Murder on the frikkin dance floor

Went to see Jonathan Burrows at the Place Theatre last night. Now this guy is, I understand, something of a big swinger in the contemporary dance world. But to the non–afficionado — I’m thinking about most of my mates here — this performance would have been regarded as a classic example of why contemporary dance is a load of old rubbish. It was two bald blokes, one chunky, one skinny, sat on wooden chairs, making various gestures and sounds for 45 minutes, according to notes to which they kept referring at the foot of each chair. But it made me think about what my attitude to dance is. I really don’t get dance. It’s quite an inaccessible art form — audiences tend to be quite educated in it, or even participants themselves. And for some reason, you feel you need to “get” it. Whereas music, you can just listen to. But I really don’t know what I am supposed to be taking away from dance and I feel that I ought to know. That’s not to say that the opportunity to sit quiet for an hour and just watch movement with greater intensity than you would normally is uninteresting, even if you treat it as a kind of personal meditation time. So in summary, not a bad evening, but I couldn’t say whether the work itself was a work of genius or something that me and a mate could have put together with a bit of thought. No doubt the Guardian or something will enlighten us.

Aside: The woman in front of me seemed to find the whole thing immensely funny and kept cracking up whenever a new movement was introduced. While there were moments of mild comedy that, say, raised a wry grin from about half the audience, I think that this woman must have been high. Either that, or she should stay away from Russ Abbott videos. She’d go into apoplexy with amusement. Now I’ve said that; she was probably mentally ill or had Tourette's syndrome or something, and I’ve just been incredibly insensitive (Sir Alex!!!!).

Labels: contemporary dance