Critical Correspondence

MRPJ#25/Dance Writing: Extras

Description is very useful when one is responsive to the appearance of dance activity: The interplay of intent and physicality within performance and structure as the whole is represented on the stage. But as contemporary performance has moved away from representation and the virtuosic action, and toward the conceptual and behavioral environment, their intents and contents have become as much about absence as they are about appearance. This development in artistic practice reveals an inadequacy in the descriptive method of criticism which is manifested as the limited ability to recognize and address the aesthetic discourses of performance beyond the physicality of its appearance. Contemporary art practice has assumed for some time the viewer’s awareness of absence as a basic strategy in its articulation of visual presence. The solely descriptive mode of much dance criticism is ill-equipped to articulate the parallel play of absence to presence that has become an equally essential strategy in contemporary dance performance. — from “The Spark Of Nonexistence” by Dean Moss

I see dances and I read about the dances I’ve seen. Secretly, I read to see if what I saw was the same as what someone else saw. It almost never is and I am thrilled. I read writing about dances and I am wary. I’m wary of description. I’m looking for a response. A piece of art in response to a piece of art. I’m looking for revelation because revelation begets revelation and I’m looking for my own. — by Karen Graham