Month: November 2015 (Page 2 of 2)

Upon hearing about the Ralph Lemon performance, I was eager to see what the choreographer had in store for us. I was hoping for a different type of dance than we had seen before. But unfortunately I was disappointed. We were once again in a small single room with a small set and barely any dancing at all. I did appreciate the technology aspect of it. The way the videos and sounds were displayed throughout the performance. But I couldn’t even link them to the “dance” as a whole. Both of the females in the show were very talented actresses but once again I feel as if I was missing out on the dance aspect of it. The only dancing I really saw in the show was the three men dancing to fun, upbeat, music at the end. This was my favorite part of the performance but I couldn’t even really enjoy it because I was thoroughly disappointed with the two preceding hours. I wasn’t even sure how these three men dancing to funk music related to the show in any means what so ever. Overall, I felt very uncomfortable with the performance, and although I appreciate that it was a type of art I do not see how it could be dance. The actresses were talking about things that none of us knew how to react to or make sense of. We couldn’t even look bare at each other during the performance and if we did happen to glance in someone’s direction, it was a look of “what is going on”, or they were just asleep.

When interviewing Levi, one thing he said he loved about New York City was that it was filled with all types of dance. That everywhere you go you can be in “direct conversation” with a different form of this art; and there are very very few places where this can happen. Coming into this Arts In New York City seminar with a dance concentration, I was excited to learn about all of these types of dance. I feel like there are very few weeks left and we have only seen or talked about one type continuously. I appreciate that post modern dance is an under appreciated art form but I really would have like to learn about all of types od dance present within New York City. I feel as if this Ralph Lemon performance really stuck out to me but not in a good way. It was unfortunately just another modern dance performance that left me confused and I was extremely disappointed.

Monica Huzinec

Upon entering The Kitchen where we would be watching Ralph Lemon’s Scaffold my mind was running with the possibilities as to what we were about to see. As soon as the performance began I had a feeling it wasn’t going to be anything like I’ve ever seen before. The first woman to come out first began jumping on what appeared to be a mattress on top of a two-story set and remained doing so at different speeds and paces for a while. She then came down and from what I remember began rambling about people like Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, and their fans. She went on to permeate the room with an uncomfortable and awkward atmosphere as she read aloud from sexually explicit novels. She finally exited the room in slow and quiet manner. The second woman who came out began by singing a song in a bad and almost very childish tune. Her part of the performance also included a lot of dialogue, some of it explicit too. But one part of her performance that I vividly remember is when she laid down on the floor in the back of the room while a horrid screaming device went on for what felt like 10 minutes. I could feel my ears ringing as the frequencies of the screams changed. I tried to piece together what exactly the movements and dialogue of both women meant but I couldn’t really make sense of them.

Though I do admit that I found my self laughing at some of the humorous parts, by the end of the performance I was just disappointed. The only part of the performance that I truly enjoyed was the final performance piece where three men danced nonstop to infectious musical beats. The main issue I had with Ralph Lemon’s Scaffold was that with it’s two-story set and ongoing dialogue it felt more like one big abstract and confusing theatrical performance. When I chose to take this seminar I hoped to be immersed into the many different cultures of dance and be able to watch a variety of dance performances but so far I feel as if I have really only seen one or two dance pieces with the rest being some kind of movement based art. Overall I feel as though I was disappointed in this performance because it is just another abstract movement based art that left me very confused by the end of it.

-Ariella Caminero