Several years ago, the experimental/postmodern choreographer Deborah Hay -- I'm sure she would wince at me slapping a label on her, but the world revolves around shorthand -- spent a year making a dance. Every day she asked herself the same question: What if every cell in her body had the potential to perceive beauty and surrender beauty, at once, each and every moment?
She performed the dance for an audience wearing a post-apocalyptic costume consisting of red ruffled shorts and a spacesuit-looking top with armbands. She decided she didn't like that costume, and the next time she performed the dance for an audience, she took off her clothes.
Video was taken of both performances. What Hay does in "Lecture on the Performance of 'Beauty' " -- which she presented Wednesday at Summer Arts -- is use a hand-held microphone, a marking pen and a pad of paper to comment on these two versions of the same dance as the videos play on a split screen behind her. She spends some of the 45-minute presentation talking to the audience and making squiggles on the paper. Eventually she sits down and watches herself performing on the videos.
I got into the expected conversations with friends following the performance: What is art? Does it require a purpose? How do aesthetics factor into the equation? How about intent? Or pleasure? Or so-called "beauty"? In the same vein, what is dance? Is any movement in time and space considered dance? How much does originality matter? How about technique? Is the first person who stands perfectly still on stage and calls it dance a genius, but the next person who comes along and tries the same thing just wasting everyone's time?
I tend to fall into what I consider pragmatic frame of mind when confronted with such issues. Here's the pragmatist in me: I spent 45 minutes watching videos (one with her nude) of a 60-plus-year-old Hay wander around a stage. So did more than 100 other people. Anyone who can get me plus more than 100 others to be a willing audience for such a presentation has created art.
If anything, the audience becomes part of the art. If you could have seen us last night, staring intently, listening with utmost concentration, ratcheting up our synapses, grasping -- even sniffing -- for cohesion and meaning in the midst of an onslaught of abstract language and motions, it would have been clear that we were an integral part of the artistic equation.
What was I thinking?
I'll be honest. Part of me was dismissive. I was thinking that this performance was the ultimate example of specialization of labor. We as a society have enough resources to provide an opportunity for an artist/dancer to spend a year tracing steps and contemplating the nature of beauty. If we all spent a year doing the same thing, we'd starve to death. There's arrogance at the heart of any artistic endeavor.
But part of me was also intrigued. Moved, even. There's something emboldening -- daring -- about watching video of a 60-year-old nude woman slapping her buttocks on a cold black dance floor, simply because we so very rarely see 60-year-old nude women slapping their buttocks on cold dance floors, and to think that this woman put this amount of thought and time into the project is amazing.
Hay spent a year doing this, and by engaging in this endeavor she earned the opportunity to show it to us. And have us think about it.
I'd be curious to know what other people at Wednesday's performance thought of the event.
Only after I suspended all notions of what I may have or have not been expecting of Ms. Hay's event was I able to appreciate what she was sharing with us. The progression of my initial annoyance giving way to compassion and appreciate of her chosen method of expression was a mini performance in and of itself.
Post event conversations are a good indication of how to measure the success of an event. As I wandered through the crowd during the reception, talk was lively and people stayed longer than usual. My eavesdropping picked up comments which addressed having the courage to dance naked before an audience; the nature of beauty; how the unbeautiful can be beautiful; ways of expressing patriotism; art as self-absorption; total waste of time.
Her presentation was thought provoking and definitely pushed people to think beyond their preconceived notions of the terms "dance" and "choreography".
Once I let go of preconceived notions regarding Deborah Hay's event, I was able to relax and let her images, words, and concepts take me on a journey. Her work has stayed with me and I find myself referencing aspects of it in conversations and when listening to other Summer Arts' artists talking about their work.
There were thoughtful questions during the Q&A and at the post event reception discussions were lively and people stayed longer than usual. My eavesdropping caught fragments about the nature of beauty; can the unbeautiful be beautiful; nudity as courage and costume; patriotism; conflicts of dance/choreography.
I took from Ms. Hay's event the reminder that to consciously practice being present moment to moment allows for the unique choreography of our lives.
The most beautiful aspect of "Beauty" was the removal of Ms. Hays clothes. It was submisive, graceful and deliberate. I appreciated that it lacked eroticism. It seemed more sincere this way. As for the rest of the piece, there wasn't enough movement. Accept for the 2nd quadrant, it had slow, small movements and I had difficulty staying focused on the piece. The nudity was distracting.
You asked for comments about Deborah Hay's performance so here's mine: For me, her process is much more interesting than her product. This is because her movement vocabulary is very dry and even with her fairly pedestrian (non "dancey") movement choices there could be more of a sense of pattern or structure or attention to physical sensation or emotion to include and engage the viewer, to allow us to share in what inspired her.
But I think she knows that and does not really care if we are interested or engaged. She is just out to please herself and engage her own mind.
I have alot of respect for the uncompromising singlemindedness that would lead her to "go into her studio every day for a year" and basically do the same process. It's a kind of intellectual or experimental exercise, like a scientist who goes into the lab and has to repeat the same conditions over and over and then we saw the results of her experiment. Except with a person's mind and body as the raw material of the experiment, she can't really duplicate results the way a scientist would, because you cant create the same conditions everyday.
As an audience member, it was fairly dull for me to watch her videos and her scribbles on the pad and multitasking sharing of process because I didnt really feel included in her process. It was a bit like someone going on and on for 45 minutes telling you the details of their dream or describing the thoughts and sensations that came up during a long meditation session.
I did enjoy her sort of quirky and authoritative personality. I did appreciate that she did her piece in the nude as that seemed fitting to the vulnerability of her desire to experience beauty and surrender beauty (whatever "surrender beauty" means) with every cell of her body. But I think its not really honest of her to defend her choice of performing nude by saying that a costume overly affected her movement choices while being nude did not. It was obvious that being nude would affect her movement choices. For example, in her costume she did alot of stacatto, clipped, bouncy movements and I didn't see that happening in the nude version without the bra support!
So thanks for asking. Even though I didnt really enjoy her performance Im going to go to the student culmination on Friday to see what the students do with her instructions.
Thanks for your thoughts, Andrea.
I agree that there was a sense that she didn't care if we were interested or engaged in her performance, and that confidence -- smugness? aloofness? -- added to the draw of the experience. I wonder if we as an audience would have had as much patience with a young performer doing the exact same program. Wrapped up in all this is Hay's august reputation and the sense that we're watching a lioness of modern dance at work. I have a feeling that we'd be a lot less enamored of an up-and-coming dancer trying this same routine.
Yes, I agree. I do think her rep made us more open to finding the value in something we might have dismissed otherwise. I like what Jaqueline said about the lecture/demo/performance(or whatever it was) sparking interesting and philosophical conversations. I imagine Deborah Hay would enjoy that...?
I am a 3rd year Fresno State student. I went into the preformance thinking that it would be an interpetaion of experimental dance. What I was confronted with was completely and utterly offensive. To be required to sit through the slowest moving performance of my life is one matter, to be required to watch a naked 62 year old make nearly indiscernable movements and to call it dancing is ridiculous! The entire performance was an insult to dance. If a young dancer performed the same "dance" to anyone who had any knowlege in the dance field they would be laughed out of the studio and ridiculed mercilessly. I walked out of the performance when Hay began "Thrashing" around naked on the floor. Up to this point what she said orally, scribbled down on the pad of paper, and "danced" on the screen never matched up. I was left upset and dissapointed with what was advertised to me as something that would be informative. The most pleasurable part of the evening was the Fresno State wine and cheese that was provided.