This is a rather brief entry regarding a performance we saw tonight. The name of the dance performance was the Czech word for “Correction”, which I have conveniently forgotten. It was a bizarre performance lasting about an hour.

Before I go any further, let me apologize about the short comings of language. As I wrote in one of my honors papers spring semester of sophomore year, language cannot recreate any physical experience. This is very much true when I consider how moved I was by the performance, and I understand that nothing I say can recreate the experience. The subtleties of the lighting changes and shifts between music and utter silence are nuances I will not even try to explain.

The performance was an unspoken show of 7 people standing in a line. At first they start of completely frozen, and gradually, as the minutes go by, you begin to see them gain control of their eyes, and then their faces and then their heads, slowly moving towards their arms and the waists. As the show goes on, you realize that their shoes are bolted into the floor. They make their bodies behave fluidly using this fact, so for example, they started by poking each other, which would send them ticking back and forth like a metronome. Then they started figuring out how to dodge one another, so they played with blowing each other around. Then they figured out the amusement of making each other fall to the floor, and watch the person struggle to get up, unable to use their feet or legs to help them. Eventually they begin to fight and they start knocking each other down. Once they were all down and out of breath, one guy stood up and fought and bucked, fighting to get out of his shoes, unable to go anywhere. Finally he exhausted himself, but the others having been inspired, got up and followed suit – all together. When they were all exhausted, they started pretending to march together. Eventually, the person on the left side (audience’s left) found a pair of unbolted shoes, and gradually they made the shoes walk from one end of the line to the other, handing it to each other down the line every few steps, and then made the shoes walk backwards. And it occurred to the middle guy that those shoes looked similar to the ones he was wearing and so started to untie the shoes he was in. The others however, kept distracting him and then others tried to untie their shoes, but they also got distracted by everyone else and soon the group was fighting amongst itself again. Once again they all ended up on the floor, exhausted. Then the lights went out, the dance members unbuttoned their shirts, and rave lights came on and they started dancing. And that was the end.

Other than the fact I felt the end was unfitting and too sudden, I thoroughly enjoyed this piece. I had never really thought about how the motion of our bodies can convey a message, and yet, without having glanced at the program or any other info about the show, I interpreted the dance to be regarding the human nature. It consisted of exploration of our own selves (bodies), discovery, humor and playfulness, competition, aggression, innovation and its subsequent jealousy, camaraderie and the pleasure of letting loose. There were times I was greatly reminded of the minions from the Despicable Me series, and there were times I was struck by how profoundly I was looking human nature in the eye. It was really quite remarkable.

Until Next Time,

Joe