The Politics of Art & Authenticity

The Barnard Project “Besotted Bumper,” by Reggie Wilson, one of four new works at New York Live Arts

Before I start to rant and rave about the awfulness and horrific performance know as “The Barnard Fall Project” I would like to write a disclaimer. It was not the dancers’ fault. I repeat! It was not the dancers’ fault. I think after that performance all of them need a hug. Again I do not blame the dancers for the performance but rather the choreographer and the drunk guy that chose the soundtrack or lack thereof. I mean it was a dance performance without music!! Who’s idea was that?! And when there was music it did not quite redeem the moments of silence.

The soundtrack sounded like it would be better suited for an adventure through a safari in futuristic Africa. If that can even do justice to the weirdness of the music. These were all problems with the production before the dancing itself which was barely recognizable as dance. Most of the production consisted of these girls being dragged across the floor in bizarre outfits that matched the weirdness of the soundtrack.

Also…

WHY DID SHE PUT TAPE ON THE FLOOR?!

I think this entire performance will haunt me for a while. From the mystery of the soundtrack, costumes, and random tape placing I will never recover from this “dance” production. All I can do is hope that the dancers recover from the weirdness they were put through. I just hope that somewhere someday the choreographer and producer look back at this performance and say “What the hell were we thinking?”

Why the tape? Why? I was willing to forgive everything about Thursday evening, but the tape was just inexcusable.

The Barnard Fall Project was a series of…modern… dances choreographed to make the viewer confused and slightly less smart. Okay, maybe that wasn’t exactly it, but that’s what it did for me. Modern dance has its merits, but the only way you’re going to understand any of it is if you’ve studied modern dance, or you’re tripping on something. (If the first piece was them swimming in a pond, why were they doing lunges? Dancing should be fun. Lunges aren’t fun.)

This was like the only picture on Google and we didn’t even see this dance.

I appreciated the performances, but that’s about it. They were filled with dedicated and skilled performers who do miraculous feats of jumping and prancing that makes me exhausted just watching, but I didn’t get any of it. It was just a lot of jumping and twirling. Whenever the music would stop and there would be five minutes of silent “dancing,” it was practically unbearable. I don’t want to see you marching like a penguin from one side of the stage in silence, alright? (I want that one song at the end as my ringtone though. That was the highlight.)

I could look past all of this though, because these were performances that people devoted time and effort too, and I’m sure they all knew exactly what they were doing and I’m sure whatever message they were trying to convey got across wonderfully. And then there was the tape. Which had no purpose whatsoever. They wasted tape. I was really looking forward for something to happen with the tape, but I got nothing. The tape went on the ground and then it got trashed afterwards. Why?

It was all one big “Why?”

Photo Credit

Eccentric. Definitely the most eccentric thing I’ve ever seen. I just didn’t think it was a dance. It seemed like they were just moving, shaking, waddling, but not dancing. But then, I guess dance is really what you make it. Yet, if there was some message they were trying to get across, I surely didn’t understand it. In the first act, were they

trying to swim? Why did they randomly say the word “swim” every so often? In the second act, why did the girls keep repeating their names? And why was each introduced with a name that she then corrected? And the list of questions goes on and on. I was simply confused as to what they were doing and why they were doing it. I also think that music would’ve helped the performance by making it more interesting. The dancers of the Barnard Fall Project performed works by four different choreographers, some of whose works I glimpsed at online. I saw some similarities. I think it’s great that everyone can express themselves through art, here, particularly through the art of dance. It seems like “modern” in the world of the arts is weird and out of the ordinary, nothing like the quintessential form of the art that one would expect. If this is modern dance, I think I’ll stick with the old days’ classics.

Quite simply, I didn’t get it. I tried. I really did, but as much as I like interpreting things, this was too much. All of a sudden the performers started convulsing. Then, apparently they were doing something called “twerping.” The best parts where when the performers were all doing motions in unison because it seemed like at least this was supposed to be happening. With all that said, I have never seen any sort of modern dance before. It may be an acquired taste like bitter wine or whiskey. I don’t really know how to watch something like what I saw at the Barnard Project. Is is the individual motions? Is it the entire performance? The reason I like literature so much is that it provides a story, something going on in the foreground which makes the ride entertaining. Meanwhile, in the background motifs link the work together. At this production, I felt like I was in a fairytale land only dealing with the “background stuff.” It was nice to say I did it, but I don’t think I will go back.

