Fall Performing Arts series kicks off with Kannapolis: A Moving Portrait
By Jake Bolster ’19, Contributing Writer
Hamilton kicked off its Fall Performing Arts series on Sept. 22 in the Wellin Theatre with Kannapolis: A Moving Portrait, a visual and auditory experience performed by Jenny Scheinman, Robbie Fulks, Robbie Gjersoe, and directed by Finn Taylor.
First, Scheinman, Fulks, and Gjersoe took the stage. Afterwards, Scheinman provided us some background information on the filmmaker H. Lee Waters, the inspiration for her musical piece. He relayed that Kannapolis was a small town in North Carolina and that Waters would take his camera with him all around the town during the years leading up to the United States’ involvement in World War II.
The projection opened with a black and white fast motion video of a group of men walking down a road; cars infrequently passed them in both directions, and eventually, the video was played in reverse. Next was a video of a black man dancing in the street with a broom. Presumably he was cleaning the street and Waters came across him on the job. Throughout the show, it became clear that Waters was interested in feet and dancing. Taylor chose to portray both heavily, giving Kannapolis a sense of vivacity and movement. There were numerous sequences in which the camera would pan up from dancing feet to reveal abashed yet excited faces, and I frequently forgot that the music I was hearing was not the music those onscreen were expressing their joy to. Scheinman, Fulks, and Gjersoe did an excellent job of crafting a genuine soundtrack to these people’s lives. The string ensemble, composed of two guitars, a violin, and occasionally a banjo, provided fast paced and lively southern-feeling music and the gentle southern twang of the three performers added authenticity to the whole piece.
Once we settled into the music, the people we saw onscreen became our focus as an audience for the next hour or so. Waters seemed to be interested in capturing people as they were, giving little to no evident prompt as to how his subjects should behave when filmed. As a result, it felt like we were receiving a peek into the lives of ordinary Americans from the late 1930s. Shots that stand out in my memory include those of people diving off a diving board into a pool, alternating with shots of what looked like workers jumping off a rock onto sand. The latter video was played forward and in reverse. Shots of men hitting the tough sand were reminders that, though Waters’ camera seems to reveal only the happiness of Kannapolis, there was a sinister side Taylor hinted at through his direction, and that Scheinman combats in her music.
The 1930s were a time of segregation in America, especially in the South, and even Waters’ seemingly unbiased camera could do little to hide that. Though all the subjects of photos and video alike are beaming, few photos feature a mix of black and white subjects. If this is accidental on Waters’ part, Taylor makes sure to make the lack of interracial photos clear in a ten minute segment in the latter half of the performance that heavily juxtaposes photos consisting of only black people with ones featuring only white people. The images featuring black people showed them scowling, if not ignoring the camera all together, while their white counterparts beamed coily, as if greeting the sight of the camera like an old friend. If Waters’ pictures sometimes show division, Scheinman’s music does not. Her lyrics and musical arrangement added a drop of heartfelt sorrow during this ten minute segment, clearly evoking sympathy for and acknowledging the innuendo of segregation in Waters’ photos.
Thus, through an authentically southern sound, smart direction, and honest treatment of subject matter, Kannapolis: A Moving Portrait proved proved to be a minimalistic, subtly thought-provoking hour of entertainment.
