Bachtrack: As I mentioned some time ago, when I wrote about Rambert's performance of Rainforest, dance has entered the museums and exhibitions spaces more and more, not as entertainment or a one off event, but rather as the object exhibited. And this isn’t a UK exclusive either, but a real international trend. Besides several national examples, you are bound to find a dance exhibition in each of the major European cities.
4 comments:
While I definitely see dance as art, I'm not quite sure how much I agree with the though of it being in a museum. I feel as though dance in a museum is not really an exhibition. Dance in museums is still just a performance and is only available for certain times. Human beings cannot stay and perform for long extents of time. I see museums as more of a collection of long lasting artwork. I'm not saying that there cannot be artwork that is temporary and is effected by time, or even that there can't be dance pieces in a museum as a one time occasion under the title of performance art, I'm simply saying that you can't have a museum exhibit of dance.
I think dance can go anywhere. It's an art form that can be performed anywhere and interpreted differently depending on where it is. I just don't think a museum exhibit is the right place. Performances at museums are fine, they happen all the time. But something seems wrong about having a dance as an actual instillation. Honestly, I don't know. During playground, the actors had an instillation in which they were acting the whole time and people could walk in and sit around to experience it. It was actually really cool. And there are also places like Jamestown where life back then is reenacted everyday! Why couldn't dance be in a museum? But then what is a museum? Isn't a theatre a museum for the performance arts?
Before I read this article, based only on the title, I remembered a subtle opera-dance performance I attended at CMOA where the performers moved through the museum space in a way that may have led some visitors to rethink how they might typically view art in those rooms. I was thinking about the ways dance might activate, or re-activate, art objects. I was therefore very interested to read Katja Vaghi’s reaction to Table of Contents, “Here, the dancer’s body is the exhibit. A body that, through years of performance, has become a living archive in action.” While museums have always been a source of inspiration for me, I believe that for the most part, they can use a major overhaul in terms more democratically representing artists across racial-gender-economic lines, and of making the institutions more accessible to the masses. I realize that is not the point of Vaghi’s article, but I do believe featuring dance in a museum opens the floor for new conversations – in this case, in the form of dance – and is one step in the direction of exciting change.
I think that it is an amazing idea to bring in dancers into museums. I do not believe this should be a permanent ritual but more so of an experimental, temporary test. Bringing dance into the museums would mix two entire art forms together. You could play around with so many diferent types of storytelling. I think bringing dancers into musems would bring the art to life and truly help tell stories in many different ways.
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