Comments on: Metamorphoses http://www.dancetheaterworkshop.org/blog/2008/02/22/metamorphoses/ Contemporary Dance Tue, 02 Dec 2008 01:25:01 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.3 By: Azaro http://www.dancetheaterworkshop.org/blog/2008/02/22/metamorphoses/#comment-238 Azaro Fri, 29 Feb 2008 20:15:02 +0000 http://www.dancetheaterworkshop.org/blog/2008/02/22/metamorphoses/#comment-238 If you like your art safe, you’ll love Yanira Castro’s Center of Sleep. “No one will touch you” and “No one will ask anything of you,” states a card of “assurances” given each audience member before entering a performance space in which performers, often nude, and audience shift about for an hour among large-scale set piece. “You are safe,” says the card--as if years of truly transgressive yet thoughtfully presented non-traditional works hadn’t left audiences like those at DTW fully prepared to feel comfortable and be adventurous at the same time. Fake-transgressive is what Center of Sleep is. The piece seems designed to reframe our gaze again and again-- by putting the dancers on pedestals, behind moving semi-reflective panels, and inside transparent structures-- yet photography is forbidden, presumably because of the nudity. Trying to get a shot of the action will result in a staff member descending and asking for your camera, to erase the pictures. Yet c’mon-- Vanessa Beecroft? Carolee Schneeman? Replicating images of nudity was part of the point of their work and lots of other work over the last fifty years—making nudity, and the shame and danger issues around it, a little tired by now, at least artistically. Are Castro and crew among the new puritans? Possibly. But nudity is hardly the reason why audience members at Center of Sleep would be inspired to start clicking. As citizens of the year 2008, they may feel uninhibited enough to get automatically interactive and try to amp their involvement in the interesting point of view Castro seems to be exploring. As denizens of an increasingly dazzling mediasphere, they may sense that random flashpops can up the sexy, immersive texture of the work’s visual direction (especially given all those reflective panels and the rush of flowing traffic). Simply as adults, they may naturally assume that nudity would be a non-issue among performers who have agreed to be that way among sixty hipsters who’ve paid their twenty bucks and checked their coats. Posting the pix to MySpace pages and be seen beyond the hipster gaze? Please. Contemporary movement-based work should be so lucky. “Do as you please,” the card also states. Again, please. After a while, dodging the videographers who are “officially” recording the evening, nudity and all, can make audience members feel distinctly un-safe, caught up in a system that is out of their control-- dress extras, perhaps, in a future funding proposal. If you like your art safe, you’ll love Yanira Castro’s Center of Sleep. “No one will touch you” and “No one will ask anything of you,” states a card of “assurances” given each audience member before entering a performance space in which performers, often nude, and audience shift about for an hour among large-scale set piece. “You are safe,” says the card–as if years of truly transgressive yet thoughtfully presented non-traditional works hadn’t left audiences like those at DTW fully prepared to feel comfortable and be adventurous at the same time.

Fake-transgressive is what Center of Sleep is. The piece seems designed to reframe our gaze again and again– by putting the dancers on pedestals, behind moving semi-reflective panels, and inside transparent structures– yet photography is forbidden, presumably because of the nudity. Trying to get a shot of the action will result in a staff member descending and asking for your camera, to erase the pictures. Yet c’mon– Vanessa Beecroft? Carolee Schneeman? Replicating images of nudity was part of the point of their work and lots of other work over the last fifty years—making nudity, and the shame and danger issues around it, a little tired by now, at least artistically. Are Castro and crew among the new puritans? Possibly. But nudity is hardly the reason why audience members at Center of Sleep would be inspired to start clicking. As citizens of the year 2008, they may feel uninhibited enough to get automatically interactive and try to amp their involvement in the interesting point of view Castro seems to be exploring. As denizens of an increasingly dazzling mediasphere, they may sense that random flashpops can up the sexy, immersive texture of the work’s visual direction (especially given all those reflective panels and the rush of flowing traffic). Simply as adults, they may naturally assume that nudity would be a non-issue among performers who have agreed to be that way among sixty hipsters who’ve paid their twenty bucks and checked their coats.

Posting the pix to MySpace pages and be seen beyond the hipster gaze? Please. Contemporary movement-based work should be so lucky.

“Do as you please,” the card also states. Again, please. After a while, dodging the videographers who are “officially” recording the evening, nudity and all, can make audience members feel distinctly un-safe, caught up in a system that is out of their control– dress extras, perhaps, in a future funding proposal.

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