From hybrid cars to hybrid foods, hybridization is largely the way of the future. Dance may prove no exception to this trend as it intersects with the visual arts to form a growing field: performance art.
A number of performance art pieces were performed at UCLA in the last month alone. In early April, a dancer walked vertically down the face of a building as a part of “Trisha Brown Dance Company: The Retrospective Project.” Last week, dancers laid down in the middle of Wilson Plaza, pivoting their bodies in a piece titled “pivot point.” In an attempt to address this interface between visual arts and dance, the Hammer Museum hosted a symposium, “Dancing with the Art World,” Friday.
Performance art – appearing in art museums and galleries, art schools and other nonstandard dance spaces – is rapidly gaining visibility at UCLA and throughout the art world.
There have been many symposia and conferences around the rise of performance in art, but “Dancing with the Art World” is the first one that concentrates specifically on dance, said Brennan Gerard, co-organizer of the symposium and co-founder of New York-based, nonprofit dance-theater collective, Moving Theater.
Specifically, the conference welcomes discussion about the differentiation between performance art and more traditional forms of dance.
“I think people tend – when they think of dance – to think of either ‘So You Think You Can Dance’ or ‘Dancing with the Stars’ or something they would see in a conventional theater,” said Ricki Quinn, a third-year world arts and cultures/dance student, who has taken a number of performance art classes.
But the conventional or commercial dance displayed on such reality TV shows is distinct from experimental dance, said Guillermo Cisneros, a third-year world arts and cultures/dance student. Conventional dance, like ballet or hip-hop, focuses on the technique and physicality of movement, whereas experimental dance focuses on the message conveyed, he said.
However, the art world has seen an explosion of interest in presenting, producing and collecting live dance work in the last seven to 10 years, said Ryan Kelly, co-organizer of “Dancing with the Art World” and co-founder of Moving Theater.
Simone Forti, adjunct professor in the world arts and cultures/dance department, said that one reason for this is that performance art created a bridge between visual arts and dance that gallery directors and museum curators could cross.
The sudden emergence of performance art in Los Angeles, in particular, is directly connected to the visual arts and dance programs at UCLA that have pushed for its inclusion, Kelly said.
“It’s certainly not happening outside of (UCLA),” he said. “There’s not really any institution for it. L.A. has really strong museums and art education programs, but it doesn’t have a very strong dance and theater community; it’s very small.
Kelly said the hybrid nature of performance art is also appealing because it can enter the political realm. Students like Cisneros recognize performance art as an invaluable tool of worldly relevance and political empowerment.
“I think it’s wonderful that a lot of students have taken on the active role of starting to use dance, not only as a way of entertaining, but as a way of conveying powerful messages of the necessity of political change or social change,” Cisneros said.
Cisneros recently choreographed a piece that dealt with themes like the power of words and bullying in school, using the architecture of Glorya Kaufman Hall to visually reference a school. In another performance art piece, Quinn choreographed a dance that paired dates of infamous shootings throughout history with frantic gestures in order to provoke solutions to gun control.
In fact, the art realm is a constructed, safe sphere in which politics may be addressed with less fear than in an equivalent political sphere, Gerard said.
“Ultimately, the political sphere is a sphere of action,” Kelly said. “And I think the artistic sphere, or the cultural sphere, is – at its best – a sphere of reflection. I think we need a place to reflect. If we only act and act and act, we lose something of ourselves.”
But the intersection of dance and visual arts does not come without its caveats, Kelly said. It runs the risk of repelling audiences who expect one traditional form or another.
Regardless, the hybridization of the two can create fresh, eye-opening opportunities for performers and audiences alike, Cisneros said. It facilitates conversations that were otherwise unaddressed in their traditional polarized forms.
“By bringing dancing and writing together, by bringing speaking, moving and drawing into a space, by bringing dance into video, you are able to communicate with more agility,” Kelly said. “By bringing other forms of communication into play with dance, I think you are able to speak to the world more clearly.”