In analyzing Rambert’s history of economics through dance I am left dazed and confused. The dance, if it can even be called a dance, begins with a very macabre performance about the death of a woman’s mother, which left a bitter taste in my mouth. Then she began to do this interesting cutting motion with her hands but never expanded on the movement and performed it multiple times, along with rest of the group of people who have assembled on the stage by this time; this happened approximately when the cutting motion began and the disgusting soliloquy about the mother.
The dancers seemed to be doing random movements such as opening cupboards, brushing their teeth, or stretching, and then the philosopher comes out onto the stage, out of nowhere. He begins to discuss economics with us and informs us that this won’t be a lecture. Personally I had a difficult time listening to him because of his accent coupled with the dancer’s continual motion, making it difficult to process what he was saying and what the dancers were doing.
Because it was difficult to understand what he was saying I was only able to understand two ideas enough to write about them. The first was his idea that economics was the exertion and portraying of power and control over someone else, and for that reason things like interest exist, as well as the loan in the first place, and further, that trading itself comes from this idea of a power struggle. I found this idea distasteful because economics is rationality and selfishness explained in technical jargon along with some graphs and charts. I believe in attaching this idea of economic transactions being exercises in posturing, Rambert’s focus or way of seeing is not one that I am interested knowing about, simply because I think it is looking at economics in a novel, but disagreeable lens. It is a point of view that is not worth exploring, at least not in the way Rambert does it.
The second idea was when the philosopher mentioned the expression love is blind, saying that it was in fact the opposite; that it is when we see something that nobody else does that we are in love. I don’t know how this fit into the economics lecture because I was grasping at straws for something interesting at this point in the performance when this gem came through. Which brings me to another point, I thought that there were many interesting parts, but I never knew how they fit together or what the point of anything was. I liked the moustaches on the sides of the ladies faces and them talking about investing in the south sea company and smoking on their candlestick cigars; I liked when all the dancers were roaming around the room doing their own things; I liked when we saw the dancers become a machine; I liked how there were different eras of time presented; I like how they explained why the crash of 2006 happened, albeit in a disagreeable way; I liked that the dancers all brought out their possessions and then shouted out what they were; I liked that most of the dancers read something witty at the end of the performance; and yet after liking all of these individual things, I can’t see how they fit together or what the point was.
Was it just a lecture on economics in the last 200-or-so years using “dancers” to play out some interesting scenes throughout this brief history? I think that was all that it was; the dancing didn’t enhance the words that the philosopher was saying, if anything they distracted us from them. The artwork did not speak for itself, we had to have everything explained to us, strangely, by the philosopher, which gave the feeling that we were sitting in a lecture hall where some students happened to be floating around the professor. You want to listen to the professor, but you can’t help but look at the students. And you can’t fully appreciate either the professor’s lecture or the student’s movements.
Not that I think the professors particular speech was appreciable. He seemed to say very little of interest, instead choosing to recite history for us, with very little spin on it by his part, but coming from a skewed and gloomy view of economics. I couldn’t tell if this performance was a dance or a lecture, but in attempting to straddle both realms, it failed to achieve greatness in either.
Ilizar Yusupov
Blog A
Entering Pascal Rambert’s show, I had a completely open mind because I had never seen an experimental dance piece before and was actually quite excited. As soon as the first woman began her speech about her mother, I was immediately turned off. I can respect all types of movement and dancing but I don’t think there ever needs to be someone actually describing what is going to be danced (what I thought she was doing at the time). What I did find interesting was the rather simple movements she used in her speech kept getting repeated by the other dancers that were filling the stage and throughout the three French women’s acting scenes.
Like Ilizar, I liked certain things throughout the piece although I couldn’t find how they all fit together. I thought watching the 30 or so people all act out different parts of everyday life was intriguing. You never really get to see someone do this, and probably don’t pay attention to yourself when doing these things such as washing your face, petting a cat, or putting on makeup. During all this, the philosopher came out and spoke to us about economics. For some reason, ‘philosophy’ and ‘economics’ don’t seem to coincide in my brain. Nonetheless, this man was clearly overpowered by these people all around him, who didn’t stop what they were doing while he was talking. Honestly, I cannot even tell you what he said maybe besides some vague themes. Was Pascal Rambert doing this on purpose? Did he want us to not pay him any attention? Was this his way of making us realize how boring economics is? Was he symbolizing everyone going on in their everyday lives without knowing about economics? I guess we’ll never know.
There were a few things I also enjoyed about this show. One was the use of the choir. They milled about as performers and then the first time they started singing together, it came as a pleasant surprise. It really caught my attention because it was unexpected and sounded great. Maybe if what we saw was an actual dance piece and Rambert had this choir present to perform the live music, that would’ve been quite enjoyable. When all the performers came out with one item, which at first I thought may be something with importance to them, it made the show very personal. Again I have no idea what this has to do with economics; maybe the only use for it was to explain how some people lost what was important to them, even the little things people don’t think about like a small “travel menorah”, in the crisis of 2006. Furthermore, this also solidified the very extreme differences in people that were “performing”. From old ladies, to a ten year old girl, the performers looks were so dynamic.
I travelled home to Long Island right after the show so I had a lot of time to ponder this show and what I really thought of it. I don’t know if I can actually judge what happened because it was my first experimental dance show, and if it wasn’t for our professor telling us it wasn’t exactly a dance piece I wouldn’t have actually known. What I can judge are my feelings on this show. I believe there were some successful pieces of it, but nothing seemed cohesive enough for me to understand anything about economics. Because of that, I look at Rambert’s show in a negative light.
Above comment: from Jill Rodesk (Blog A) 🙂