“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.

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?”

I was completely confused by the Ralph Lemon Dance. I didn’t really understand what the point was of the disturbing seizing that took place on stage. I was unable to understand how the events in the video were related: the elderly couple, the bunny-man, and the dancing.

I found the video distracting. Maybe it was because I was exhausted, but I couldn’t focus on both the narrations and video at the same time.  When the performance started, I tried to connect the scenes on screen. All I could come up with was that the dance from the video was somehow (supposed to be) representative of African American oppression and the Civil Rights Movement, but the only indications of this were the 3 second flash of a black and white image of an African American woman being attacked by white police officers while the rabbit was being flogged and the high powered hose soaking a struggling African American dancer.

I thought it was interesting that despite the negative response from previous audiences, Ralph Lemon chose to impose his “formless form of dancing” on yet another group of spectators and that he acknowledged the similarities between the two versions of the dance, the one in which the dancers were drunk and high and the one in which they were sober.

The only thing that really struck me in this performance was Lemon’s comment about how his  “formless form of dancing” is the most American form of dance. In this tiny seemingly insignificant comment, by comparing American culture to his dance, Lemon was clearly commenting on the lack of structure and senselessness of our American culture.

After speaking with Katherine Profeta in class, sad to say, I still had no clue what the point to the piece was. It had no profound meaning, it was meant to be meaningless. Ralph Lemon treated his audience like guinea pigs. “How You Can Stay In The House All Day And Not Go Anywhere” was nothing more than a social experiment. Lemon was tying to push the envelope, to see how much he could get away with before his audience got up and left.

Unfortunately, the origins of the performance didn’t help me understand the piece at all. The only thing that I did interpret correctly was that the dance piece in the video from “Come Home Charlie Patton” was in fact about the Civil Rights movement. The rest of it eluded me completely. In all honesty, if Lemon’s performance were not a class activity, I probably would have left when the tall woman started crying.

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.

I watch the performance and I think of the title “How Can You Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere?” What is the point of this title? Why is their crying and discomfort? Is this designed to make any sense to the viewer?  How can I stay in BAM and not leave? These were all initial reactions that ran throughout my head for one very confusing hour and a half, but it is definitely a memorable dance performance.

As soon as I left the performance, I wondered how could I review this production.  Where would I possibly start?  My mind about the performance  was clouded with such ambiguity that I did not know where to possibly begin.

Dr. Profeta served as a very important factor to clarifying my confusion.  I honestly wish that she came first to talk and discuss the production before we viewed it.  I wondered if  this would make the production more enjoyable? I am not sure but to hear Dr.Profeta’s  insight on the performance allowed me to review the performance in my mind and to see how interesting Ralph Lemon is as an artist.

One element that was clarified to me was the staging and the elements that were incorporated.  The beginning staging was simple one part completely black with a light that focused on Ralph Lemon.  This feature immediately drew my attention to him but then a screen came down showing images.  At times I could not hear Ralph Lemon because I looked at the images, wondering what is this suppose to mean and why is it significant.  This is where I started to get confused.  Before I went to the performance I read a summary that stated the play was about a 102 year old sharecropper.  As I watch the piece I am wondering where is the sharecropper besides the beginning section. There was so much more displayed and so many issues that Dr.Profeta soon revealed.

At first I did not know what to say about the screen.  I realized that the screening was Ralph Lemon’s attempt to show the audience what inspired the future dance that would appear later on. As confusing as it was, this is what Lemon discussed.  He talks about how he had different inspirations that contribute to his ideal dance.  The screen shows Walter then Asako and how each had an important factor to his boneless and formless dance that I would watch. After the screening session dance just erupted leaving me once again confused. First it was interesting then in my opinion the dance would become drawn out to the point of annoyance.

For a review I would normally move on to the storyline, but in reality was there any storyline to the performance.  I saw the piece more as an evolution and journey that Ralph Lemon went through. For some part of his life he was in pursuit of a dance that culminated many things.  He wanted a dance filled with no form and that was what the screening was about.  To me, he was looking for a dance that had elements of the characters he encountered.  He wanted a dance that had Walter’s independence and desire to do as he pleases. He wanted a dance that was formless as opposed to the dance that Asako practiced. He went through lengths to attain this goal and he found it which is what the audience witnessed.

The dancing left me with the most questioning. I watched a group of people making sounds and throwing their bodies on the ground, which is something I definitely have not seen before. If this section was short, I would have been more thrilled, but the constant flailing of the bodies made the dance drawn out and out of hand. I saw this as a pattern in the piece as I would be interested but then annoyed at the length of the piece.  This also happened in Okwui’s wailing  in which I was drawn into her sadness and confused but then she would not stop. I felt discomfort because of this part and I wanted it to stop but it kept going on and on constantly.

