The Arts in New York City

How would I even begin to describe what I saw on October 14th.  Perhaps I was dreaming and a bunch of people were just going completely crazy right before my eyes.  Or perhaps I was cursed by some evil spirit who forced me sit there and watch ninety minutes of what I would call…torture!

When I went into the theater, I was super excited because I’ve been to the Brooklyn Academy of Music a few times before to see ballet performances and I absolutely loved it there.  However, when I heard about this dance performance I didn’t really expect a whimsical and pretty ballet, but I did expect something entertaining.  As I sat in my seat, I couldn’t help but take pictures of the amazing theater, which I fall in love with every time I’m there, but I was quickly scolded for just trying to take a picture for my photo journal :[  I saw in my seat, got comfortable, took out my bottle of water, flipped through my BAMbill and I was ready for an awesome experience–flashy dancers, beautiful costumes, amazing choreography, hip music, a storyline–I just couldn’t wait.  But instead I received the complete and total opposite.

When the lights dimmed, I saw a chair with a spotlight on it. I thought that the dancers would come and start spinning chairs and crazy acts but instead, out comes Ralph Lemon with a small set of papers, and the screen lowers.  “A film?!  Are you serious…where the heck is the dancing?  I could’ve stayed home if it was just a movie!”  I thought to myself.  After thirty minutes of watching a video that made absolutely no sense to me whatsoever, but I do admit that Lemon had a very soothing voice, the lights dim once more and I’m ready for some action.

Then the dancers came out in really crappy, bright, stretchy, cheap-material costumes that look like they took about two seconds to put together and start dancing like the crazy people on the video that I had just seen.  That moment set off a lightbulb in my head, Ralph Lemon said that he made his dancers dance like that for three minutes and he wondered what would happen if he made them do it for thirty minutes.  Foreshadowing?  I think so.  Those thirty minutes felt like forever.  I didn’t understand what they were doing at all and at times, it began to be funny watching them.  I did notice that there were some structured dance moves for example Okwui (I might have gotten the spelling wrong, actually I’m pretty sure I did) was doing a broken down version of a pirouette in the corner of the stage while another man was flipping in the air (Ten times!!!).  These dance moves all seemed very familiar, but it was like they were messing them up on purpose.

I waited for thirty minutes, or thirty hours, and then a woman started to cry backstage.  I thought to myself then that the story Lemon was trying to convey was about his grief for his partner, but the crying wouldn’t stop.  In fact, the crying went on for probably another thirty minutes to the point where it was driving me completely insane and I wanted to yell out to Okwui “Shut the **** up already!!!”

Luckily, just as I felt as if I had reached my breaking point, the crying stopped.  When the crying stopped a few animals came out including an adorable dog, the bunny from the video in the first act, a cow, a walrus, and god knows what else.  I felt like I was in a staring contest, but the silence was a plus for me after hearing minutes of wild, crazy crying.  The animals were cute…and I don’t understand why they were even there in the first place, but the projections were incredible.

Ralph Lemon comes out once more but instead he is dancing with Okwui, a duet that I felt I understood a little more.  I actually really enjoyed this part of the dance, believe it or not because I felt like it was a love story between the two of them, and to me that was beautiful.

I left the theater not knowing anything that had happened and I was just focused on going home.  In the train, I decided to read the BAMbill once more to see if I’d understand what had happened the second time around, which actually made me even more confused than before.  When I heard that a professor who was the dramaturge would be in to speak with us, I was super excited because I would finally understand what I saw.

When the professor walked in, she was actually really cool to talk to and I felt comfortable with telling her about how much I actually hated the performance even though she had worked on it for so long.  After her discussion, I still didn’t completely understand the piece and I still don’t really understand it, but that’s the beauty of it…Ralph Lemon didn’t want us to understand it, he wanted to create something so mind-boggling that it’ll stay with us forever, and possibly haunt us.

