’s
kind of interesting because there’s a sense of what can you do in
this totally limited state and still make it a sort of artistic
experience," Fenley says.

Hoch’s work, like Fenley’s, is influenced heavily from his
personal experiences."(I) bring characters that I feel very close
to, characters that are a part of me ­ characters that are
part of my family, that are on my block and around my neighborhood
­ center stage in a positive and complex light," he says.

"Language is the thing that drives me in my work," Hoch
explains. "Yes, I have a political agenda, and yes, I have an
artistic agenda, but language is always the element that’s driving
everything that I do."

Hoch’s interest in spoken language perhaps is due to the various
languages and cultures he was exposed to as a child. Hoch grew up
in Queens, where there was no racial majority. "Everybody was a
minority, so that definitely had an effect on me," he says.

"I never really identified with white American culture. My
godmother was Cuban and spoke Spanish and my two
next-door-neighbors were black North American and down the hall was
an Indian family and an Odessan family. My best friend downstairs
was Puerto Rican and Israeli."

Hoch is trying to expose people to new languages, "whether it’s
foreign language or a different type of language in English." In
1994, he won an Obie award for his solo show, "Some People," which
appeared on HBO last fall. The show is about the English language
spoken by Jamaicans, Jews, Puerto Ricans, Cubans and African
Americans. The characters range from a Polish plumber, struggling
with English, to a rapper trying to order Chinese takeout, to a
Hispanic father who has recently lost his son.

Hoch, of Russian-Polish descent, portrays characters, that are
similar to the people who surrounded him during his youth, honestly
and with a heightened sensitivity and understanding. Far from what
he sees as the patronizing roles seen throughout history, Hoch
believes his characters are real.

"I think sometimes my accuracy pains people and it pains people
because of the history of minstrelness in the United States," he
says. "The history of white people portraying nonwhite people in
the United States is negative and racist and degrading. Any time
people like my characters are brought center stage on TV or in the
movies, it’s always in a negative light or a purely comic
light.

"I’m sort of in an odd position because sometimes I feel like if
I was black and I was doing some of the things I was doing and
saying some of the things I was saying, I wouldn’t have achieved
the fame because I would’ve been too threatening with some of my
political messages. But because I’m white, I think Hollywood or
scared white America can sort of swallow it better. They kind of
get a kick out of it, but underlying there are these subliminal
things."

Perhaps part of Hoch’s effectiveness and appeal is his
sincerity. Only 25 years old, Hoch has experienced, learned, and
consequentially matured a great deal. He used to break dance in the
streets, was a graffiti artist, became involved with drugs and got
arrested. Hoch later decided to become an actor. "I didn’t identify
with a lot of the roles," he says. "I wound up auditioning for
these really white-bread sitcoms and movies that were all racist
and boring and it was all empty. I wound up searching for a way to
express where I come from, which is a community of many different
languages and colors and shades and cultures."

Hoch encourages everyone, especially younger audiences, to come
to his performance Friday. "They’ve been to parties before and
they’ve been to movies before, but they’ve never been to live
theater like I’m going to do; I guarantee them that," Hoch
says.

"Sitting in front of a TV or a movie screen, you remain passive
and you have no responsibility to what’s going on on-screen, but if
you’re sitting in a theater, you have nowhere to run unless you
decide to walk out. If something makes you uncomfortable or
something questions what you’re doing, that’s a risk. People need
to take risks and dropping acid is not taking a risk. Going to the
theater is taking a risk."

PERFORMANCE: P.S. 122 Field Trips at the Veterans Wadsworth
Theater on Friday, April 12. For more info call (310) 825-2101.