Gamut in Davidson+Black Girls in

Gamut in Davidson

The show is a great example of abstract art, which evoked my thinking: What to do as an audience to better understand the art? 

One of the dances that empresses me a lot is (d)Evolve, containing spinning immediately follows another turn, movement of reaching out, and constant changing in latitude, sets me in a strong feeling of outbreak, which encompasses hope of breakthrough within the tangled reality. I can clearly tell the strong passion for dancing from the dancers and the vigorous love towards life. As I saw my friends performing our shared love for dance, I am both proud and happy for them.

The next two performance is confusing and gothic for me. They use elements like repeated faces and grotesquerie and repetitive music. Thinking as hard as I can, I still couldn’t get the gist of the performance. Interestingly, the gothic choreography stick in my head that I still ponder about it after the show. After the intermission, E=mc^2 helps me evoke a new interpretation towards those two confusing dances. For me, it seems to tell an idea of finite and infinite game. The four dancers on the stage performe repeating movements one after another, followed by monotonous music. It seems that this will go on forever. Yet some variation would occur on one of the dancers, which shifts your focus as if some meaning would emit in this finite set of variations. This understanding comes from my recent thinking between the infinite universe or time and the finite of one human being. It’s interesting that this could be far off from the choreographer’s original intention, yet still have a harmonic resonance with the dance. It sets me in wonder what is the relationship of a good audience and the art itself. A possible conclusion is that if the performances are intended to address certain degree of social assertion, it would be more effective to read the social context ahead of the performance. If the performances are set on the base of common human attributes, the audiences would feel they see a magic mirror that reflect some aspects of their thoughts yet refine and rearrange the thoughts in a more aesthetic way of expression.

BLACK GIRL: Linguistic Play

Choreographer Camille A. Brown reflected on not the social identity of her as a black female but instead a resounding question of: how am I before the would defines me? By reflecting the games she used to play with her sisters, Camille showcased the unspoken languages of black girl cultures.

!: This play revealed another scope or break the current scope on black women identities.  Camille A. Brown took advantage of the collective archival “black girls” experience from the cast, in the attempt to interrogate the current stereotypes of strong, trauma womanhood and bring back the shared sisterhood common to all girls. Normalizing and self-defining identities help the black girls in a whole to agree themselves as commonplace. Instead of defending the black’s identity all the time, black girls get to be themselves as who they are and navigate the world as any girl. 

?: Is it critical for people to understand the play? In another word, is the primary purpose of a dance piece to let people understand? If not, what is the purpose of dance and abstract dance in total. A self-expression? But if one wants to address social problem, how can art (a form of protest requires audiences’ interpretation) in general be able to voice what they want?