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
I completely agree with Ariella when she mentions that she was overall disappointed by the performance. I didn’t know what to expect either when we went inside The Kitchen, but I was hoping that it was going to be more dance based. When we went inside the performance space I immediately knew that what we were about to watch was going to be something very interesting. The set-up did catch my attention because it had two stories and I was wondering what was going to happen on the top, where I saw a mattress. I thought that this was an interesting choice and it made me feel curious about the performance.
The first woman that came out on stage started jumping on top of the mattress and at first this was interesting to me, but at the same time very confusing because I had no idea what was going on. The screens on the bottom of the stage were also playing different videos and I did not know if I should look at the screens or the women jumping on the mattress on the top. I found myself constantly looking up and down. Once the women came down from the top she started making jokes about Beyonce and other stars, and even though some were humorous, I was completely confused on how that had to do anything with the performance. As she read out loud from the sexually explicit novels, I just looked around the room to see the reactions of other people. I felt that slowly everything was becoming awkward for me and I didn’t know how to react to what was being said. The woman herself had a very awkward character and as she quietly and gracefully excited the room, I didn’t know what to expect next.
The second woman that came into the stage was the complete opposite from the previous woman. She had on dressy clothes and a wig. She walked in and started singing in a very out of tune and not appealing way. She then started talking and kept on talking for most of the time with a few moments where she sang. Something that was interesting towards the end of her performance was the moment where she laid down on the floor and there was a recording that kept on playing. The recording seemed to go on forever and it became annoying to me after a while because I thought it would never end. Once it finally ended, I felt relieved from all the noises. The second woman, just like the first, left in a very graceful and slow manner as she walked through the audience. At this point, I wasn’t sure if the performance was over and what was going to happen next.
All of a sudden, the door opened and three men started dancing. I found the music to be very appealing and I enjoyed seeing this dance. I still had no idea what the performance was about and what exactly was going on, but the dance was my favorite part. I was hoping that the entire performance was going to be more about dancing, but in the end it wasn’t. I also think that the performance dragged on for too long and I found myself losing interest at some points. I was overall disappointed by the performance because it left me confused and after two hours, I still didn’t know what went on.