In the prologue of his 2019 memoir, cho-
reographer Mark Morris wrote that “the 
live aspect of performance is what appeals: 
the dancers, the musicians, the audience — 
all living beings in the same room. People 
might say they’ve watched a dance on You-
Tube and they have. But they haven’t. It 
isn’t live.” Morris is so passionate about this 
point that he reiterates it in almost every 
subsequent chapter. By the time the book is 
finished, his emphasis of live dance set to 
live music feels practically annoying. 
And yet, on May 29, the New York Times 
published an article on Morris’s new adven-
tures with Zoom — the choreographer used 
the video communication platform to cre-
ate four new works, all now available on 
YouTube. While Zoomed choreography 
may feel like a monotonous phrase as we 
approach the second half of August, Mor-
ris was one of the earlier pioneers in this 
world of digital dance creation. In the May 
article, dance critic Gia Kourlas framed the 
process as inventive; she was excited by the 
now-customary technique, curious about 
his inspiration to still create amid stay-at-
home orders. Morris told Kourlas that he 
felt annoyed by the idea that our lives must 
be on hold throughout this pandemic. “This 
is how we’re living,” he said, “and there’s no 
real reason to fight it” — an admirably quick 
adjustment for someone who, just last year, 
published a book so adamantly in favor of 
live performance.
At the beginning of May, I sat on my 
living room floor and wrote the introduc-
tion to this series, telling the brief story 
of theatres that still remain dark today. I 
asked readers: What happens when we’re 
left with a stage wholly mediated by posts, 
shares, comments and likes? At the time, 
I’m not sure if I thought the ghost lights 
would be off by now, at the end of The Dai-
ly’s summer editions. In May, many ballet 
companies still planned to return to their 
stages come fall; many summer festivals 

still had not announced cancellation. And 
yet, as the days grow shorter, most Ameri-
can stages remain completely empty. Thus, 
as this series comes to a close, it seems my 
question should remain at our forefront — 
what happens when we’re left with a stage 
wholly mediated by posts, shares, com-
ments and likes, and what happens when 
that digital stage continues indefinitely 
into the future? 
I have several potential answers, many 
of which I hope remain embedded in my 
various installments of this series. I wrote 
about Christopher Wheeldon’s “Within 
the Golden Hour” and examined how the 
blooming natural world can provide in-per-
son beauty when ballet goes online. I wrote 
about Tiler Peck’s online dance classes and 
the larger movement of celebrity acces-
sibility afforded by COVID-19. I examined 
and analyzed the many ways in which this 
pandemic exposed structural failures of 
artistic funding: Companies now face fiscal 
meltdowns in part created and aggravated 
by a government that does not acknowl-
edge the economic importance of an arts 
sector. Millions of dancers and backstage 
workers will likely be out of work for over 
a year. With the rise of national protests for 
Black lives, I wrote about the deep-rooted 
racial prejudice of ballet’s past and pres-
ent along with this art form’s substantial 
role in the ripples of white supremacy that 
permeate our shores. I wrote about ballet’s 
structural failures to support Black artists 
and suggested that quarantine be used as 
an active moment to listen, learn and lean 
into the acknowledgement of such wrong-
doings. I also wrote about my deep love for 
this art form. More than once this summer, 
the sounds of ballet’s music and the pat-
terns of its movement have eased my head 
and heart of depressing anxiety generated 
by our country’s sociopolitical reckoning 
that is no doubt far from over. 

