Multi-Media Pledge of Allegiance Recreates America 
BY ARIELLA COHEN

Entering into the multi-media world of Pledge of Allegiance, there is none of the escape often associated with art, rather a hauntingly beautiful reminder of America’s tragically misdirected everyday. Directed by Conservatory sophomore César Alvarez and choreographed by senior José Melendez, this 45 minute presentation succeeded at drawing the audience into a chaos of over-stimulation with its use of familiar images, voices and motions to create something wholly unfamiliar. Layering a barrage of electronic and manually created sounds and representations, Alvarez, Melendez and six dancers recreate America as a twenty first-century circus, forcing us to confront the cages, tightropes and illusions that make up the American lifestyle.
Pledge of Allegiance uses multiple forms of art, all of which figure prominently into America’s history and future to tell a story of America’s present. 
The presentation divides into three segments of video, dance, music and costume themed by what Alvarez refers to as the modern day social diseases and obsessions that are shaping the United States at the beginning of the 21st century. Information, images and excess are themes of the respective sections. Pledge of Allegiance deals with an America that Alvarez sees as dictated by an obsessed, superficial, consumerist and materialistic mainstream society. 

In grade school Alvarez never much thought about each morning’s flagpole ritual. Years later Alvarez has taken a closer look at America’s flag and is now asking to what it is, really, that Americans pledge allegiance. 
At the center of this performance hangs a 10x15 foot flag. The red, white and blue patchwork pop-culture dominates Hallock and serves as a microcosm of the piece. “You see all these disparate and disjunct images and then, when you step back and squint it becomes a flag, both are a barrage of words, sounds, images and objects that when you step back a moment, illustrate a cultural identity,” Alvarez said. 

Just as the flag is a collage of corporate logos, technophile toys and other consumer-friendly symbols, Alvarez’s piece is a collage of reactions, which also, in a very different way, represents our culture. 
“When you say ‘pledge of allegiance’ you pledge to this corporate culture, this obsession with technology and materialism. This Barbie image. Patriotism is submission to consumer culture,” Alvarez said. Gesturing to the 150 foot flag he continued, saying “This piece will question why most people don’t notice if you put an American flag on a bikini or a beer commercial but politicians go nuts if you burn it as a political statement.” 
The Christmas season, with its atmosphere of mall-fed spirituality, proved the perfect starting point for Pledge of Allegiance. Following Winter Term, the piece’s creation extended into a semester long TIMARA private reading. “I come from a very political background and for a very long time I been trying to incorporate politics into my art. This is the culmination,” Alvarez said. All the music in the piece is the original work of Conservatory students, much of the score influenced strongly by Alvarez’s training as a jazz saxophonist in the Conservatory. 
Melendez’s choreography was requested early on in Pledge’s creation. The two students had worked together on a previous piece and Alvarez knew of the political and social nature of Melendez’s work. In this work, where social commentary is being expressed through movement a choreographer of Melendez’s awareness was necessary. 
“I started to think about my own identity and how I distance myself from that cultural ideal which we address in the piece. There is a sense of void, of distance from emotion. In the choreography I explored never fitting into American ideals and show how other interact with this. The audience is never made to feel comfortable,” Melendez said. 

Pledge of Allegiance is Melendez’s Senior Choreography project and will be his last performance before graduating this May. Pledge of Allegiance will run this Friday at 8 p.m. and Saturday at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. in the Lewis Environmental Studies Center.