This week at The L Magazine, we list off a few of the week’s best events and openings. We’re most excited about artist Trevor Paglen’s talk at the NYPL and Barry Hoggard and James Wagner’s show at English Kills but there’s heaps of other stuff to do too. Tonight’s listing below;
Tonight: Monday, September 17th
Panel: Why Dance in The Art World?, Judson Memorial Church
6:30 – 8 PM, 55 Washington Square South, free, rsvp at rsvp@performa-arts.org“Why Dance in The Art World?” is a good question. Though dancers and artists have worked together since forever, there are a lot of disadvantages to dancing in front of gallerygoers: Crowds are smaller, nobody knows to remember the dancers’ names, and half of everything goes right over the audience’s head. Art and dance each have their specialist vocabularies, which gives any crossover both a purpose and a flaw: As an art person, I’m fascinated that dancers take classes in “presentational aesthetics”, and I want to know more; at the same time, I have no idea what good presentational aeshetics looks like (Jeremy Barker, among others,has considered these topics in depth many times). A new word can bring a new idea, or it can just be gobbledegook. There’s plenty of room here for both conflict and synergy. How do we weigh the benefits of such a collaboration?
Jennifer Homans, dance critic for The New Republic , MoMA performance curator Jenny Schlenzka, and renowned dancer and choreographer Ralph Lemon are the right people to ask. We’ve seen Artforum’s David Velasco at Lincoln Center once or twice, so presumably he’s got something to say too. The Kitchen’s Executive Director Tim Griffin recently talked our [single, collective] ear off about how great it is when dancers work with artists, so we’re thinking this topic is in air.
Then again, the press release leads with “Dance and visual art have always had an exhilarating relationship”, so maybe this’ll all be a frothy blowjob to the glories of working together.
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