I finally understood that it was the breakdown of the body’s normal everyday activities and movements and Lemon wanted something different.  Perhaps he wanted to show his grief for his partner, or the connection of time periods, or  That’s exactly what he gave us–something really different that probably only a few in the audience could actually relate to, but we all found one part, one thread of the entire “story” that we could relate to.  After the class discussion, I learned to really appreciate this type of art because we had a chance to go behind the scenes and really dig deep into the artist’s mind which proved to be extremely helpful in understand the piece.

What seemed like a horrid experience for me, actually turned out to be an eye opener.  Although I am a lover of spectacle, fancy costumes, and an amazing storyline, I’ve come to appreciate art that doesn’t have any of this, but yet still does in its very own way.

Confused, fascinated, and expectant are the best words I can think of for how I was feeling during the BAM performance.  I was confused as to what was going on and what the artist was trying to say, fascinated by the newness of the experience of watching such an undefinable form of dance, and expectant of something to explain the piece, or at least tie it all together, at the end. One thing I did understand was that Ralph Lemmon was trying to defy form and put on something the audience had never seen and he couldn’t have done a better job of it.  I am by no means familiar with dance, but I usually can recognize some moves or style within a performance I see.  There was nothing recognizable on Wednesday night, except maybe a couple of motions that looked like things I would see in a wrestling or MMA match.

Because of my confusion I was fascinated.  I couldn’t take my eyes of the stage in my attempts to figure out what was going on.  I tried to catch every move, every word, and every subtle symbol in order to understand Ralph Lemmon’s message. The flailing, the crying, the animals, the sock and tambourine all caught my attention, but I couldn’t connect them.  It seemed that the performance was a series of meaningless, disconnected pieces.  I was hoping and searching for some sort of explanation.

In the end, I did not get what I expected and wanted.  I’ve experience strange and confusing works of art before, but usually there has been something to make sense out of.  There was nothing in Lemmon’s piece that I could figure out.  However, I remained fascinated, I was sure there was something being said and couldn’t wait for an opportunity to find out.  I had high hopes for the explanation I would receive in class.

Professor Profeta helped a lot.  She didn’t provide concrete explanations- that would have limited the ability for the piece to provoke thought- but she did give some helpful opinions and background information.  Going into the performance I did not know about Ralph Lemmon’s relationship with Asako or Walter, nor was I sure that he was talking about real people during the piece.  Professor Profeta gave us more detail into Walter’s influence on Lemmon and Asako’s illness.  Knowing that Lemmon was in a state of grief during the process of creating this piece helped me understand the crying and even the lack of structure.  Death of a loved one can leave a person feeling as if there is nothing reliable, and a structureless dance is a great reflection of this feeling.

Professor Profeta also told us that Lemmon had been studying dance from other cultures.  If the dance reminded me of anything, it would be of primal dancing. Although my lack of knowledge leaves me unable to be certain, I would not be surprised to find out that the piece was heavily influenced by some sort of tribal ritual.  Also, studying other cultures can make a person more open to experimentation and less convinced that any conception of the right way of doing things is objectively true.  Lemmon’s experience with foreign cultures may have left him contemptuous of the idea that a dance should have a particular style, or any style at all.  Knowing that our ideas of formal dance would look ridiculous to other cultures, and vice-versa, may have left Lemmon feeling as if structure and style in dance is useless and even silly.

In the end, I cannot know what Lemmon was thinking when creating “How Can You Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere,” but I can think about potential implications. I can do my best to empathize, or at least sympathize, with the artist and think about the importance of structure.

Eccentric. Weird. Connected. Torturous. That’s how I would describe Ralph Lemon’s dance piece, “How Can You Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere?” It was a piece that was unprecedented. It was “out of the box.” It was alien. BUT there was a story, a message, a feeling, emotions that kept the piece together. What those things were, I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. Even with Professor Profeta’s help in trying to understand the piece, my preconceptions did not change they were only spurred on.

Other than that, I really don’t know where to begin. I don’t know where Ralph Lemon began in his piece. Was there a beginning and an end? Maybe it was a dream? Was it about fertility? Maybe it was exposing us to the metaphysical world? Or it is string theory? Personally, I’ve been using the concept of time a lot in my schoolwork, but it can’t be helped. Time affects everything. And maybe that is what Ralph Lemon is trying to say. Maybe he’s trying to talk about time. Or not.

