“We’re fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance.”

- Japanese Proverb printed in the “Frelon: This Year’s Remix” program

The lights dim, the stage goes black, the crowd stirs, and then, chaos!  It’s another year of Frelon. Frelon is fascinating simply for the fact that people are dancing.  And why not?  Why not dance down Academy St., and, upon the acceptance of a double mocha latte at Biggby?  Why not perform an interpretative interlude as you make your way to your morning classes?  Why not dance as you do your homework?  Why don’t we dance while driving our cars?  People only dance in certain settings because dancing is the most naked state a human can be in.  Immediately, a dancer is stripped of all their protective social garments, and they stand there, contorting the bodies in tune with the music and their senses, naked as before Eve knew shame.

To whom is this license for this public nudity granted? Is it the most beautiful of each gender?  Those with professional or formal training?  Only those with impeccable rhythm and musical sensibilities? Each year at Frelon, the fire of exclusivity within dance is brought down from the hoarding gods, and released to the public masses.

As in the past, Frelon has its hits and misses.  To the casual observer, some routines seem to work, and some not so much.  Many appear to be spot-on to the intended choreography, while some feign articulation for unrefined precision.  This year is no exception. With such an amalgamation of performers, there is disunity not only between dances, but within individual dances themselves.  More experienced and engaging dancers not only themselves stand out, but reveal their less tantalizing counterparts as well. The best dances–such as Pointe Percussion, choreographed by Marina Takagi–were marked by internal unity glued together by obvious technical refinement.

Yet to isolate the dances of Frelon on a scale of “meh” to “wow” misinterprets the spirit of the program on the whole.  Frelon has, and I hope will always be, a celebration of the human spirit to physically express itself in an attempt to articulate the individual. The chaos grants us fools the opportunity to dance to make sense of things, should we take it.  Several Frelon routines begin with flashing lights, loud noises, screaming, running around, sirens, and the like.  This chaos begins to fade into rationality only by progressing into the choreography of the dance.

Frelon is significant as a litmus test for our generation’s contemporary musical tastes.  While on a road trip with my mother, I once asked her if the music of her generation–from the late ’60s through the ’70s–spoke to her generation as a musical representation of their experience.  This phenomenon of mainstream popular music being the soundtrack to average life is most overtly seen in the blues and many jazz forms such as bebop, and, to a more mythologized extent, evident in the rebellious nature of some rock ‘n’ roll.  For years, however, there seems to be a disconnect between our generation and the mainstream music produced for and by us.  While we may dance to whatever it is they play in the basements of house parties, we are not dancing with the message and musical-cultural ramifications of that music.

Frelon affords an opportunity to explore this notion of generational soundtrack.  Whereas only those with exceptional social clout are able to control what it is people dance to at house parties and mainstream clubs, at Frelon, people are not only able to choose what they dance to, but how they are going to dance to it, and to some extent, who is going to be doing the dancing.  The one exception to the aforementioned pop-generational discrepancy of note is Lady Gaga‘s “Bad Romance.”  It’s nonsensical opening of onomatopoeia narrates an angry trans bass with enough energy to topple sky-scrapping fortifications of meaning and emotion, shaking them to their very cores.  While it is love the speaker claims to want, Gaga does not sound like she wants love at all, but calling for more decapitation than intimacy.  Soon after this proclamation, the song transitions into its trademark chorus of “I want your love/And I want your revenge/You and me could write a bad romance [...] Caught in a bad romance” in which the lyrics solidify the duality between pleasure and pain, resolution and conflict present in the song’s schizophrenia.

This conflicting sentiment of yearning for both pleasure and pain is emblematic of uncertainties pervading today’s American youth.  Confronted with persistent murmurings of an uncertain economy, we prepare to leave the relative safe zone of undergrad.  We will encounter an America not in decline, but in transition, jockeying to restructure so as to globally keep the emerging China and India US-dependent sub-powers.  We are entering a society that meets lovers on the internet in relationships built upon qualifications entered into electronic boxes followed by a button that says “save and continue.”  These relationships are subsequently not consummated until Facebook pages have been notified.  We are a wartime society living a peacetime civilian existence, our armed citizens overseas under fire without the support of public forethought and effective protests encouraging their safe return to American shores.  Simply put, we are a young generation living in an America of yet-to-be resolved contradictions.  So what is our theme song?

