The Arts in New York City
My first thought once the dancing of “Political Mother” began: zombie apocalypse. I would not be surprised if, after zombies took over and ate everyone’s brains, the human population would transform into one giant “Political Mother” dance. Interestingly, from what I inferred, the dance was conveying that humanity is already at that mindless stage, even without the brain-eating apocalypse.
“Political Mother” portrayed normally clad individuals (wearing dresses, trousers, t-shirts) moving on stage in a fluid, detached way, as if they had no solid control of their own actions. While this type of dancing was amazing to watch, it gave off a very primal feel. Aside from the remarkable dancing, “Political Mother” also had crazy lighting and music that all added to the hectic atmosphere of the show. Fog filled the dim room and lights flashed sporadically, pretty much like what would be expected at a rock concert. The live music is best described as angry heavy metal, with the singer periodically yelling out.
Throughout the dance, the performers copied each other, often times changing their dance after others changed. There was one instance where a dancer ran across the stage, arms flailing, and others would follow right behind. However, every once in a while a different dancer would appear running in the opposite direction, and a follower, running after the initial dancer, would pause for a moment in confusion and then turn around and run after the second dancer. This type of mindless following was apparent throughout the performance.
At various points, the band and singer would be foggily lit up in the background of the stage and all the dancers would stop and gaze up at him, as if he were a god, or Satan who had everyone under a spell. As he would rant and rave in a loud angry voice, the dancers would sit or stand with their arms waving above them, in total awe and submission to whatever he was saying.
This led to other instances that strongly resembled the holocaust. The dancers appeared in striped clothing, in a closed room, totally dejected and lost. They attempted to continue with the societal dancing, but many gave up and just slumped down. To me, this symbolized those individuals who are at the negative receiving end of this political frenzy, and even they, after being subjected to horrors, try to fit in and “live” as society would expect.
The zombie-like dancing combined with the dictatorial singer and angry music was successful in creating the idea that humanity is really a species of primal, mindless individuals who do what’s expected of them; whether it’s having sex or getting over a traumatic event. After all is said and done, we all end up acting the same way. As the performance concluded: “when there is pressure there is folk dance.” Life is strangely pointless, and maybe its best we don’t take it too seriously.
The performance is titled “Political Mother,” but I wonder whether “Social Mother” may have been more accurate; or perhaps the two are one and the same.
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I’m pretty sure that when the performance once started everyone had zombie apocalypse on their minds. The performance started with a samurai taking his own life. The stage went dark,the music began to blast, and the dancers appeared on stage. The dancing appeared to have many face value patterns as well as many subtle patterns. Dancers would break off from the original formation and dance in a completely different style and pattern from the main group. The moves of both groups would intertwine and then separate until the sub group that broke off fluidly rejoined the main group. The band in the background fog, played intermittent scores that accompanied the dancers. There was a monster=ish character blaring in to a microphone unintelligibly. I agree that he resembled some kind of figure in power. In the end the words, “Where there is oppression, there is folk dance,” kind of threw off a lot of people, as did the title, “Political Mother.”