Ryan McNamara has staged Whitney Houston karaoke events inside the Whitney, disrupted mundane press conferences with orchestral performance art, and created a “story ballet about the Internet” for Performa. Given that background, his current project isn't so leftfield: A choreographed procession up the High Line in which four costumed dancers recite the text of a 1979 Jimmy Carter speech. Dubbed “Missy Malarky Ying Yang” (after the name of Carter’s daughter Amy’s cat at the time), the performance breaths new life into the infamously unsuccessful text, which is popularly known as the “malaise” or “crisis of confidence” speech. ARTINFO met up with McNamara at the High Line’s new headquarters — next to the future downtown home of the Whitney Museum of American Art — to talk about the performance, which will be staged (weather permitting) July 16 and 17 at 7:30 p.m., beginning at the Gansevoort Street end of the elevated path.
What was your connection to Carter’s speech itself, considering that you weren’t born at the time it was delivered?
When I was first able to vote [around when Gore was running], I became attached to Jimmy Carter — and wishing I could vote for him. Throughout that election year I collected Carter T-shirts and “campaigned” for him, even though he wasn’t running. The 1979 speech has a mythological aspect to it: Carter is building a mythology around how if we solve the energy crisis we’ll solve the crisis of confidence in America. It’s a rebirth. One of his speech writers talked about how Carter was a born again Christian — how he had not done well as a president up until that point, and how he was going to repent for his sins.
In the speech, Carter basically listed critiques ordinary Americans had made of his performance.
It was kind of amazing — he had people tell him what a bad job he was doing, and then he reported it to the country. The idea being that if we all admit our sins we can, like the Phoenix from the ashes, rise above this. Conservatives still bring the speech up as [showing how] liberals want to blame you. Carter is saying: “I can only do so much. Ya’ll need to change the way you’re living. Overconsumption is why we have an energy problem.” He’s weirdly philosophical: “We’ve learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.” Presidents don’t talk this way, and this speech is one of the reasons why they don’t.
The speech is still a negative case story for political historians.
For the 30th anniversary of it, the speech writers did op-eds for the New York Times and the New Yorker. In a way, they’re still having to explain themselves for it. But as far as political speeches go, it’s one of the best that I’ve read. This maligned speech is the one that I connect to the most. And what I find interesting is there’s a lot of messed-up juxtapositions in it: Carter’s talking about stopping overconsumption, but the American economy relies on overconsumption.
At one point he says, “We will protect our environment. But when this nation critically needs a refinery or a pipeline, we will build it.” You can imagine that someone told him: Try to sound tough here.
The version of the speech that we’re doing is abridged. Carter had a tendency to repeat himself. I didn’t add anything, but I subtracted. I’m definitely making it a little more liberal. On that line I say, “We will protect the environment.” Period. It’s my version of history, I’ll admit that.
Is this the first time you’ve made a piece that incorporated a text like this?
The genesis was in a project I did in Hong Kong in May called “Score”: 20 performances in 20 minutes with 20 performers. One was “Apology Aerobics.” We took a potpourri of different political speeches that were apologizing for wrongdoing — an affair, prostitutes — and then we did these aerobics moves to it.
What is Carter’s demeanor like during the speech? Is he very glum?
He had a guy who went on to be a Broadway director come and help him with his delivery. One of the things was that Carter had a sing-songy way of speaking. They told him to get rid of that. And he always smiles, he was famous for his giant smile. They said, You shouldn’t be smiling while you’re saying these words. But [for “Missy Malarky Ying Yang”] we’ve added syncopation to the speech, so we’re putting the sing-songy back into it.
Can you tell me about the choreography for the performance?
I was thinking: What is it to make choreography that’s not to music at all, but that would still have a relationship of moves on sound? To create a choreography for a political speech, almost a tongue-in-cheek marketing campaign for the speech. Alright, the subject matter is not so sexy, but we’ll kind of amp it up, make it a little Las Vegas. The two things are clashing. But in the same way, my interest in this speech and my love of decadence are clashing. I believe in everything Carter says here, but at the same time here we are in the visual art world, which is pretty decadent.
The dancers are going to do all of these cliches that you’re not supposed to do. We had freedom with that; we didn’t worry about being cool. It’s a political speech, so it’s not going to be cool. There’ll be a Pied Piper, town crier effect with an audience that has come to see the piece, and this other audience that is just encountering it. We’ve been rehearsing in the middle of the day, and these performers are amazing — they’re reciting, doing the movement, and negotiating the crowd all at once. I told the performers not to listen to the speech. I didn’t want them to have that context for it, I wanted it to be somewhat disconnected, so sometimes the movement relates to the words and sometimes it’s almost random, like Dada, smashing together two things that make absolutely no sense. And sometimes it’s nearly offensive...
Are you playing on the idea of the speech that people were having the finger pointed at them?
As part of the choreography there’s a lot of pointing. And I’ve definitely instructed the performers to engage with individuals. It’s not this sort of bubble that’s moving through; it’s about looking at people.
Is there a connection to the site of the High Line?
The High Line is a cross-section of America in a way you don’t get in the rest of the city. It’s really like giving this speech a second chance — going out into America while staying on the west side of Manhattan.
The costumes everyone will be wearing are covered in images of Amy Carter from the late ’70s, and the piece itself takes its name from her cat.
I’ve always loved Amy. The cat’s name, Missy Malarky Ying Yang — that’s a message from another dimension. In the ’80s and ’90s she was a somewhat radical political activist. Her sort of liberalism is a liberalism that can never be president. Missy Malarky’s the mascot, but Amy is our spirit guide throughout the performance.
