smiling faces all around: creating connections with rube g. and jody o.
Jody Oberfelder Projects is presenting Rube G. — The Consequence of Action at Gibney through March 19 (photo by Julie Lemberger)
Grantland Rice once said of Rube Goldberg, the Pulitzer Prize–winning cartoonist, inventor, engineer, and author, “There may be greater all-round guys than Rube. But I’m sorry. I never met one.”
To paraphrase the legendary American sportswriter, “There may be greater all-round choreographers than Jody Oberfelder. But I’m sorry. I never met one.”
Oberfelder, who is also a filmmaker, is one of the most happy-making people I know. Ever smiling, Jody has the kind of positive attitude about life that lights up those around her. She brings sunshine and flowers wherever she goes, using the planet as her stage. A quick scroll through her social media pages reveals her spontaneously dancing on a shed door, in the woods of Palisades Park, on a beach, and on a hill in Munich.
Which made my screw-up all the more painful; I so did not want to disappoint her and wipe that infectious grin off her face.
Jody had invited me to attend one of her rehearsals for her latest work, Rube G. — The Consequence of Action. The immersive piece is running March 4–5, 11–12, and 18–19 at Gibney by City Hall. I was to meet with her afterward for a one-on-one interview; I had previously interviewed her twice over email, so I was particularly excited to do this one in person while getting a sneak peek at the piece, especially since I’ve been a fan of Rube Goldberg machines since I was a kid, adoring the strange combinations of objects that link together to form a chain of events with an exciting conclusion. For example, one of his cartoons, “A Simple Parachute,” features an aviator, an umbrella, shears, a feather pillow, a penguin, a bucksaw, wood, rope, a gun, and other things you might find in a home. (Well, except for a real penguin.) It’s a metaphor for how people and stuff connect in life.
I was supposed to arrive at 4:00 on a holiday Monday; they had offered to move it to 4:30, but I insisted they not change the time just for me. The subway was fast, so I got to Gibney ridiculously early; I took a leisurely stroll through City Hall Park to check out Wyatt Kahn’s “Life in the Abstract” sculpture exhibit, consisting of a series of large welded steel blocks of such objects as a comb, eyeglasses, a potted plant, a push-button phone, and an umbrella (!), which would have fit right in as elements of a Rube Goldberg machine.
Jody Oberfelder uses the world as her stage (photo courtesy Jody Oberfelder)
A few minutes before four, I went into Gibney and told a receptionist why I was there, that I had an appointment on the eleventh floor. He looked at me like I was in the wrong place.
I was.
I quickly checked my phone and saw that the rehearsal was being held at Open Jar Studios in Midtown, practically walking distance from my apartment. I also noticed that the Gibney building, which I have been in many times before, does not go all the way to eleven.
In a panic, I texted Jody to let her know I was running late. Studio time is expensive, so it made no sense for her to wait for me.
Furious at myself, I tried to figure out the best way to get there; I decided on the subway, which I thought would be faster than a cab.
Jody texted: “ETA?”
I was freaking out. I pride myself on being professional; this was a disaster.
Once in the Times Square area, I ran up and down Forty-Eighth St. trying to locate the entrance. I finally found it and headed up to the eleventh floor. Jody came to the door and let me in; I could see the rehearsal was well underway and didn’t want to interfere with it. Jody led me to one of several folding chairs in the middle of the space.
Dancer and choreographer EmmaGrace Skove was in one of the seats; Grace Yi-Li Tong, Paulina Meneses, and Ashley Merker were performing, with huge smiles on their faces.
Despite my frantic scramble to arrive, I immediately had a huge smile on my face as well.
One at a time the dancers came over to me, asking if I could gently push their shoulder or make my hands into a basket and give them a lift. They sat down in chairs and made movements (crossing their legs, slapping their thighs) that Jody, EmmaGrace, and I imitated in order.
We were living, breathing objects in a Rube Goldberg machine, making playful connections that were warm and welcoming and needed, especially following a pandemic marked by so much loneliness and isolation.
After the performance, we all talked about it, offering our thoughts while Jody took notes. It turns out that I was a “test guest,” not there only to see the rehearsal but to share my response to the work. After apologizing for my tardiness (over and over), I let the dancers know how moved I was by it all, how it instantly changed my mood to one of elation. (You can read my interview with Jody here.)
On March 11, my wife and I went to Gibney, where we were supposed to go, to see Rube G. — The Consequence of Action. As we entered White Box Studio C, we each chose a small stool and placed it atop one of forty yellow dots scattered on the floor around the room.
For the next fifty minutes, Grace, Paulina, and Ashley greeted audience members, bounced off one another, wove in and around the stools, requested that people give them gentle touches, squirmed on the floor, and twisted their bodies together in complex physical arrangements that at times defied logic. Jody, whose career I’ve been following since she and my wife were in the same yoga teacher training class nearly twenty years ago, occasionally joined in when she wasn’t beaming with joy on her stool.
The four performers were wearing Claire Fleury’s spectacular costumes, covered in yellow, orange, blue, green, purple, gray, and red circles and other geometric shapes, part circus, part color field abstraction. The score, by Klezmer trumpeter Frank London, had a fun-loving, carnivalesque quality, with bonus bells and whistles. I’m not sure the piece could have been any more enchanting and uplifting, right up to its sculptural conclusion.
After the show, Jody announced that we had a special guest with us, Goldberg’s granddaughter, Jennifer George, the chief creative officer of the Rube Goldberg Institute for Innovation & Creativity. Jennifer spent much of the pandemic overhauling the organization’s website and planning for the future; the institute sponsors machine, Minecraft, and cartoon contests, visits children’s museums, publishes books, and offers resources so anyone can build their own Rube Goldberg machine.
“Jody did an amazing job conveying kinetic energy, momentum, and chain reaction through this dance,” Jennifer told me. “With the human body as her medium, everything from the props, to the costumes, to the music and sound effects — and even the audience interaction — she and her dancers created a visceral experience, one that evoked machinery and humor, all at the core of my grandfather’s work.”
Rube Goldberg at work on one of his contraption cartoons (© Heirs of Rube Goldberg / courtesy Abrams Books)
She continued, “Even though Rube was a cartoonist and never built the machines he imagined, they were always rendered and described to be in process. I love seeing how artists use the zeitgeist of Rube Goldberg in their own unique medium, and I’m always interested in the end result. And Jody’s The Consequence of Action delivered on its promise in the most charming, smile-inducing, and delightful way.”
As far as what her grandfather would be doing if he lived in this digital age (born on the Fourth of July, he died in 1970 at the age of eighty-seven), Jennifer surmised, “I have to believe that he'd be riffing on NFTs, driverless cars, virtual assistants, and our never-ending dependence on our cell phones — and always with an eye to making us laugh.”
In Rube Goldberg, Jody Oberfelder has found an ideal subject and artistic soul mate, another compatriot who excels at forming connections and making us laugh, no matter how frantic our lives might be.