When I walked into the BAM on Wednesday night, I was excited that I would get to add another wonderful art performance to my list of wonderful art performances I have thus far seen. Boy, was I wrong! I walked into the theater thinking that I was going to see a wonderful dance piece with crazy, heart-racing, feet thumping music accompanying it. I kind of thought I was going to be watching a dance out of the Step Up movies (although not to such an extreme). After all, the Ralph Lemon dance was supposed to be a modern piece, right?
I was wrong on all counts. What I ended up getting was neither dance nor music. Instead, I got a movie screen with confusing, mashed up, random clips on it, people literally hurling themselves on the hard, wooden floor, a woman crying hysterically, a screen that tricked you into thinking there was a real dog on the stage, and a man with one sock… I think I’ve covered it all. Oh wait, there was also the “whoa” and the “yes” at the end of the dance piece. I’m sure that this “yes”, just like many other parts of the dance piece, had a second, more profound meaning to it. To me though, it simply meant, “YES!!! It’s finally over! I can go home!” As much as I disliked this piece, however, there are parts of it that stuck with me.
When the movie screen first came down, I was confused. I thought there was going to be a grand entrance where all the dancers would come flying out and music would start pounding through the speakers. Instead, there was a movie of random clips that to me, seemed to make no sense at all. One part of the movie that I liked, however, was the part that dealt with civil rights and I’m glad that Professor Profeta touched upon it in class. The clip showed African-Americans being hosed by police officers as they attempted to fight for their rights. A few moments after this clip was shown, there was a segment where Mr. Lemon danced on a stage as someone attempted to hose him down. This was an aspect of this performance that I connected to and it’s something that I actually thought about while the rest of the random clips were shown. When Professor Profeta spoke with us, she said that Mr. Lemon has incorporated the struggle of blacks in his past pieces, and I was touched with this respect for those who suffered in the past.
Another part of the performance that affected me emotionally was the six minutes (according to Professor Profeta) of a woman sobbing hysterically. I can’t explain why, but listening to this woman’s cries scared me. Maybe it was because her cries reminded me of the bad things that make people cry and they were things that I didn’t want to think about.
I didn’t think much of it when the crying began. As time went on, however, the woman’s cries grew more hysterical and it became painful to sit there, in the dark, with no sound, except this woman’s sobs, filling the theater. Professor Profeta explained to us that the actress who was crying keeps a journal of really horrible things that have happened in this world. Before going on stage, the actress has five minutes to go through her journal of horrible stuff. Such strong devotion surprised me because I can’t imagine how anyone can psychologically deal with reading about all the terrible things that happen in this world. I couldn’t even sit through a six-minute performance of thinking about the terrible things that happen in this world. Whatever the actress reads, however, really does the trick because she is one heck of a crier.
What I wouldn’t call her, or the other performers, is one heck of a dancer. It was DEFINITELY not a dance out of the step up movies. I didn’t feel entertained by this dance and I didn’t see the art behind it. I understood why audience members might have felt some discomfort, though. I averted my eyes at one point because I was uncomfortable with the way the dancers grasped each other. At the end of the night, I was so tired of what I had seen that I found myself wishing that I had stayed in my house all day and done nothing.