Dr.Profeta allowed me to think of these elements of the performances in this way.  It made me wonder and see the performance in a whole different light.  I was no longer fully negative about it but I could see it overall differently.  That is the beauty of performances in the area of art.  You can come out thinking it was such a bad show, but in the end you see it at a different angle and you grow to like it.  I should definitely do that more often in performances that I view. Overall Ralph Lemon’s performance would always leave me with questions as to what is his exact message to the audience, something that will be hard to figure out.

I came. I saw. I nearly died.

The Ralph Lemon performance was like a fish out of water. The dancers were the fishes. Their bodies perpetually splashing painfully against the wooden stage. I spent moments suspended in disbelief, wondering when and if they would stop. Was their a purpose to their self-affliction? A method behind the madness? Perhaps they were imitating fishes. They flailed, flopped, and became somewhat free in their experiment. No longer were they bound by the confines of one same sea; Lemon attempted to abridge the gap between past, present and future, submerging himself in interdisciplinary dance. For what many refer to as a work of genius, quite frankly I was disappointed, I thought it was a load of horseshit. Please excuse the profanity, no euphemisms would express my contempt for this dance. I refuse to limit my criticism in an attempt to appreciate what I don’t really understand. At best this dance was nothing more than child’s play. A waste of time.

Thinking about this dance enrages me and I apologize if it shows in my writing. I feel a bit better knowing the dancers felt the same way. I couldn’t help but chuckle when I heard the mantra they kept in mind. “Fuck Ralph. Fuck Ralph. Fuck Ralph.”

I have nothing against Ralph Lemon and I deeply respect his works paying tribute to the civil rights movement, but I could not comprehend why he did what he did. There was no reason to put his dancers through complete exhaustion and potential injuries to get his point across. A few minutes would suffice, but 20 minutes! Just what the hell was he trying to prove.

Putting the dance aside for a moment, I felt more attached to the film presented before the performance, especially when Professor Katherine Profeta explained it in-depth. I was especially captivated by Walter and Edna. It added a whole new dimension to the performance, one that focused more on the emotional aspect of love than the physical one. The physical one was ridiculously interpreted during the dance…

Speaking of the unbearable dance (yeah, I’m writing about it again) did anyone besides me feel as If the dance ended abruptly? What I mean is that I did feel that it was overemphasized, but at the end I felt sadly detached. It was as if something was missing. With the lack of closure, my mind generated various scenarios of what I had just witnessed. I had imagined that the man was engaging in a ritual of sorts. One that clearly represented sexual intercourse Now this might be my mind wandering, but it does make sense.  The wearing and exhibition of the makeshift “sock” condom. The erratic movement of the male dancer versus the female dancer lying on the floor.  And what about how he yelled a satisfied “YES!” at the end of the performance.

But perhaps this is all in my head. Now that I think about it. I don’t hate this performance. Or the actors. Or Ralph Lemon for that matter.

I hate that I didn’t understand it until it was over.

WHAT THE FUCK. Probably the most used phrase in the first half of the performance. It was definitely my reaction afterwards too.

The beginning was interesting… Upon first seeing the screen and the man sitting there on stage reading to us, I was shocked. I thought it was supposed to be a dance performance. The film on screen was confusing, but at the same time made a lot of sense. It told the story of growth and despair, of loss and grief. Walter, Ralph Lemon’s teacher, at age 102, was still teaching him important life lessons. Much of the film was about the loss of loved ones, and the hardships of dealing with such losses. I honestly feel that the film had more importance than the actual dancing did. The words, the way he spoke, everything about the first half was just so enrapturing that it was unforgettable.

“A storm is blowing in from Paradise…This storm is what we call progress.” The storm represents grief and the depression after the death of a loved one. When Asoko dies, leaving Ralph on his own, the storm comes and takes over when his Paradise disappears. This misery helps him progress past the death of his true love. In the end, he is finally able to come to terms with the illness that took her away. As he says, “the struggle itself…is enough to fill a man’s heart.” With depression, there is no room for any other emotion. The “ conundrum is unsolvable”- there is no way to get past the loss, because death is forever.

“Oh, and there’s some kind of wall in this part, a virtual wall, dividing it from the other parts, a wall that I have to somehow put a hole through. A fairy tale with a menagerie or a hare in the moon story.” The wall represents the grief, the hole is the escape route. He needs to tunnel a hole through the wall in order to escape the feelings of loneliness and isolation after losing the one person who meant the world to him.

