I was completely confused by the Ralph Lemon Dance. I didn’t really understand what the point was of the disturbing seizing that took place on stage. I was unable to understand how the events in the video were related: the elderly couple, the bunny-man, and the dancing.
I found the video distracting. Maybe it was because I was exhausted, but I couldn’t focus on both the narrations and video at the same time. When the performance started, I tried to connect the scenes on screen. All I could come up with was that the dance from the video was somehow (supposed to be) representative of African American oppression and the Civil Rights Movement, but the only indications of this were the 3 second flash of a black and white image of an African American woman being attacked by white police officers while the rabbit was being flogged and the high powered hose soaking a struggling African American dancer.
I thought it was interesting that despite the negative response from previous audiences, Ralph Lemon chose to impose his “formless form of dancing” on yet another group of spectators and that he acknowledged the similarities between the two versions of the dance, the one in which the dancers were drunk and high and the one in which they were sober.
The only thing that really struck me in this performance was Lemon’s comment about how his “formless form of dancing” is the most American form of dance. In this tiny seemingly insignificant comment, by comparing American culture to his dance, Lemon was clearly commenting on the lack of structure and senselessness of our American culture.
After speaking with Katherine Profeta in class, sad to say, I still had no clue what the point to the piece was. It had no profound meaning, it was meant to be meaningless. Ralph Lemon treated his audience like guinea pigs. “How You Can Stay In The House All Day And Not Go Anywhere” was nothing more than a social experiment. Lemon was tying to push the envelope, to see how much he could get away with before his audience got up and left.
Unfortunately, the origins of the performance didn’t help me understand the piece at all. The only thing that I did interpret correctly was that the dance piece in the video from “Come Home Charlie Patton” was in fact about the Civil Rights movement. The rest of it eluded me completely. In all honesty, if Lemon’s performance were not a class activity, I probably would have left when the tall woman started crying.
