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Training the anti-spectacular for Ralph Lemon's dance that disappears

2011; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 2; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/19443927.2011.607373

1944-3919

Katherine Profeta,

Art Education and Development

In fall 2010 choreographer and visual artist Ralph Lemon presented his first large-scale performance project in six years. Entitled How Can You Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere?, the work departed, in large part, from a three-minute structured improvisation he had staged near the close of 2004's Come home Charley Patton. In 2008 Lemon reassembled the cast of Patton, asking the group to re-enact that turbulent, unruly improvisation from four years earlier, and then keep pushing it further, extending it over 20minutes. For Lemon this meant pushing the idea of a dance of ‘non-form,’ a dance ‘that disappears’ – in other words, a furious dance that would resist being choreographed, structured, remembered, or even seen beyond its expression in an eternal present. The rehearsals for this movement (which eventually became the second of three sections of the stage work) were gruelling – the project admitted no ‘marking’ or ‘breaking down’, and theonly way to proceed was to do it full body, full time, full throttle. This begged the question: how does one train for a dance that disappears? Perhaps either no training was possible, or the training was all there was. This paper grapples with the implications of Lemon's disappearing dance for both its performers and its eventual witnesses, relating it to an evolving tradition of anti-spectacular performance that values process over visible product.