Now, the dance. Ugh. I don’t even know what to say. When I was sitting there in the theater, as the time slowly ticked by, I was forced to watch these people throwing themselves on the floor like two year olds who don’t get their way. As I watched, I had a strong feeling that it was sexual. The way their bodies moved and interacted, and the way they rolled around on top of each other made it feel as though they were about to have a giant orgy on stage. It was strange and awkward, but it was daunting and suspenseful. No one had any idea what to expect. But really, it was completely anti-climactic. They just continued to throw themselves around. As Lemon points out, “What you see is what you see.” Some people might have seen the deeper meaning in this “dance,” but I didn’t.

When the guest speaker came in and tried to explain what the performance was about and why things were such, I tried to make more sense of it, but I couldn’t. Much of what she said about Lemon was contradictory. She said that Lemon believes in the question rather than the answer, but at the end of the performance, the man says, “yes,” in answer to the many questions posed throughout. Will life go on- yes. Is this what happens after a loss- yes. Can you stay in the house all day and do nothing- yes. Can living people endure the physical exhaustion of their bodies- yes. YES YES YES! The answer to every question is yes!

There’s no rhyme or reason to this performance. The film itself would have been sufficient to show Lemon’s point, the dance was just excessive…completely unnecessary and a waste of time. And the animals at the end? What the hell was that about? It just didn’t go together. Lemon probably had some great ideas, but he tried to squash them all into one single performance which belittled any good in it that there could have been. Maybe separately, the storylines would have made better pieces and been more enjoyable to the audience, but this was definitely nowhere near enjoyable.

I was writing furiously. Carol thought I was playing a game on my phone. No one has service on subways. But I was not playing a game, nor was I texting with miraculous service. I was writing my initial stream of thought and reactions to the Ralph Lemon piece that we were on our way back from. I really had so many thoughts in my head that had developed over the course of the production. I was trying to save them all throughout the night so I could write them down. The result is a little incoherent, but it is pure and true. The result is a breakdown of a formal review. It is a stream of consciousness. This is my writing with out thinking. It is my unintentional breakdown of a normal blog post.

“Start with BAM!

The end erased all my intense feelings from the beginning. I got it though. It was deconstruction of life. Of everything that has order and everything we believe to be true. Like the reader said, life is science fiction. It is where we are now.

When she cried it was like back to the beginning. It was birth. Primitive, yet completely open.

The entire show was really form equals content. It was completely chaotic and random. Just like the point the dancers were trying to get across.

You know when you’re little and you’re alone and your dreams of being a ballerina can be let loose? But you don’t actually know how to dance, so you flail your body around. But you like what you’re doing and you feel like you are doing something right. There is some order in your brain, some beauty. Someone on the outside would just laugh.

The beginning video was so raw it hurt. It made all these thoughts swarm around in my head.  The concept of children almost cleansing the earth with their dance, and the idea of absence and emptiness having mass and substance, you could feel it.

What intrigued me about me about the dance part was the questions is made me ask myself. Why is this wrong? What makes a ballet more valid and more enjoyable than this? Ballet  is structured and ordered and something we are conditioned to see as beautiful.

By the end though I did not care about this thought. I felt like I was going to throw up. I appreciated it, but it was so challenging it hurt to sit there. Maybe that is what the title meant. Almost a challenge in itself, how can you sit there and do nothing?”

When Katherine Profeta came to speak to us I was excited to hear what she had to say. (I was even more excited when she gave out the film text! During the performance I literally tried to hold on to certain words and ideas. I would, sadly, watch them slip away a few moments later.) She had been behind the scenes. She knew the place this piece was coming from, while I only speculated. I found the brainstorming and the experimental part of the process of creating this piece very interesting. When I watched the dance, it didn’t cross my mind that someone had actually thought about this “style” for a very long time before experimenting with it.  Ralph Lemon and his fellow performers posed many questions, such as, “How do you make a dance that disappears?” Even their questions and their processes were poetic to me.

Though she had answers, Katherine Profeta definitely did not intend to simplify the performance. The performance was not intended to be straightforward. She said they understood that the performance was extreme and challenging and that people would have to change the way they usually watched dance or really any performance. But could they do it?

“The question is of course the answer and the form in which the answer exists. ”

When I first heard that I thought it was the strangest thing ever. But it does make sense after discussing it.

The whole performance was puzzling.

The whole time I was hysterically laughing (silently of course). Perhaps it was the confusion that made it so funny.

Initially, I could not help but wonder: what, about that whole performance, could make anyone do anything but laugh?? Why was it only the students giggling? Did we miss something important? Were we just too tired to understand?

I think we did. I do not think this was a suitable performance for us at all. We were tired, confused and only slightly amused.

From the beginning, I expected people to dance, ACTUALLY dance.

What we endured was nothing of the sort. The introduction was so long, and the monotone voice of Lemmon made me tune him out. I know he was trying to be deep, and perhaps he was saying meaningful words, but it just did not sink in.

And so, I waited patiently for the long and strange introduction to end and the dance to begin. At that point I knew better than to expect a traditional dance.

