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GalleristNY: One evening in mid September, some 300 people packed into the Judson Memorial Church for a panel discussion on the rise of dance in the art world. About midway through, Ralph Lemon dropped a bomb: “I wait,” he said, “for the day when a museum acquires a dance.”
I think the artist wishing for dance to put dance as an object in the museum is a interesting concept. It is often hard to tell dancer from the dance. It would be much like putting an a scene in a museum. Actors and Dancers use their body to express emotion and stories and that cannot often be captured with video. (the explosive charged atmosphere of a live performance.) I think it would be interesting to see acting makes its way into museums as well as dance.
In the article the author uses art work that has dancers as objects. I think that is different then the concept of having dance in museums. The pieces of art exports the dancers themselves as the subject of the pieces, where as Mr. Lemon is speaking to the art form itself.
I agree dance is hard to collect, but there are many ways to document and reproduce it. After the Rebecca scandal i can see someone trying to scam a museum. The five figure price museums will pay is a high incentive to try.
for some reason the idea of "collecting dance" gives me the image of prisoners... I don't know why exactly, but for some reason to actually say the words, "We collect dance." sounds like buying people and making them dance whenever the buyer feels like it. ANYWAY. Maybe that's one of the reasons that putting dance in museums is so controversial. I don't really see any harm in having live performances; in fact, I believe that dance isn't celebrated enough as a real art form.
The concept of action as object may be new to dance, but it is not something that has not been explored, particularly in theatre. In theatre we can see there are characters who serve only as props to other characters or scenes. We can see people who perform ahead of performance (for example the harpists who play in the lobby before KÁ in Las Vegas are music, not musicians as a part of the piece). The objectification of an act is not something explored often in dance, and that is likely because, as Nathan notes, it is hard to differentiate between dancer and dance. I don't think it can't be done, I just don't think anyone has yet. And when someone does, will it be that earth shattering? Probably not because people will see dance as dance, whether that is dance the verb or dance the noun, an audience will still see dance.
4 comments:
I think the artist wishing for dance to put dance as an object in the museum is a interesting concept. It is often hard to tell dancer from the dance. It would be much like putting an a scene in a museum. Actors and Dancers use their body to express emotion and stories and that cannot often be captured with video. (the explosive charged atmosphere of a live performance.) I think it would be interesting to see acting makes its way into museums as well as dance.
In the article the author uses art work that has dancers as objects. I think that is different then the concept of having dance in museums. The pieces of art exports the dancers themselves as the subject of the pieces, where as Mr. Lemon is speaking to the art form itself.
I agree dance is hard to collect, but there are many ways to document and reproduce it. After the Rebecca scandal i can see someone trying to scam a museum. The five figure price museums will pay is a high incentive to try.
for some reason the idea of "collecting dance" gives me the image of prisoners... I don't know why exactly, but for some reason to actually say the words, "We collect dance." sounds like buying people and making them dance whenever the buyer feels like it. ANYWAY. Maybe that's one of the reasons that putting dance in museums is so controversial. I don't really see any harm in having live performances; in fact, I believe that dance isn't celebrated enough as a real art form.
The concept of action as object may be new to dance, but it is not something that has not been explored, particularly in theatre. In theatre we can see there are characters who serve only as props to other characters or scenes. We can see people who perform ahead of performance (for example the harpists who play in the lobby before KÁ in Las Vegas are music, not musicians as a part of the piece). The objectification of an act is not something explored often in dance, and that is likely because, as Nathan notes, it is hard to differentiate between dancer and dance. I don't think it can't be done, I just don't think anyone has yet. And when someone does, will it be that earth shattering? Probably not because people will see dance as dance, whether that is dance the verb or dance the noun, an audience will still see dance.
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