Lady Gaga

Ultimately, Gaga wants her “bad romance.”  She is a masochist.  This makes Dwight Trice’s Frelon interpretation of the song in his “Bad Romance” all the more interesting.  The message of his crowd-pleasing and effectively theatrical choreography was terrifying.  Trice is the male in a bad romance with Frelon director Kristen Jost providing his better half.  Trice is emotionally and psychologically abusive, leaving Jost to her own lonesomeness and pain.  Whereas Gaga derives pleasure from just such malaise, in Trice’s dance, Jost rebels against it, rejuvenating into a vengefully healed individual.  While in the song, Gaga wants not only the complications, but an orgy of past lovers to make her hurt-felt love all the more dramatic (I want your love and all your lover’s revenge), a renewed Jost reappears with an army of girlfriends assumed to be her confidants, but who, according to the song, are Trice’s ex’s, back to dole out comeuppance.  Trice is then physically abused by this army of bad dates, conquered, and left for dead as the audience roars in approval.

What is interesting is not that an army of women destroy a hurtful man, but that the dance completely reinterprets Gaga’s already conflicting masochistic anthem.  The struggle between pleasure and pain in Gaga’s song is transformed into triumphant revitalization in Trice’s choreography.  The relationship in the song ends as it begins with unintelligible sound words related to “Roma,” suggesting that Gaga is just as confused and stuck with wanting her love as she was when she began singing about it some five minutes earlier.  She has gone nowhere, but in Trice’s relationship, a complete reversal has occurred.  Gaga’s audience has articulated meaning in social mobility from an inherently contradictory song without a message, and applied it to a modern relationship.

The fact that Trice was able to make sense out of chaos, articulating the individual despite its environment, is significant, as it is the task of our generation.  It is the contradiction within Gaga’s anthem that makes it such an appropriate candidate to be the soundtrack of those soon to be entering a society without all of the answers, pervaded with the conflicting notions of War-Peace, Love-Math, America-World, and Ambition-Structure.  While what our generation’s soundtrack will ultimately be is still open for debate, the always enjoyable Frelon provides the perfect proving ground for what it is we choose to dance to and how we choose to do it.

Frelon continues to run through Saturday, April 24 at 8:00 pm in the Dalton Theater of Kalamazoo College.  Tickets $5, $3 students.

Back in December, students here at Kalamazoo College participated in the Core Alcohol and Drug Survey in an attempt to diagnose the alcohol, drugs, and sex students here participate in.  Since there is no indication that anything has changed between then and now, an evaluation of the data allows a relevant diagnosis of the more  nefarious aspects of K social culture and what this says about us as students.

Alcohol and drug consumption within a college demographic is essentially a litmus test for a healthy college community. By getting an advanced education, people in college–while extremely fortunate–are doing an unbelievable amount of good for not just themselves, but their community and the world as a whole.  Principles appreciated in the college academic setting follow graduates throughout their lives, dictating motives of social responsibility and societal contribution.  But, as my father says, “Work hard, play hard,” which, the more I think about it, is sadistically a uniquely American school of thought.  As we progress through college, we (hopefully) learn the wisdoms of how to handle the pressures of academic life.  When encountering adversity, the malleable college student transitions from phases of “freaking out” in their underclassman years to fazes of “there’s some s**t I gotta git done” as they come closer to graduation.  We need to relax.  When we respect our educations, we are able to understand that things are going to be OK.  As a sailor once suggested, “Everything in moderation.” Or, some things in moderation.

For the survey to put the binge drinking quota at five drinks seems a little low, with 48% of students claiming to have “binged” in the previous two weeks.  A 750 ml bottle of wine contains about five five-ounce servings, and a bottle of red hardly seems like reproachable opulence, considering the 55% of respondents reporting that friends would “disapprove” of an incident of bingeing. The most common reasons K students drink are to “break the ice” (81%), to “enhance social activity” (76.2%), to “give people something to talk about” (76.1%), and “to give people something to do” (76.9%).  All this is quite ironic when considering that only 55.9% of respondents claim to have “engaged in sexual intercourse within the past year.” Of course the real number is much lower, probably around 37% or less, according to an informal and unauthorized social survey conducted by Kosmo staff since the release of the Core Survey.  For the apparent lack of “things to do” and the apparent success rate of “ice breakers,” one wonders where all that social energy is channeled.  Indeed, 19.4% of the polled had used alcohol the last time they had sex, an almost identical figure to the 18.3% of respondents who consider alcohol to “make men sexier.”