However, as time passed, I began to get even more confused. Why was there crying?

What was the point to the scene with the walrus (which apparently was there, but all I saw from my far away seat was a blob)? Why was Lemmon twirling a sock?

Most importantly I wondered why people were leaving, and why everyone was not as amused as I was. What was I missing?

This bothered me so much that when I thought about it, I actually stopped my quiet laughter. I stared puzzled at the stage before me.
What was Lemmon trying to say and why are we not able to understand it? I scanned the booklet in the subway, searching for clues to the meaning I had missed.

I found just what I had expected: Nothing! In frustration, I waited five days until I would get any sort of explanation.

After the class discussion with Dr. Katherine Profeta I was able to see a whole new side of the production. Instead of viewing it as a funny piece without any specific direction, we were able to find a unifying theme for the piece. There was so much to discuss: there was meaning and symbolism behind everything!

Now that I have more knowledge of the piece I kind of feel guilty for laughing. The piece is about not only the loss of people close to Lemmon, but it is about the universality of loss, love and time. Like the planet Solaris from the sci-fi movie, the piece brings out the innermost thoughts in Lemmon’s mind. Perhaps this is why it was so abstract: thoughts are rarely as simple as a structured dance can convey. For this reason, the unique choreography and the breakdown of the bodies were appropriate to the complex meaning of the piece.

Nevertheless Dr. Profeta emphasized that the true meaning of the piece is only equally as important as our reaction to it. For me, this piece was an emotional catharsis. I have not laughed that much in so long, and this piece left me feeling refreshed and energetic. Understanding the piece did make me respect it and Ralph Lemmon more, but it did not change how it made me feel. I think if I truly understood the piece while watching, I would have ended up crying and leaving the theater feeling much worse.



When I initially noticed the Ralph Lemmon Dance on the syllabus back in September, two thoughts ran through my head – first, how am I going to get to Brooklyn and second, I can easily stay in the house all day without going anywhere. As we began reading through the syllabus, I got really excited – we were going to see a dance piece! Little did I know that the performance would be nothing like what I expected.

I arrived at the theater, and showed my ticket to the usher. I knew I was sitting in the orchestra section, but I had no idea how close to the stage my seat was. I was in the third row, practically sitting on the stage. I was able to hear the thumps as the dancers threw themselves onto the ground, and I saw the sweat dripping from their faces. As close as I was to the stage, I was still envious of the members of the audience who sat in the first row – they really were sitting on the stage.

The dance show began with a movie, which struck me as rather odd. When the screen came down, I figured there would be a little film introduction, not more than 10 minutes long. I was most definitely mistaken. The movie went on for more than 30 minutes, and I spent the majority of the time trying to discern the purpose of showing it. I kept saying to myself, “This performance is only an hour and a half…When are the music and dancing going to start?”

The dancing eventually began; however, the music never did. The dancers came onto the stage, barefoot, wearing leggings similar to the leggings I used to wear for jazz. They then started moving around the stage, with no apparent form or rhythm. It was a confusing modern dance segment to watch and it went on for about 20 minutes. Luckily for our class, Professor Profeta of Queens College, worked with Ralph Lemmon on the piece and came to our class to discuss the major themes and meanings behind the piece. She began her lecture by explaining to us that the dance involved in the 20 minutes of straight dancing, was indeed a form of freestyle dance. She used the term “minimally structured improvisation” to describe the technique. The dancers were given tasks that needed to be accomplished during the 20 minutes, and planned to be in certain locations of the stage at established times; however, the dancers were improvising for the majority of the segment.

While watching the performance, I didn’t understand the significance of the animals, such as the rabbit and the hare. To be honest, even after our discussion in class, I still don’t fully comprehend the point of including these animals in the performance. I was a little disappointed to learn that if I had been sitting further back in the theater I would have believed the dog was real: From my seat in the third row, I knew right away that it was fake. After the dog was projected on the stage for a few minutes, other animals appeared. When I saw these animals, my initial thought was that the dancers in the performance were supposed to be imitating animals. Most animals don’t think before they act – they just move their bodies on a whim. The performers, similar to animals, were letting their bodies lead rather than their brains.

I must say that the most interesting part of the night was when I got into my car to go home and I saw the dancers on their bikes outside of the theater. Usually, when I go to a Broadway show, the actors spend a long time backstage following the performances, and then sign playbills outside of the theater. This performance was definitely different than I was used to in many ways, and the fact that the dancers left immediately following the performance was the icing on the cake.

The Ralph Lemmon Dance seems to encompass many random ideas and emotional states into one performance. Although I did not personally find the piece to be as entertaining as some of the other shows we enjoyed this semester, I am happy to have had the opportunity to see a modern dance piece. Still, the next time I go to a dance show, I expect to hear music.