Dance On Camera: Duets Performance

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.