Last Friday I attended what I consider to be one of the weirdest
concerts I have ever been too. I do not remember ever feeling so
confused after a dance performance. The concert was made up of seven
duets that of course ranged in quality and style. The whole
performance reminded of some of my favorite and least favorite
aspects of modern dance. First off I think it is important for me to
state how much my tastes have changed since my freshman year of
college, from when I came in with no prior modern dance experience to
now when it is a big chunk of what I do here. I love how liberating
it is to make a piece where you can be as expressive or abstract as
you want and that is just considered normal for the genre. That being
said there I think I will just discuss my favorite and least pieces
because they get the point across quite well.
My favorite piece of the night was a piece titles “Together”
which was performed by our (former) very own Courtney World and a
dancer I had never seen before. The two dancers started stage left
with one hand in each others pockets, then without removing their
hands they performed leaps and moved across the entire stage. There
were elements of weight shift and balancing, all the while never
breaking the formation of hands being pocketed. More than halfway
through the piece the dancers took their hands out of their pockets
but still managed to always be connected to one another, whether it
be the arms or the legs they were always touching. The piece as a
whole was amazing because it was so clear that it started with a
simple thought, “what if we just never broke contact?”, after
that it was simply a process of the dancers pushing the boundaries of
what they could do given the their limitation. They moved in ways
that inspired me to experiment with the way I am thinking about
shooting videos. I have these large complicated concepts but what I
should be doing is starting small and working my way up. Take the
most mundane limitation or idea and exhaust all the ways I could do
that. In hip-hop that is not so common because with such quick non
repetitive movements it is hard to stick to an idea, but in modern
you can spend 10 minutes doing one move if you are clever. This is
what the piece symbolized to me, what you can do when you just let
your imagination leak its way into your dance style. I hope I can
find effective ways to use this new inspiration in my dance on camera
class.
Now onto my least favorite piece: Firebird/mating season. This piece
consisted of two topless girls (which was not nearly as distracting
as I intentionally thought) dancing to the worst mash-up of songs
using the motif of fire that I have ever heard. This dance was just a
mess of terrible audio and great dancers. The reason this piece was
my least favorite was because of the wasted potential. I understand
that some people want to use art to make a statement about society
and such, but if done wrong I think it just looks dumb. To have such
talented dancers and great music, but fail to get the message across
because of how the piece failed to come together, in my opinion, is
worst than having a bad piece. I hate seeing a wasted idea or concept
and I really wanted this piece to be good. The moment I saw so many
songs listed I knew that I would either love or hate the piece,
because almost no good can come from such a complicated concept. This
where my hang ups with modern dance come from. I dislike when dancers
try to make a statement by doing something avant garde or abstract,
personally I would just prefer you to get the the point and say what
you mean. There is too much talent out there to waste on a bad piece.
Also a lot of modern pieces have terrible endings, like it is an
after thought to a piece. Granted I am used to a genre where endings
are big and explosive, but at the very least make your ending
consistent with the theme of your piece. This dance where topless
women were dancing on each other, supporting each other, and moving
rapidly ending with one slowly laying on top of the other one and the
music fading out. It was not the worst, but compared to the rest of
the dance it seemed out of place.
Good and bad I still love modern dance and cannot wait for the
chance to use this class to make something breathtaking.
