Miami City Ballet, Vincent Mantsoe, Trisha Brown Company and Dorrance Dance Company; that was the order of the program. The order of the dance pieces symbolized the message behind the program, this desire to detach from mainstream society and value what is different and real.
When looking at the order, I realized the first piece juxtaposed the second and the third piece juxtaposed the fourth. However, the third piece’s placement really connected with me and I am going to focus on that in my analysis.
When I initially reflected on the program after I got home, the Dorrance Dance Company piece was the most memorable due to its interesting music and incredible choreography. However, when I began to analyze the program as a whole, the Trisha Brown number kept bothering me, as if I couldn’t figure something out about it.
It was an eerie piece. The red light engulfed the dancers, giving them a warm but alien look. The off-sync imitation led the audience to highlight the other differences between the dancers, like the differences in haircuts and heights. It was as if Trisha Brown was trying her best to make the dancers seem like the same people, but they weren’t, and that was the important thing. Her off-sync imitation choreography spoke volumes to the message she was conveying to the audience. She gave commentary about the forced conformism that society mandates on people. However, humans are not dolls that can be made to look alike. We all have individual beliefs and traits that make us unique. Therefore, Trisha Brown chose for them to have different haircuts and overall body types, to make obvious the differences they possessed and highlight their individuality. This is made further evident with the Dorrance Dance Company piece following the Trisha Brown piece. The Dorrance Dance Company piece was diverse from the get-go. It had no uniformity in costumes or dancers with spoke to the almost utopian goal of this program. It was as if the Trisha Brown piece was reality and the Dorrance Dance piece was a hopeful future. In the wake of this political atmosphere, the overall program was a refreshing reprieve and proved that though we are all different, we stand together.
