Thunder. Rattling drums. Falling rice. Clicking castanets.
These images churned through my mind as I watched Savion Glover’s STePz. Though I applaud the number of mental images he and his company were able to conjure, I found myself more affected by the performance more aurally than visually. With the exception of certain thrusts of the arms and flourishes of the hand, I found there to be little to engage the eye. Through a lens colored by my highly limited understanding of dance, I can’t help but be a little dismayed by the fact that the dances were never able to engage me fully. There were certain points where I was more involved (such as the parody of ballet) but these instances would give way to what felt like hours of relentless tapping that only sometimes communicated with the background tracks. I have to admit I’ve never totally understood dance. Drama, music, the visual arts, and literature engage me in a way that the semi-choreographed spasms of dance have never been able to. Yes, there’s an energy to the medium that is supposed to relay emotion but I’ve never been very good at pinpointing what emotions/feelings dancers are trying to express, especially when they perform without a background track or shape their act parallel to the music. I often found myself asking, “Why?” I just couldn’t see a point to all that tip-tapping. Yet as I looked around I could see that there were a number of people in the crowd who were affected by the performance. They watched Glover and Co.’s every move intently and seemed to draw some real emotion out of the display. That fact alone made the performance more engaging for me as it challenged me to move outside myself and examine why those around me might identify the spectacle before us as art while I refused it this label. I thought about how they might appreciate the freeness of the dance, liberated from the over-contextualization other arts can suffer from. There might also be a joy associated with seeing a body push itself and strain, all in the name of impressing an audience with some emotion. It might not be as tangible (for me) as the emotions relayed through other media but I could sense there was some undercurrent. Maybe those around me were simply better at seeing the thread that wove the performance together than I was.
In short, though I personally didn’t “get” STePz, I appreciated the experience because it forcefully illustrated for me the subjectivity involved when determining whether something is art or not. It was also rather humbling as I, in all my pretentiousness, often feel as if I’m the only one who understands art. Simply because I’ve read a little more about art history, I feel as if I’ve identified some key element all others miss in their ignorance. It was humbling to be forced to make sense of a medium of which I had no real concept. I realized just because I didn’t think of something as art didn’t mean it wasn’t valuable. I was forced to recognize people have opinions different then mine and though we might not agree, there was validity to their feeling. I guess in the end, art is rather like religion. We might all be proved wrong later on but until that grand finale, no one can claim they’ve found “the truth” that overshadows all the rest. While we (read: I) so often want to feel right, conversation and difference of opinion really is more interesting and important in the long run. Disagreements may only end up affirming your beliefs but it’s good to have them tested regularly. One can’t help but grow from the process.