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2012/11/17/arts/17BARNARD.html

Generally I try to be open minded about all the productions we attend. I learned early on that they’re very different from the things I’m accustomed to seeing so I tried not to be judgmental and tried to let it sink in like I usually do…

The Barnard Project was definitely the most different of all the productions we’ve seen. I’m usually just shocked and in awe of whatever it is I’m seeing but this time…yeah…I talked to my friend about it. She’s been dancing since she could walk and when I told her how I felt about the show she laughed and told me I had to love dance to appreciate modern dance. I’m going to have to agree because from the beginning I was just really confused. I was concerned that they weren’t wearing any shoes at first (or were they? I forgot my glasses and couldn’t see much). I tried really hard to understand why they kept saying, “swim” at random moments but they weren’t actually swimming?? Or making any swimming motions? I also felt really bad for the one girl that got dragged by another girl by the foot… That hurts…I was also wondering what was going on when they flipped their hair onto their faces and kind of convulsed for a while. I may or may not have been frightened. Basically I was just really confused the whole time.

I’ve tried to let myself think about it and try to be a cultured person since we watched it but I just don’t think it’s for me…My friend that I mentioned earlier is taking me to see a ballroom dancing show at Columbia University in December and that I am excited for. I can see myself appreciating a dance show like that because it’s a lot more familiar. I don’t think I’m cultured enough for modern dance just yet…maybe after a couple more semesters of IDC I will be but for now…I’ll stay away from it.

I do have to admire how passionate they were about what they were doing. They were all very in tune with the noises (music?) that was playing and with each other. I don’t know how they all knew which moves to make at what time especially since the music was a little hard to follow. It also looked like a workout. Especially that last scene when they were all running around and hopping and all of that. I can barely walk up a flight of stairs let alone run around and twirl and roll over people for 15 minutes. Passion and stamina…that is what I gathered from this production.

Last week we went to see Edward Munch’s The Scream. I was looking at the picture, asking myself, what is it about this picture? What makes this so perennial? Why is this viewed over and over again throughout the years?

Maybe people can identify themselves with this bald-headed, open-mouthed man standing on this bridge over the water. It could be a calm, serene painting, maybe something Emerson or Thoreau could describe in terms of nature, but Munch painted a swirling storm and a brightly colored bridge with artificial colors. I think his use of colors is what makes this picture tick. The yellow pool in the sea, the red and pink and purple tones in the bridge, and the gauntly tone of the person all make this picture scream. It doesn’t really matter if people live in the nineteenth, twentieth, or twenty-first century. We could be in the middle of a hurricane, or just living in total peace. As Much himself wrote, “I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.” Sometimes, all we want to do is scream.

We also saw the New Photography exhibit. Professor Davis asked us what makes something a 21st century picture. I happen to love photography. I have a DSLR camera and I love taking pictures of everything. I didn’t really like this exhibit so much. Some pictures were really cool, but others seemed really mundane and there was nothing special about them that struck me. I think today, in the 21st century, the term “artist” demands a lot less talent than it used to. Today, people can post videos of themselves singing and dancing and become an instant YouTube star. Today, people can digitalize their faces and voices and pictures and videos. There is more room for creativity, but more of the computer’s work and less of the artist’s. I was unimpressed with most of the pictures I saw. I didn’t like the collages, where it looked like the artist just pasted a bunch of unrelated-looking people or pictures together. The pictures didn’t really speak to me. There were pictures of regular, everyday scenes, like garbage, people smoking, and shots of New York city. These pictures didn’t really have anything special about them. I could walk to school one day and see the exact same scene outside. Today, if people take pictures with a digital camera and edit them on a computer, they can make them so “artsy.” I think this term is so hackneyed in today’s world, and in a sense, rather than the photographer, the cameras and computers have become the artist. After visiting this exhibit, I was a little disillusioned with what today’s photography may have become. People can just take pictures of anything, edit them a little, and call this art.

Later, we went to the Barnard Fall Project. I wasn’t such a huge fan of this performance. In the beginning, I thought it was really cool. I thought, those girls have some real guts to go out there dressed like that. I liked how in the beginning there seemed to be two different dances going on at once – all the girls were moving in sync except for two, who were doing their own sort of dance. I thought this dynamic was cool, but as the show progressed I started to like the dance less and less. I really didn’t understand when the girls came out in dresses and kept repeating their names, and mixing up each person’s name. I couldn’t tell if that was some sort of private joke between the girls, but I don’t know any of the girls and I was so confused as to who was who. I liked it at the end, when they all changed their outfits to either the white or brown outfits. Everyone looked kind of like oreos.

Overall, I enjoyed the experience. I especially liked seeing The Scream. I would recommend it to others.

