Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends. Happy Thursday to the rest of you. I usually have a bit of a rant about what a sham this holiday is, but this year I can't be bothered, so you get this instead. You're welcome.
*****
Hoo, boy.
Last week I did a thing I haven't done in a looong time. I went to a college dance department show. I hadn't been to one since, well, college. One of the girls at my Pleasant Hill dance studio who was a high school senior last year is now a freshman at a private Catholic college a few towns over, and she was in the show and told my pal P.V. about it, so P.V. invited me and her mom to go see it with her.
Kids, the average college dance department show has not changed in the last thirteen years.
When I was in college and enrolled in a dance department class, I had to go to the shows and write "reviews" of them as part of my coursework. I pity the poor soul who had to read them. I inevitably panned them. I was merciless. Spite and vitriol flew from my fingers and filled the required page with disgust.
I was kind of an asshole.
I regret nothing.
Back to last week. The show had a theme which I can appreciate, even applaud. This one was billed as a "shared dance show that is energized by a long-awaited collective assembling and finding momentum beside each other again. Returning to campus this fall and reflecting on the shared experiences of the last few years, these emerging choreographers are exploring concepts of life cycles, family, returning to self, letting go, healing, and pathways forward together." Cue me signing resignedly and admitting that it's a good theme for the current state of the world, while at the same time rolling my eyes and making a rather rude hand gesture because dear God, could they be anymore vomit-inducingly sincere?
The pieces college dance students create can be wonderfully meaningful and cathartic and freeing for them. Dance therapy is a thing, you know. And that's fantastic! The trouble is that for the most part they get so bleeding artsy about it that what the audience ends up experiencing is the performative equivalent of being on the outside of an inside joke. It just doesn't translate. The audience sits there observing some very talented people doing something they enjoy, but the meaning is lost on them. Sometimes it sort-of comes through--if the program notes give enough insight into the choreographer's process--but for the most part...not so much.
It's not always a complete strike-out. Most of the time there are one or two pieces that hit the mark and then some--there were two pieces that have actually stayed with me since this performance. One was delightfully creepy in a way that made me properly uncomfortable. The little quote in the program notes was something about strangeness, and your strangeness, and what if you looked at that strangeness, and what if that strangeness looked back at you. It gave me the wibblies in a wonderful way. It's difficult to try to relay a physical artwork in verbal form, so I won't. Just take the description of my reaction at face value. The second piece, well, I haven't the foggiest notion of how it fit into the overarching theme at all, but it was a refreshing change from the styles of tap I get to dance myself. It was a wonderfully gentle, simple-in-steps-but-complicated-in-rhythms piece that started a capella and transitioned to Pennies From Heaven. It was clean, it was bright, it was wonderful. It put me in mind of old Fred Astaire films. With a world that loves hard and fast and sharp and edgy, it was a lovely reminder of the value of slowing down every once in a while.
Other than those two pieces, though, the rest of the show was hidden behind the rehearsal room palisades insofar as meaning was concerned. I could take the time to pick the rest of it apart in terms of technique and execution and use of lighting and sound design, but that smacks of all those damnable papers I had to churn out during my undergrad years, and fuck that noise, thank you very much.
No, the average college dance department show hasn't changed at all since the last time I attended one. They're still chock-full of self-indulgent, deep-and-meaningful wankery. And they still make me want to scream.
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