Ok, so in the first Ralph Lemon blog, I was harsh. REALLY harsh. Now that I’ve met him and learned more about his performance, I take it back…all of it.
I got to the dance studio a few minutes early, so I stood around talking with a few friends, until I decided I really had to go to the bathroom. So I hurried off before the discussion started. As I was leaving the bathroom, I quickly passed this group of people who were walking really slowly. I got back to the studio, and immediately after, this slow-walking group of people came in too. Automatically I said to myself, “oh crap, I just cut off Ralph Lemon in the hallway. Wow, I’m an idiot…” But I soon got over it when they asked us to take our shoes off, and I thought they were going to have us try out the dance. I definitely wasn’t looking forward to that.
So they sat there and talked. Four of them were facing us, and one was to the side. There was Ralph Lemon, Dr Profetta, David Thompson, and Okwui. Dr Profetta started telling us about the piece, at some points stopping to question the two dancers. While Dr Profetta and the dancers spoke to us, there was a major question in my mind whether or not Ralph Lemon was a mute…but when he finally started talking, I realized what a dumb idea that had been, because he was the one who had spoken during the whole film part of the performance. I’ve gotta say though, I really love his voice.
To get to the more profound stuff- what the dancers said was really interesting. David told us how it wasn’t meaningless movements, but instead the dance exhibited something deeper within. It was a removal of all inhibitions and fear, and the search for personal identity. What is the body? What is the body trying to do? Those are the questions that the dancers were attempting to answer. It was a routine: get lost, get found, get lost, get found.
When I first watched the performance, I thought the dancers were just throwing themselves around on the floor, but apparently it wasn’t only improvisation. There were certain discreet segments in order to help organize the whole thing, because a 20-minute improvisation wouldn’t work out very well.
Ralph Lemon’s reason for this performance was to experiment, and let out something personal. He wanted to expose the “wrongness” that is so often associated with sharing personal and private feelings, and he wanted people to feel uncomfortable and question their discomfort.
“Love and joy and happiness don’t exist without pain and grief…We choose to look toward one or the other, but they coexist, one can’t exist without the other.” This, I think, sums up the whole thing. This was one of the last things Ralph said to us, and it was extremely powerful. The whole performance is the clashing of these emotions and how uncomfortable it makes us feel, but this is what we experience every single day. These emotions coexist within us, and this performance and dance were meant to show how they are constantly flowing into and fueling each other. Feelings that are supposed to be private and personal, Ralph takes a risk and puts them out there, trying to gauge people’s reactions to reality.
