No Manifesto:
No to spectacle.
No to virtuosity.
No to transformations and magic and make-believe.
No to the glamour and transcendency of the star image.
No to the heroic.
No to the anti-heroic.
No to trash imagery.
No to involvement of performer or spectator.
No to style.
No to camp.
No to seduction of spectator by the wiles of the performer.
No to eccentricity.
No to moving or being moved.
To be honest, the dance looked at first to be very primitive and ungraceful to the eye, along with the outfit, which was rather very plain and not like the flashy costumes we see on dance shows. I know I resemble the bais of society seeing the dance as unaeshetic. Im left very confused because we are taught and raised that everything we do must have meaning and here she is trying to defy any meaning but isn't that meaning within itself? What is she thinking? I tend always to think that things have a purpose but it is hard to imagine a storyline. This movement reminds me of:
ReplyDeleteL'Age d'Or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHZyIx3oNZk
Un Chien Andalou: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUaP-IB-2Gs
Leger's Ballet Mechanique: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SgsqmQJAq0
and Duchamps Anemic Cinema: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXINTf8kXCc&feature=related
all are modern art history videos we saw in my class last year. I know it's not surrealist but just how unrelated and without a storyline the movement was reminded me of Dali's and Brunel's pieces. If the piece had a song it'd be to Ballet Mechanique in my mind- just how disjointed and rough everything seemed. The movement seemed clashing, and made something almost fierce out of the standard flowing "beautiful" movement of what we percieve as dance. Finally Anemic Cinema by Duchamp has the closest resemblance because Duchamp really had no purpose in his film and the words in it had no meaning nor story. It was also supposed to be a silent film.
The dance, like the art videos, takes a bit of getting used to. And at first, I experienced slight discomfort from both but after watching it a second time, you began to see some sort of beauty from it- a beauty not necessarily defined by what society says it is but through the beliefs of Rainer in avoiding to make something beautiful.
Reading this article, it seems like the modern dance has its revolution just like any other hisotry. I learned that Martha Graham and Yvonne Rainer are creative and determined. They dance what they belive the modern dance can be. These movements open our eyes to not just limit our imagination to classical operas or musical shows. They recognize the beauty of human body movements naturally.
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