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2012/2/21/1329830313060/The-only-privately-owned–008.jpg

At the beginning of the day, MoMA was definitely something I was excited to go to because it was something I would never imagine myself going on my own time. I never stepped foot into a museum. Except for the Natural History Museum, but I don’t really count that as an experience because I was young and I kind of just ran around with my friends at the time. I didn’t appreciate what was around me at the time. When we arrived, the first thing we saw was The Scream by Edvard Munch. This famous piece of artwork that I seen basically every where, on television, in textbooks, basically every where since I don’t even know how long, but to see it before my eyes was incredible. Although people praise this artwork, I looked at it and I said to myself, “This is it? This is what people obsess about, what people think is amazing.” I looked at it and it looked so simple, as if he just took Crayola crayons and wanted to draw something real quick. It didn’t look so special to me and that is when I realized I’m not an artsy person. I understand the time he took, but I expected to see GREAT detail to the point where I’d look at the painting and go, “I wish I was an artist.” However, when I looked at this artwork, I said to myself, “It looks like I can do this” (But of course I can’t because my drawing skills on a scale of 10 is undefined. It’s horrible I must tell you). I do enjoy looking at artwork, especially The Scream because I got to see this painting with my own eyes without media having to portray it themselves.

Also, at the MoMA, the photography section was a little too much for me. I guess the term “modern art” can be interpreted VERY loosely and I wish it wasn’t. I guess my view on that section of the museum is that if you are not open minded about stepping into the photography section of MoMA, then I don’t think you should. Just a fair warning.

Later that night, after watching The Barnard Fall Project, although I left early, it was a different experience. I walked into the theater with a very open mind, actually excited to see what this “modern dance” is because I didn’t even know there was such thing as “modern dance.” I guess, I know what it’s called modern. The way the danced was so very unique I would say. It was just their movements seemed so “different” in a sense. I guess it’s just not what I’m use consider dance. The one thing that really bothered me though was that during the second dance, they kept walking around to wherever they were going. It wasn’t dancing to me, it was just walk to where you need to stand and that what grind my gears at the moment. However, the one thing I must applaud about The Barnard Fall Project was the first dance because the fact that majority of the dance was performed without music. I’ve tried to dance without music in a group and it was a complete fail because people were just off beat, but during the performance everyone was basically in sync with each other. It was amazing to watch and the stamina that they have. Jeez… the amount of jumping and leaping and running and walking they did was just…. CLAPS FOR YOU GLENN COCO (Excuse my Mean Girls reference).

All I can say about this modern stuff is that one needs an open mind, I wish someone told me that sooner or else my mind would of been opened rather than closed. Now I know, an open mind is needed when you are exploring NYC in a different way than what I’m use to seeing NYC as I see it.

When we went to MoMA to see The Scream exhibit, I was very pleasantly surprised. I had seen the iconic image before, so i was just expecting more of the same. But the photocopied versions I had seen in textbooks and in my high school’s art room did not touch the heels of the original painting. Something about seeing it live and real and in the flesh was spectacular.. Thinking about the fact that Edvard Munch’s pastels carved the image out on this paper that I was looking at was a really beautiful experience. I am grateful that I got to see it in the few weeks that it was out for the public to see.

Next, we went to the New Photography exhibit. There, I saw one of the most beautiful pieces of art I have ever seen. Along an entire wall was a picture that was made up of thousands of little pictures, all taken in one place over the course of a day, from three different perspectives. It was interesting to see two forms of art, one so modern and one so.. old fashioned (the scream), juxtaposed so closely together. The Scream is one of the oldest pictures in the book. I have seen it a million times. But, its message is a modern one. It symbolises modernity, how much people want to scream amidst the chaos and confusion draping over them. It looks at the insanity of our world in this post-industrialized society. So perhaps, there is no better place for this exhibition than right in the middle of this modern photography.

Later still, we went to see The Barnard Fall Project. When I walked into the auditorium, I thought, oh! thats why he was screaming! I truly have never seen a moe bizarre production. These girls were… wiggling.

weirdly. All across the stage, saying something about swimming. If they were trying out that stroke in the water, as a certified lifeguard i can tell you that they would have drowned. I cant understand what they were doing! And those four girls, Linden, Lea, MArtha Scott, and Katherine were CREEPY! why were they pulling eachothers hair?!

I guess it was trying to be modern, but I think it was too modern. I read the biographies of the dancers, and I truly commend them for being part of a production and expressing themselves through dance in a public forum. I just dont understand them, but nobody said it wasn’t art if I didn’t get it!

I think the common denominator between the three experiences of the day was modernity. So when I went home, I was mulling over the concept in my mind. Modernity is scary to me, because it is always changing. As time goes by, the modern becomes ancient, making way for the unknown. Someday, wacky dance wiggles will be an old story, and well all watch cloned fish robots walk in a circle on a stage. You really never know whats coming next. I think thats what the guy in the painting is so worried about, because Im worried about it too.