One Dance, Three Stories

For some, “I don’t believe in outer space” was a random, confused dance performance. Grey rocks scattered around the floor. Dancers were freely dancing as if they had no control over their bodies. There were different scenes and random actions. However, to me, I found it soothing with a surreal mix of life and fantasy. In fact, I considered the entire dance performance as three different stories: the atomic world, the human mind, and New York City (Yes, Nietzsche would probably smack me thrice for this).

The Atomic World

I was not sure how I began to think of the entire dance as the atomic world. Possibly because the Chemistry lecture that day was about internal energy? However, to me, it did make some sense. Atoms move randomly, occasionally colliding to other atoms, thus forming a compound. Likewise, the dancers moved around randomly, and some even attached to each other for a while. Some bonds collapsed, while others did not. The scatter grey rocks represented sub-particles (more specifically the electrons), which, like atoms, are scattered around. What about the chatting and occasional background voices? Well, even atoms communicate with each other, whether they are vicious to bond with other bonds or remain alone like a noble gas element.

The Human Mind

As I listened to the words coming from the “bipolar” dancer in black, I began to consider the entire dance in an existential point of view. At the end, the dancer spoke about her lover, in which she loved him and hoped he would come back “from outer space.” This could indicate a sense of withdrawal or even insanity brought about by the lover’s death. Could the dance be the entire thoughts of that “bipolar” dancer in black? Maybe her state of mind is in “outer space?”

New York City

A dancer in a blue hoodie was playing ping-pong. Occasional dancers sat by the corners of the stage as if they were poor. A Japanese acrobatics instructor was jumping around. Dancers grabbed onto each other as they were fighting. Does the randomness reminded you of New York City, or even captured an essence of the city life? I even considered the references of Hamlet (“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark” and “I Will Survive” (by Gloria Gaynor) as satires, which could reflect society’s view on such literature or music.  It was also difficult to notice every single dancer’s actions. Likewise, in the city, we do not notice every single movement in the crowd of people. We do see movement as a whole, but to notice what each person is doing, we have to focus our attention on one person at a time.

Overall, out of the entire dance, I considered the ending of the performance as my favorite. No, not because it was the end of a random, confused dance performance. The voice combined with the choice of words (for example, the repetition of “no more…”) created a poetic, dream-like tone. Therefore, the tone created a soothing ending (a feeling of serenity) to a random dance performance.