The Arts in New York City

After initially watching Ralph Lemon’s performance I wondered why on earth would he chose to produce something that would want to make the people he was performing for want to get up and just leave? After listening to what Ralph Lemon, Katherine Profeta, and the dancers David and Okwui had to say, I was finally able to realize that the piece wasn’t supposed to be about whether or not we liked it, it was about the process. We as the audience have to figure out how to watch this performance.

Normally when I watch something I try to figure out what the storyline is and why things are occurring. So naturally when I sat down to watch this performance I immediately tried to figure out what the story was. For this reason I think I left the theater very unsatisfied that night because I wasn’t able to figure out this story. But that’s exactly what Lemon wanted. “How Can You Stay In The House All Day And Not Go Anywhere” can be thought of as an “experiment”. Ralph Lemon didn’t want the piece to be about us, rather for it to be about the bigger questions, such as, is it acceptable to go to a performance and watch dancers just be? What is it now that is done on stage? What is dance, and what are its boundaries? How far can something go before it doesn’t belong in theater?

I guess another reason why when sat through this performance I didn’t enjoy it is because it wasn’t anything I was used to seeing. I was very disappointed when I walked in thinking I was going to see a dance, and then all of a sudden I saw a large screen on stage, and then when the dancing started it wasn’t the dancing that I had been expecting to see. “We’re not trying to do something that you recognize”. ……oooo, now I get it! I wish I had known that going into the piece. Now everything makes so much more sense. We weren’t supposed to know what was to come next, we weren’t supposed to recognize their movements. This is why their dancing appeared to have no form. It was child-like, which is what Ralph Lemon wanted to accomplish.

Something that Okwui pointed out which changed my view on the dancing was that she mentioned that the dance actually did have some form to it. Because it was a performance for an audience, it couldn’t just be 20 minutes of complete randomness, there had to be some structure to it. So although to me the whole thing just seemed like completely random movements, and during the performance I had no idea how something like that could possibly be planned, and that it just had to be completely made up on the spot, but after speaking to the dancers I now understand that there were moments where the dancers met, and these moments were prepared and very structured. So although there was no form to the dancing, it was still a very structured piece.

Through this piece, Ralph Lemon takes the opportunity to share a very personal experience with the audience, and through the performance he creates moments of wrongness and tension and in these moments of wrongness he sets the stage for a discussion. So now I finally realize that this Ralph Lemon performance wasn’t about the entertainment aspect, rather it was about how you view this piece, and what you are personally able to get out of it.

I love his voice. Hearing Ralph Lemon speak today brought me back to the performance at BAM when he read the film talk. He has this thoughtful tone to his voice, and his diction makes him seem like he is reciting poetry.

But his voice is just the cherry on top.  I thoroughly enjoyed the dialogue between Ralph, Katherine and the dancers. Actually, Okwui is not even a dancer; she is an actress, which I also loved. I have too much love to give.

Sometimes I get too passionate. Like, I will have all these ideas in my head after listening to people explore their own ideas or after reading a really great thought provoking essay, and I feel like I’m going to explode from all the connections and new thoughts that they have helped generate in my head.

This kind of explosion of excitement began, when they started talking about non-form, of trying to break the patterns of dance and create their own language. This semester in my philosophy class, my teacher keeps trying to get my class to think for ourselves. To realize, as Socrates says, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” We are brought up with fixed categories, but instead of questioning these stereotypes and brandings, we accept them as truth.

Professor Rosenberg would love Ralph Lemon, for he also tried to break the norms and protocols. With this production, he wanted to find realms beyond his consciousness. Beyond what is fixed right and fixed wrong. Beyond what is beautiful and what is ugly. To see, “what happens when you get lost in your body?”

I could probably answer this question of what happens when you get lost in your own body. I’m not really a great dancer. I have rhythm; I am just not the greatest multi-tasker. My feet and hands just are not capable doing two different things at the same time. Yet, I know the feeling of when a really great song comes on and you feel it travel through your veins, all over your body, until it is not possible for you to sit still. Then you just get up, and start moving. Jumping. Prancing. Shaking. And it’s the most freeing and exhilarating thing. To others watching this may look very wrong. VERY WRONG.

Ralph Lemon spoke of this “wrongness”. Not mine, but his production.  How it was full of moments that expose a tension from this wrongness. How it was suppose to create a debate as to what we now do onstage. This again, goes back to the idea of a set framework. Where do the borders end? How far can you push until the frame breaks? Maybe I want to break the frame.

This reminded me of a painting I analyzed for a formal analysis paper in Art History. It was Van Gogh called Oleanders. In the painting, the composition is really interesting. It is of a book and vase of flowers on a table. Yet the book is all the way on the left, half off the table, and the vase is towards the right back corner of the table. When you look at it, you feel a tension emanating from the painting, for things are not, “where they belong.”

The idea of things not being where they belong, or how they are “suppose to be,” connects to the idea Ralph was speaking of at the end of the session. (I promise this is my last point)

At the end he spoke about this performance as memory and memorial, him, “Coming to terms with my own life.” It was like a catharsis. Most people see sadness and grief as something terrible, and wish it would just be absent from their lives. Someone commented that she really appreciated him stepping into his own sadness and sorrows and fully taking them in and creating something from them. I could not agree more. I think there is something simply beautiful about contemplating life and sadness. Sorrow and loss can create a sense what of it means to be alive and a human being. In this piece, Ralph Lemon took his grief and tried to get to elements of joy and grace and ecstasy. In the film at the beginning of the BAM production Ralph declares, after his partner dies, “I will ennoble this loss…the remarkable and confounding absence.” I believe he did exactly that.