The largest disparity between K students and our national counterparts came in the categories of academic persistence.  While 22% of a  reference group  of 71,189 students from 148 institutions reported having “performed poorly on a test or important project” due to their alcohol or drug use, only 11% of K students admitted a similar fate.  Furthermore, 30.1% of the aggregated poll “missed a class” due to substance use, more than double the rate of 14.6% found here at K.  Yet the hangover rate at K was higher than the national average–65.2% versus 62.5%–indicating more academic fortitude in the face of typical college party culture.

K also digressed from the national average in our consumption of illicit drugs and marijuana.  When considering “Lifetime Prevalence,” K students consume cocaine (3.8%), sedatives (3.8%), and opiates (1.3%) at less than half the rate of the national average, while matching our fellow Americans in hallucinogens (8.3%), and beating them out in marijuana (52.2% at K versus 45.3% nationally).   No K respondents predicted steroids to have “lifetime prevalence.”

With 74% of underaged K students claiming to have consumed alcohol while at college, the Core Survey brings into question the pragmatism of an “abstinence” oriented campus alcohol policy.  While the school is legally obligated to a “21 means 21″ stance on alcohol consumption, everyone knows this is like a squirrel asking a semi truck to “please desist” before being run over,  as effective as posting a “1 m.p.h.” speed limit sign on I-94 W, and as futile as requesting a hold on further tuition hikes while inflation plays catch-up.  It is silly that the drinking age in the United States is 21 years of age.  While 18 is too european, 19 years would theoretically keep alcohol buyers out of high schools, while in effect allowing students to moderate their own consumption while at college.  Consuming large amounts of alcohol is often a social construction.  Indeed, 67.7% of K respondents “believe the social atmosphere on campus promotes alcohol use,” while 83.2% of students consider “drinking… central in the social [lives] of male students.”  Correspondingly, 49% of K students have “felt pressure to drink or use drugs.”

A drinking age of 21 makes alcohol consumption “something to be desired” for many undergrads, increasing its appeal as a “forbidden fruit.”  Similar to “Alter Boy Syndrome,” where it is the very sheltering of a youth that makes an exploration into the Dionysian so enticing, it is obvious that the very existence of the law is all the encouragement we students need to break it.  Everything about college is a heightened experience intended to mimic the lives and careers it theoretically prepares us to have.  We work hard, worry hard, dream hard, love hard, drink hard, play hard, cry hard, and laugh hard.  For many of us, college really is the first opportunity to live a life that does not involve being home at 7:30 for mommy’s dinner.  It is human nature to take exploration to the extreme, and extreme is the nature of exploration itself.  I see people fall-down drunk at Saturday night parties, covered in their own spittle and viscera who, five or ten years from now are going to be family men and women with respectable jobs contributing to the livelihoods of their fellow man.  Sunday morning, they will pull themselves out of a bed, scrub the slovenly grime off their wretched bodies, drink plenty of water, and prepare for Monday’s class.

It is important to acknowledge that alcohol and drug use is not without its risks.  Alcohol was present in  83% of reported “physical violence,” 100% of “theft involving force or threat of force,” and 50% of “forced sexual touching or unwanted sexual intercourse.”  We’ve all seen someone too drunk, and can name people who’s behavior we feel has changed due to drug use, evident in the  12.9% of K respondents who think they “might have a drinking or other drug problem,” a figure higher than the 10.8% from the national sample.

Like all sins, however, drinking and drug use has its time and place.  Jack Kerouac lived by the mantra of “try never get drunk outside your own house,” or someone else’s house, or a bar… Obviously to live life like a writer who died of a combination of depression and kidney failure would be both unwise and extremely cliché, but Kerouac had a point. When it comes to substance use, don’t allow one part of your life to interfere with another, and when I look around, I think we here at Kalamazoo College are doing just fine.  While any community has its exceptions, by and large, alcohol and drugs seem to provide a seasoning that compliments the already tantalizing academic and social entrée served up here at Kalamazoo.

It was January 16, 2010, and eight of the roughly 17 channels I receive on my 13-inch TV/VCR combo were tuned to Kid Rock (Alright Detroit!) mouthing a rendition of “One Love.” Four days prior, a titanic 7.0 magnitude earthquake rumbled outside Port au Prince, Haiti, leaving hundreds of thousands dead, millions homeless, scores wounded, and me with nothing to watch on basic cable.

