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Thursday, October 11, 2012

Dance as sculpture



Watching dance, my attention moves from one part of the stage to another, so that I experience the intimacy and the beauty of particular movements.  But recently I had a glorious awakening.  At the Performance Festival of the American Dance Guild, being farther back in the audience than usual, my eyes suddenly took in the entire stage at once and I found myself watching a great sculpture where the parts moved instead of the viewer, and the dancers, coupling, grouping, separating, created continually changing forms in space.  All we had to do was to sit and be willing to receive.  I don’t know why I never saw it before.  All of my large constructions were created with many individual parts, lines of different weight and direction, with this very goal, that the viewers, moving around and thereby shifting their perspective, would continually see new objects forming in space. This is a gift too from park trees, those with twisting outstretched branches, if you keep your eyes fastened while you walk.  Walk backwards if you have to.

I won’t abandon the old way of looking, I simply know that an entire new dimension has been added to my experience of dance.

Here are two views of “Private Rooms”, 16’ x 12’ x 8’h: