Ralph Lemon

“So how was the dance?”…..

“It was…well…how can I explain it accurately……it was….different”

“Different in a good or bad way?”

“I’m not really sure, I’m still trying to figure that out.”

I share a room with my younger sister, so when I got home that night from the dance my sister immediately asked me how the dance was. When she asked me this, I honestly didn’t really know how to respond. I was still baffled by what I had just seen.

Before going to this dance piece, the only form of dance that I had ever really been exposed to is something that you would see on television such as something on Dancing with the Stars, or So You Think You Can Dance?, which is meant just to entertain you, not to make you question things.

I guess I should have known that this dance wasn’t going to be anything like the dances I see on these shows just by the title, “How Can You Stay in the House all Day and Not Go Anywhere?”. The title actually made me really want to go see this performance, I was curious to find out what kind of a dance could possibly be made about staying in a house all day. However as the lights in the room dimmed and the performance began, I was extremely confused to see a screen coming down center stage in stead of dancers entering.

When the video began I was extremely confused, all I kept thinking to myself was wait, I thought we were coming here to see a dance? The video was actually pretty interesting (at times) when we were hearing about all of the different stories, but at the same time I was very confused as to why these stories were being mentioned, I guess it all just seemed so random.

Going into the performance I was really curious to find out what about this piece could possibly make people want to get up and just leave. After sitting through this dance I now fully know why people would want to leave. It could be boredom, feeling nauseous, or just feeling uncomfortable. I definitely felt like getting up and leaving during many parts of the performance. The constant spinning and throwing around of their bodies on stage for such a long time made me extremely impatient and I just wanted it to be over. Then when I found myself staring at projected images of animals just doing nothing, I found myself getting restless, I kept wondering, what is this all supposed to mean?! My frustration increased even more when there was absolutely nothing on stage, and all we could hear was crying from backstage. At first I was very curious to find out why there was someone crying, but after about a minute of this I honestly just wanted them to SHUT UP! When this crying continued on for what at the moment felt like hours I really really just wanted to get up and go home. On the way back home all I could really think about was how happy I was that I didn’t have to sit through that any longer and I could go home!

Once I was home however I did wonder why would Lemon create a dance piece that would cause his audience to want to get up and leave? Isn’t the point to attract an audience? Don’t you want as many people as possible to want to come see your performance? If that’s what a director wants when creating a piece, why on earth would Ralph Lemon create such a bizarre out of the ordinary piece like this?

After speaking to Dr. Profeta in class on Monday, I now somewhat know the answer to this question. Throughout the course of the performance, I was trying to focus in on finding the purpose to the dance, and what the meaning was. When Dr. Profeta came to speak to us on Monday I was hoping that she would explain what the meaning of the piece was to us. To my surprise the answer that she provided the class made me even more confused. Well maybe confused isn’t the best word, I guess unsatisfied would be better. Dr. Profeta explained that the piece wasn’t about having any meaning, rather it was about testing the audience. How long could the audience sit through a performance where they had no idea what was to come next, or how long something, like the crying scene, could possibly last. This now makes sense to me. It explains why I had the feelings that I did. I guess Ralph Lemon was more interested in our reaction to his piece, rather than whether or not we were actually able to understand it.

Speaking to Dr. Profeta definitely helped me understand Ralph Lemon’s purpose in making this piece, however I still left class confused about many aspects of his dance. It made me really wonder, would I be able to enjoy a work of art without really understanding it? It made me think about other forms of art, such as a painting. Sometimes I see paintings with a bunch of what looks like random lines and different colors, and although I have no idea what the meaning behind the painting is, I enjoy it because I think that it’s very pretty, it’s appealing to my eyes. However I can’t say that I enjoyed this work by Ralph Lemon because although I didn’t understand it, it also just didn’t appeal to me, there was nothing to really look and say “O wow that’s really pretty”. Because of this I didn’t enjoy Lemon’s piece. All the dance did to me was make me want to just get up and leave, which in a way was exactly what Lemon wanted to achieve.