The Haitian earthquake is the most extreme recent example of a Fad Cause, that is, a time-sensitive period of reaction to a horrific event that permeates American popular culture.  The reaction to an event such as an earthquake, a flood, or a epidemic disease is considered to be a “fad” simply for the fact at the end of the day, the earth keeps turning, and life goes on for the rest of us.  The human consciousness is not vast enough, nor are their enough hours in the course of a day to warrant giving all the causes out there in the world (or beyond) the amount of attention those closest to their wake feel they demand.  Our limited capacity to consciously care is what allows us to function with some level of sanity.  If we cared about everything there is to care about, we’d all go mad.

“Fads” come and go based on two factors, the first being the initial catalyst, and the second being what happens in the world immediately following the event.  Take the 2005 flooding of New Orleans.  The tragedy captured the hearts and minds of millions, and immediately following the hurricane, no major event occurred on a scale large enough to cause Katrina’s relevance to dip in popularity.  The storm gave liberals something else to use against an already-despised president, it facilitated a dialogue on still-pressing concerns in American social relations, and it gave the media something other than the two wars to talk about.  Yet with such phenomena as the economic downturn, swine flu, the events leading up to Obama’s election, the death of Michael Jackson, and the Olympics, Katrina has steadily migrated from the forethought to being an afterthought of the collective American consciousness.  Though the city is still in the process of recovering to a pre-flood status, one would be hard-pressed to find a headline or featured story recently published regarding continued efforts in the Bayou. While the rehabilitation of New Orleans could benefit from a return to its past perch atop US collective consciousness, it is simply old news.  Other examples of past fads are abound:  The memorial at Ground Zero? Everyone dying of pig flu?  Even Gorean global warming seems to have dropped off the populous map.

While it is inevitable for the public to pack up their populous interest bags and move on down to the next station (take the earthquake in Chile), this migration is even better reflected in the lives of actual survivors.  While the fascination of the public may shift from one circumstance to another (hello, coup d’etat in Kyrgyzstan!), an effected population is temporarily removed from this vicious cycle of interest, instead centered on a return to normalcy.  A former resident of Port au Prince, for example, is probably more concerned about adequate food, water, and healthcare for their children than they are with the revelation that the main departure point for the American war in Afghanistan is now an anarchist state.

One can only care about so much, and so the key is choose about what one is going to care and why.  This is why Lespwa Fè Viv: A Benefit for Haiti is so important.  The fundraising event, presented tonight, Thursday April 8 at Stetson Chapel, challenges the notion of the Fad Cause in a bold statement that there is no time like the present to rekindle compassion about an unresolved conflict, regardless of whether or not celebrities are still tweeting about it.  Wonderfully timed not quite three months after the initial catastrophe, Lespwa Fè Viv (“Hope Makes One Live”) will use a combination of song, poetry, and cultural story to paint a picture of a Haiti still deserving of respectful foreign financial and moral compassion.

“It’s amazing that they still exist, [when considering] the things they’ve overcome as a nation,” says Amelia Liang, K ’10, a founding organizer of the event.

Damage following the January 12th quake.

Liang rejects the popular viewpoint that Haiti’s condition prior to the earthquake was strictly a result of domestic turbulence and political corruption.   “A reoccurring theme in US [media] coverage of Haiti is seeing Haiti as an isolated nation, a static, unchanging nation,” Liang said.  “These articles speak of the poverty of Haiti, the mortality of Haiti, etc., etc., but they don’t consider the US government’s role in it.  A lot of the articles I read didn’t even mention that we occupied their country for 19 years and rewrote their constitution.  A lot of them don’t mention the fact that we were responsible for the ousting of one of their only democratically elected presidents in the ’90s and again in the 2000s.  They don’t mention that we funded the Duvalier dictatorship for 30 years. I find that problematic.”

While maintaining popular concern for Haiti has been a key struggle for Lespwa Fè Viv, their 138 group members on Facebook points to a positive reception. They hope for the benefit to use cultural understanding in order to reinvigorate awareness of the need of continued support for our rebuilding neighbor to the South.  “My biggest hope is to make a lot of money, quite frankly,” Liang said, “but my second hope is to make people think about Haiti, and to spark an interest in some of the audience so they continue to know more about Haiti.  It’s a fascinating country that showcases so many of the problems we have today with a global economy.  [I hope for them] just to think about Haiti and why it is the way it is today.”

It is April 8, 2010.  I turn on the TV, and there is nothing whatsoever on about Haiti.  And that’s OK.  What is not OK is to forget about the people there whose lives Mother Earth forever altered three months ago.  Lespwa Fè Viv shows our ability as a community to transcend society’s constant influx of new Fad Causes and revisit an old friend in the name of a global community.