Overview
Come home Charley Patton (2004) is the final part of Ralph Lemon’s Geography Trilogy, blending dance, video, and narrative to examine race, memory, trauma, and American identity through historical and personal lenses.
Performance Structure and Themes
- The piece integrates dance, documentary footage, and autobiography, creating a collage-like, multi-layered performance.
- Central themes include racism, lynching, suicide, and the legacy of the Civil Rights movement.
- Lemon uses physical sites from civil rights history, counter-memorials, and personal encounters during research to inform the work.
- The performance explores how different generations recall and interpret critical historical events.
- Motifs such as “holding up a wall,” blues dance styles, circus acts, falling, and whistling are woven throughout the piece.
- Referenced narratives include the lynching of Elias Clayton and stories from the Mississippi Delta, alongside elements relating to Arna Bontemps, James Baldwin, and other cultural figures.
Visual and Technical Elements
- Multiple video screens present contrasting imagery: animated figures (like Baldwin), Lemon’s site visits, and live dance.
- Stage props include moving mic stands, ladders, tables, and hoops, symbolizing instability, transformation, and memorialization.
- The use of offstage voices, whispers, and lip-synching blurs boundaries between presence and absence.
Artistic and Emotional Impact
- The work is emotionally intense, provoking reflection on memory, mourning, and the persistence of historical trauma.
- Dancers alternate between mirroring, confronting, and physically struggling in patterns that evoke both unity and fragmentation.
- Scenes such as being sprayed by a fire hose reference specific civil rights violence.
- The performance intentionally includes moments of obscurity and discomfort to challenge the audience.
Key Questions and Reflections Raised
- The piece addresses questions of American spiritual, social, political, and aesthetic identity.
- It examines the process and importance of remembering and memorializing traumatic events.
- The show ends with a reflection on shifting definitions of identity, as spoken by Baldwin’s figure.
Post-Performance Interaction
- The reviewer met Ralph Lemon and several dancers after the show, noting their striking presence and aesthetic in person.
- There is hope the trilogy will be released on DVD for broader access.
Recommendations / Advice
- Audiences are encouraged not to miss the performance during its final run, especially in Pittsburgh on March 19.