Art Performance Now: While many dance makers have embraced the idea of staging their work in non-traditional venues, I have presented work almost exclusively in the traditional theater setting. Yet, over the past few years, my choreography has been graciously supported and encouraged by my continued relationship with the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco. This partnership has been a wonderful way to challenge myself as both a performer and choreographer.
5 comments:
i like it! i always think that dance is the art of body language and we must understand it under different situation. this idea makes me feel dancing on stage is always lack of something. but dancing in the Museum is THE way to make it up. i talked about it with a dancer from New York, who was planning a performance, in which they gonna dance in an cemetery. and their mission is to show people the process of going into death with their beautiful bodylanguage.
This is the flash mob phenomenon, isn't it? Guerilla dance theatre that surprises the audience it's grabbing? Where Jetta Martin's dances specifically diverge is in providing an educational/contextual framework for the piece, rather than simply having a goal of surprise for dance springing up in an unexpected place. Her interactive piece for children most surprised me - if you're specifically looking to pull a particular crowd (the under-12 set, in this instance), how does that sync up with the spontaneity and the fact that most audience members just randomly happened upon the performance? How would the performers know or decide that the amount of children properly gathered is the number that they wish to perform for? Or that meets the museum's exposure goal? A very interesting partnership, and challenging for both sides I'm sure, but I have a few questions about the practicality for the site-specific works and how they work in this particular instance.
This is interesting because typically artists are trying to get out of museum spaces into more publically accessible venues, and here is a choreographer extremely excited by her partnership with the museum. I guess that her intrigue in the museum comes from the same place that fine artists' intrigue in public art comes from- that it is an unconventional space to showcase the art, and that it collects a different and varied audience than what is often expected. Although what Brian said mirrors my response to this venue-- it hardly seems like the attendees who will "spontaneously' happen upon the dance fit well with the intended audience of the pieces. Except in the case of the jazz quilts, it seems more like it is a convenient place for her to showcase work.
I disagree with Reilly here. I think that she can most definitely have the pieces fit with an intended audience and still have it be a spontaneous performance that the audience didn't necessarily plan on coming to see. For example, they are about to perform the 60's Black Power Movement piece at the same time that the museum is displaying the 60's exhibit for Black History Month. This clearly is for an intended audience interested in the 60's, but the audience may not know or expect the dance element of their visit.
This is fantastic. I love dance and I love seeing it performed in new and innovative ways. This sort of reminds me of the movie Step Up: Revolution that came out this past summer. There was a scene where they were dancing in a museum in a somewhat different context, but the whole point was to educate and make a message known to the audience and to be heard and I feel that this is doing the same thing and I believe this is a great way to do exactly that. It's so great to see how someone can learn and adapt by just putting themselves out there and dealing with the forces around them that might cause a problem for them. Brilliant.
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