When the dance piece began, I wasn’t expected a piece where a person talks in front of an audience, but maybe that was his way of expressing the dance. The dance of the words – bouncing, ricocheting, rolling, jumping, spinning – across the auditorium and, finally, into the audience’s ears. Then the screen filled with images that seemed to have no flow, no connection yet, it did. The images may not have held together by themselves, but the words, the narration did. I guess this can be seen as time holding the world together, just like those words. Whenever the silence came out, it made everything seem empty and unsecure. Time gives us structure.

During the readings there were a few things that Ralph Lemon read which struck me. One was “the question was in the form of the answer which answers all questions” or something to that manner and that reminded me of Epik High in my previous post where they say, “Genius is not the answer to all questions. It’s the question to all answers.” This started me thinking that we shouldn’t just accept life just the way it is. Instead, we have to be questioning our existence and the present. Why are we here? What is our purpose? “All for one, one for all.” That is the way life is. When we live everything is ours, but once we die our own bodies will be serving a purpose for other organisms. This slow breakdown of the body makes me think that we are all living contradictions and not of our own volition. What I mean is that once we are born, the mitochondria release these toxins that is one of the components which bring about the slow breakdown (I’m sorry, but I do not know where I can retrieve this fact because it was televised on the Science Channel several years ago, I believe). Is this what Ralph is trying to tell us? We should take advantage of our lives because once born, we are already set to die.

Another set of words were seemingly strung together delicately yet bluntly, “Asako, with the last of her strength, grasped my penis,” or something similar to that. When Ralph Lemon said these words, the myth of the Fisher King immediately flashed into my head. This myth showed how the arid, barren, and infertile land was tied to the Fisher King’s injured groin. The groin was the symbol of life and, because of the injury the kingdom was affected greatly. I feel that Ralph Lemon’s words here portrayed this because Asako was ill during the time and slowly withering away, but she still had the strength to grasp at life. In addition, Ralph Lemon may be using past myths to connect to the present because it is also seen in Ancient Greek Mythology that Dionysos was born from Zeus’ thigh/groin. The word for groin means life. This is another way in which Lemon is connecting everything with a thread, maybe the red thread of fate. Well, not really because that is meant for soul mates. But maybe everything is a marriage for one another because we cannot live without everything else.

Then there was the dance that, as Professor Profeta explained, was the breakdown of the body, was torturous to watch because it showed the dancers moving without “structure” and throwing themselves around. The fact that the dancers were so dedicated to this shows their concentration and state of mind of being in the present. Other than that, it was long and confusing.

After the dance, there was a woman, Okwui, who was crying loudly. Professor Profeta told us that this part was like the grieving of death. She was mourning for herself and her cries includes our own. During this part, I actually got tired of the crying, but if it was a child I would have been irritated. Maybe it’s the pitch of their cries which annoy me, but that’s besides the fact. Anyway, Professor Profeta mentioned professional mourners which reminded me of Japan because they hire professional mourners to cry for their dead ones because the mourners themselves cannot cry enough or cannot cry at all. The professional mourner can be so emotional so as to incite the mourners to cry. But honestly, I didn’t really know why she was crying, but at one point there was something in me that felt happy. I guess I felt that she was crying for me too, but it was a quick moment until it was hidden under layers of my annoyance.

Still, the entire piece can be confusing. You have to look at it as a whole and remember specific pieces which touch one another. It’s like a spider web: strong yet thin, fragile, and almost invisible.

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This is an addendum to my Ralph Lemon blog. I bring this up because Professor Profeta mentioned John Cage because the New York Times article mentioned Merce Cunningham. I bring John Cage into this blog because of his work “Aria with Renga.” Personally, I was captivated by the definition of Renga and therefore, I listened to the piece. Renga is a “type of group improvisatory work where John Cage tells the orchestra how to play and when to play it, but not what notes and instrument to play,” as Michael Tilson Thomas defines it. This piece reminded me of Ralph Lemon’s dance piece because they both have freedom, but this freedom is restricted within some boundaries.

Aria with Renga