For the Love of Dance; Blurb 1
Dance is a lot more weird and complicated than one would think, and what one finds in the Donald and Mary Oenslager Gallery at Lincoln Center Plaza will be surprising. Not knowing much about dance, I was baffled by what I saw at the Invention Exhibition by Merce Cunningham & Collaborators. The first thing I noticed a giant, green tripod-looking structure in the center of room. And that wasn’t the only oddity there. The exhibition included numerous strange costumes. For example, there was a whole line of tights by Jasper Johns in the seven colors of the rainbow so it would create a spectrum when the dancers took a bow. Another one by David Hare looked like a character from Star Trek Voyager, with a ring around its head and paddle-like hands. Aluminum pillows and dresses that opened up like fans hung from the ceilings. Along with a modified piano pierced with screws, sticks, rubber, and plastic, I realized there was more to dance than meets the eye. Music sheets, orchestra lists, stage directions, and choreographic notes displayed showed that there were many components to performances and it took a lot of planning. Sure, the sets may look funky, such as in Walkaround Time where dancers were inside plastic-wrap boxes, but while watching Summerspace on the large projection screen or just observing the photographs lined against the walls, one could not help but admire the dancers for their grace, strength, and balance. I was taken by how different dance was from how I had envisioned it. It was more than just someone in a tutu prancing about. Dance had influenced so many other forms of artwork, including music and paintings. Anyone who may or may not be interested in dance should visit this exhibition because I personally find the strange costumes worth the time. Always a fan of the outlandish and puzzling, I think I will start to appreciate dance a lot more.
