Dec 04 2009
Falling for Dance
The Fall for Dance festival is a series of dance performances by various companies in the fall and the goal of the festival is to make the audience “fall for dance.” Even though I did not fall in love with dance after watching the four performances, I enjoyed following most of the dance movements although struggled trying to figure out the essence of the performances.
My favorite performance of the night was Afternoon of the Faunes (from Dream Analysis) by Mark Dendy of Dendy Dancetheater. A faun is a type of Roman gods who lives in the rural area and is known to be lustful. The faunes are supposedly to resemble goats physically. Even though I couldn’t tell which animal the two men represent during the performance, their animal-like movements and furry shorts showed that they were in fact animals and the plain green background suggests that the setting is a forest.
The performers had the same movements for both the beginning and the ending, which represented their seeming innocence and naïveness. The essence of the work is that even innocent animals have passion, which is shown by the intimate dance moves exchanged by the two men on stage occasionally. It is shocking that this dance was choreographed in 1912 by Vaslav Nijinsky. The way that two men move smoothly and in sync with each other was just incredible that I was falling for their dance.
As for the essence, yea i did not have one. I have to either enjoy a performance or understand it in order to formulate an essence. I was not very happy with Fall For Dance because I love watching action-packed, vivacious dancing, and that just did not make the cut.
To be honest, the Fall for Dance Festival was like watching the grass grow. I was surveying the audience and it appeared that those who were in attendance had a pretty high IQ on dancing techniques and the humor within the dance performances when they let out the chuckles. Overall, this was one of my least favorite shows for the semester because it was too technical for an audience member who is not familiar with dance.