During my middle school years, I was in the dance talent class so I learned about different types of dances including modern dance. From my previous dance education, I was able to analyze Garth Fagan choreography. I saw influences from Martha Graham and similar dance moves from Alvin Ailey’s famous production, Revelations. However, I saw that this production tried to refrain from having an overall religious tone and made it more engaging. It was not so mature in the end when the dancers were wearing modern clothing and using contemporary music. It was also a very buoyant dance where every dancer was smiling and seemed to enjoy the dance.
Even though the production was not as mature and sophisticated which I liked, modern dance is still not my taste. My life predominately focused on ballet so I always saw dance as a feminine movement and portraying a story. However, I was constantly nitpicking the dancers’ forms especially in their hands and feet. In ballet, the hands are always in a certain form that exuded femininity. In this production, their hands were either flat or fisted which really stand out to me. Also, the feet were flexed in my moments of the production which is completely different from ballet in that feet are almost always pointed. In addition, most ballet productions easily conveyed a story based on the technical production of the setting on the stage and the dancers’ movements and costumes. In this performance, the costumes were somewhat plain and not very additive to the story of the dance. This is why it was difficult for me to decipher the story it tried to convey if there was any.
What I did appreciate in the performance was the strength and effort these dancers put in. As they were dancing, there were some movements that required a lot of agility and strength. You can see all of their muscles and the sweat it took to keep a certain pose such as balancing on one leg. Even some of the veteran dancers were able to do certain things that I can’t even do anymore!
This was one of my favorite events to go to because of my dance hobbies. Even though modern dance is still not preference, I was grateful for the first live modern dance performance I got to see.
