“A good number of museums are really looking at dance and saying how can this art form, which up until now has mostly been presented in theaters and thought of as a kind of entertainment, be integrated into art history.” --Philip Bither
This article (and the movement it describes) really excites me. I have spent several years studying an interarts approach to history--how visual arts, performance, writing, music, etc. have all developed and connected with each other and with the greater social contexts surrounding them. So it is quite a gratifying experience to read about museum curators and choreographers beginning to collaborate--and for dance to be taken seriously enough as a part of art history [and not just a means of entertainment] to be "curated." Visual arts and physical performance are not so different after all. As a stranger once told me on the NJ Transit when we found ourselves discussing our chosen art forms [his photography, mine dance and theatre], "It's all gesture."
There is one difference, however, that might present tension, which I find more intriguing than worrying--performance is ephemeral. Paintings, sculptures, etc. have a physical reality, a tangible, finite nature that does not have to be recorded. They exist statically, stably. Will museum curators find it necessary to play a recording of the dance performance when there are not performers present to complete the exhibit? [Which brings up another question about the values of live vs. recorded dance...] I would be most interested to see how the space, with its works being constantly in display, looks and feels different when a dance is taking place within and around it. What can one see in the space when it's inhabited by performing bodies that one could not see when it was empty? And what can we notice about the form, aesthetics, or artistic intentions of a dance piece when it is taken out of a traditional space and placed in the context of pre-existing, inanimate work? I am eager to see such work--and to see what I find.
