I’m serious! Wouldn’t it be great to take a break for once and just sit in your room all day and do nothing? When Dr. Profeta told us how they would do exercises like this where you would choose one task to do continuously for 12 hours as meditation I was really intrigued and it made me wonder if I could do it too.
First of all I’d like to say that seeing this performance was an experience which was out of this world, in a good, weird way. Although it was hard to understand at first, after our guest speaker and the discussions we had in class, some very interesting points were presented and it made me look at the piece differently. Nicole pointed out that this piece was about grief and I totally agree. I mean there were moments were I was like “what the beep?!!” but after a while it got to me. For example the part where Okwui was offstage crying for a good six minutes was very moving. At first we were all sort of giggling because of the uncomfortableness of the situation, but after a minute or so I kind of felt her pain. I felt as if it was a mother crying out over the death of her child. Her cries were really powerful and so realistic that if she had kept going I swear to you I might have also cried myself. Another part was also when one of the dancers came onstage with a red towel and started screaming into it. It was as if he had just learned he had a terminal disease or something. 🙁
I loved the fact that Lemon wanted to change his way of thinking of dance and he challenged the traditions of dance. I think this is why many people have problems with this piece. It’s not something you are familiar with or something you can classify in a genre. We can go see a ballet, hip-hop, and/or salsa performance and have no idea what the meaning or story behind it is. Yet we’ll enjoy it and applaud and talk about how great it was afterwards but as soon as we are confronted with something different and unique we criticize it and dislike it because “we didn’t get it.” But do we have to get it? Can’t we just sit there and watch and enjoy?
Why is it that we have to have meaning to everything we do or say or think?
Why can’t we just stay in the house all day and do nothing and not say “that was a waste of a day?”