7
ARTS

Always keep dancing

Read more at michigandaily.com

ZOE PHILLIPS
Daily Arts Writer

SUMMER SERIES
SUMMER SERIES

It takes only a page or two of reading 
to realize that the cover of “Milkman” is 
deceptive. The binding of the 2018 win-
ner of the Man Booker Prize depicts an 
innocuous, fluorescent-pink sunset — 
one of those once a year, stop-and-snap-
a-photo sunsets that makes “Milkman” 
stands out among its fellow books.
The sedative lightness of the cover 
seems to admit innocuousness. But 
“Milkman” is not innocuous. Nor is it 
gentle, or quiet, or apologetic — nothing 
that the cover may suggest about a sub-
dued, romantic narrative. To say I wasn’t 
excited to read the Booker winner would 
be a lie — based on the superficiality of 
covers and excerpts, I have rooted for 
“Milkman” since its nomination on the 
long-list — but the way I fell in love with 
reading “Milkman” was not in the pleas-
ant, blushing manner I had expected. It 
was a cycle of shock, recoil and return.
Anna Burns’s third novel narrates the 
story of an 18-year-old girl (referred to 
as “Middle Sister,” as none of the charac-
ters in “Milkman” are prescribed actual 
names) over the course of two months. 
Her unnamed town is saturated with vio-
lence — violence from the ubiquitously 
demonized enemy countries “over the 
water,” violence from the renouncers 
of the state that control Middle Sister’s 
town and violence from the state police 
as they intervene in a village of scattered 
revolutionaries. 
Surprisingly, 
though, 
this war-zone setting is but an offhand 
normality in the book. Instead, it is Milk-
man, a paramilitary that begins making 
unwarranted advances on middle sister, 
that takes the place of chief antagonist 
in the book.
At first glance, Burns lays out an invid-
ious landscape that seems to hyperbolize 
the dark experience of growing up as a 
woman in the late 20th century. Maybe, 
Burns seems to suggest, the descent of 
society would look like this for all gen-
ders. But on second thought, the land-
scape Middle Sister walks — and how 
her 
hyperaware, 
rightfully-paranoid 
thoughts congeal in it — becomes pain-
fully real. Middle Sister’s encounters 
with Milkman while walking, her fears 
of being drugged, the pernicious com-
ments coming from third brother-in-law, 
all resonate uncomfortably with the real-
ties meeting women today.
This daring, critical kick at that expe-
rience of being a woman pays off. The 
apotheosis of the book’s dark and appli-
cable portrayals is perhaps Tablets Girl, 

a “girl who was actually a woman,” that 
is one of the local outcasts in Middle 
Sister’s town due to her propensity to 
poison people. This usually takes place, 
most suitably and without retribution, 
in bars. People flee from Tablets Girl, 
people watch their drinks when Tablets 
Girl is around. It’s not just Burns’s clear 
allusion to date-rape that that is to be 
appreciated here, but her spiked humor 
and exaggeration also.
This is not to reduce “Milkman” down 
to a forced, constricted focus on gender-
politics though. Burns’s writing alone is 
remarkable (something I refuse to say 
passively). “Milkman” is brimming with 
endlessly long paragraphs, lose-your-
train-of-thought stretched sentences and 
digressing thoughts from Middle Sister 
that render the book incredibly complex. 
At first, I was perturbed by this formal 
and royal-esque writing, especially upon 
an encounter with a paragraph spanning 
four, almost five, pages. But as I contin-
ued, I found myself — in an unlikely way 
— reading Middle Sister’s voice in an 
uninterrupted pattern even more critical 
and translucent than I expected possible. 
This is assisted by Burns’s near-perfect 
draw of synonyms through the book, 
making her writing appear dependably 
careful and personal.
I was enamored by the characters in 
“Milkman” and the abrasive humor that 
was tacked onto them. It isn’t often that 
I get a full cast of characters (narrator, 
antagonist, family) that are so real, so 
exciting to encounter. Most memorable 
are the “wee sisters,” Middle Sister’s 
three younger sisters who, despite their 
young ages, are infatuated with topics 
such as French revolutionaries, going 
through “Kafka phases” and eavesdrop-
ping every moment they get. Characters 
like the wee sisters offer unexpected 
gratification along Burns’s dark time-
line of events. The real humor displayed 
make “Milkman” all the more authentic 
and pleasurable.
I love “Milkman” because it is a fruit-
ful attempt to offer me hints of a human 
experience I will never be able to under-
stand, let alone be familiar with. Perhaps 
the most evocative and vivid account in 
the vein of social-rebellion and unwant-
ed-gaze I have ever encountered, “Milk-
man” is a narrative that has been told 
repeatedly, even frequently in the 21st 
century. Burns’s unequivocal writing 
turns this narrative into a fearsome 
chant, one well worth shouting along to.

JOHN DECKER
Daily Arts Writer

‘Milkman’, an unfor-
giving look at gender

BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW

Thursday, August 13, 2020
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

