I really did not want to be spending my Wednesday free hour spending more time talking about Ralph Lemmon’s “How can you sit in the house all day and not go anywhere?” BAM dance piece. But that’s exactly what I found myself doing.
When I saw the BAM piece, as I wrote in my blog, I really didn’t like it and just wanted to forget it and put it behind me. But of course that didn’t happen- first we had a discussion with Katherine Profetta, the dramaturge, and just when I thought it was over I found out we had another one with the great Ralph Lemmon himself!
Well, I was shocked when I walked into that dance studio. I saw Ralph, Katherine and two of the dancers sitting in chairs across from us, not up far away on a stage. It was an intimate gathering, there weren’t many people there, and it seemed pretty informal. Especially because since it was a dance studio they had to take their shoes off, so it was funny that Ralph and everyone was there barefoot.
Anyway, enough about that. Now for the actual content of the talk. At first it was boring, like same old, same old, talking about how the goal was nonform and dance in a different way instead of something we’re used to, etc. which we knew already but they had to talk about for the other people there who hadn’t seen the show or didn’t know.
After that I picked out some interesting tidbits. First of all, I thought it was so interesting when a student asked a question and mentioned unstructured dance or something like that, and Okwui the dancer answered and was saying that it was a false impression- it was a VERY structured piece with exact timing and reasons behind everything. Contrary to what I, and I think a lot of other people, thought, the dancers didn’t just get up on stage and start randomly flailing. Okwui said nothing they did was random- for example, she would spin for 25 seconds, then improvise for 1 minute, then she had an “appointment” to bang into another dancer on stage, so everything was very structured.
Another thing I liked was when someone asked a question about what the animals on screen were all about and Ralph Lemmon said that it was his attempt at showing grace, because it was just a peaceful moment among all the fast-paced craziness, and that the animals were the perfect representation because they just are what they are. I don’t really know how to put it into words, but when he explained it I really liked that idea. In general, I just really appreciated that nothing was random and that everything had a reason or thought behind it.
I also found it interesting when they were talking about their relationship to the audience and Ralph was saying that it’s not like a typical Broadway show where they want the audience’s approval. He said its less like they were performing FOR the audience, it was more like they were performing and ALLOWED the audience to watch.
It is also really impressive that they managed to pull off the performance because the dancers were saying that it was so hard to do because they couldn’t rehearse and learn everything straight through, they would do it for a week, then take a few months off, do it for two weeks, take more time off… and it was all very scattered. So I’m impressed that they were able to do it so well and keep moving forward instead of relearning the same thing every time they got together, which, from what I gathered, wasn’t too often.
Overall I have to say that the more I hear about and talk about the Ralph Lemmon show, the more I can appreciate the kind of performance they put on and what they’ve done. But that doesn’t mean I would want to sit through it again LOL.
