“Moving Theater: Impermanent Collection” at the Whitney
Last Friday, the Whitney had its weekly Whitney Live performance series, this time performed by Moving Theater and the International Contemporary Ensemble. To summarize the performance, I quote the Artists’ Statement in the program: “Impermanent Collection attempts to bring attention to how performance is experienced in the context of a museum.” And very basically, that’s what they did. Each of the performers chose a piece from the Whitney’s permanent collection to base a dance solo off of; these solos were filmed and was juxtaposed with the live performance that I saw. The live performance interacted significantly with the museum building itself, going off the designated stage onto the stairwell, and for the final section actually took place outside, in the space below the sidewalk.
Moving Theater with this performance sought to raise the questions (again from the program) “What happens in the transition from video to live performance and back again?…And what are we doing in a museum anyway?” The first question is one that concerns any record of a live performance. Personally, I believe that recordings of live acts should be considered completely separate entities from the originating piece. Videos must be edited in order to be optimized for the television viewer; angles are changed, sound is usually enhanced, and camera techniques are in many cases employed to heighten the artistic quality of a recording. This was so in the Moving Theater performance. The gallery videos that were shown alongside the live performances were edited so that they became not only images of what occurred, but portraits of the event. In the live performance these became a sort of emotional background, setting the tone for or dramatically contrasting the live act, which, in actually being the event taking place, took immediacy over the videos. The second question was explored thoroughly throughout the duration of the piece. Acts took place all around the museum space, interacting with the people around and even the gift shop. The performance was integrated into the architecture, forming a distinct connection between that specific place and the show. As for why this took place in a museum and not some other public place, I interpreted it as such: a museum is a collection of relics. Once viewed, they are imprinted into a viewer’s mind, becoming something separate and greater than the original object. A collection of these relics creates a massive outlet for mental and physical release, stimulating emotions and memories and thoughts that would not be apparent normally. The gallery dances are just a more physical release than is typical.
Unfortunately I wasn’t able to completely see what the artists were doing all the time, as the stage was level with the floor and I was in a back row. What I could make out of the live performance, however, was that the performers were stretching the definition of “dance” extremely far, moreso as the show went on. The first part, set around Lucas Samaras’ piece Small Chair 5, mainly consisted of the dancer entangling herself in threads of string held around the stage. This was followed by a section where all of the performers together twisted amongst each other in sinuous formations, a section where the vast majority of the movement was in the video recording and the dancer stood by a wall in an agitated pose and shuddered violently, and again, the final scene, where everyone ran out outside to run in a group from one area to another. The vast majority of it wasn’t in any way rhythmic, and large portions weren’t set to any music at all (or if they were, the music was only to set the mood not tempo or rhythm). I was reminded heavily of Zhang Huan in the process, yet what the performers did during this show was still definable as dance.
I’m personally ambivalent about how I felt about it afterwards. The concept and aesthetics were certainly interesting, but the completely avante-garde nature of much of it, compounded with my complete inability to view anything that happened at floor level, lowered my satisfaction. However, had I known what it was going to be like beforehand, I still would have gone, if only to broaden my personal experience with completely new interpretations of art and performance.