Recently I went to see Joaquín Collado's performance of Hacia un sol negro. It was a gift from my partner, and worked especially well because we're still learning to speak the language where we live. While the theater is out of the question, most dance exists outside of spoken language.
The performance took place in a smaller rectangular space ringed with chairs, where the fourth wall was non-existent from the start, and his dance was an ongoing conversation with the audience. Even from the start, as the audience was taking their seats Callodo came in and out of the "stage", skipping about while we shuffled to the available open chairs. He sometimes made eye contact, sometimes looked toward the audience but shielded his eyes. A few times he ran the perimeter with his hand outstretched as if inviting us to give him "five."
Writing about dance I can't help thinking of that silly quote "writing about music is like dancing about architecture." It's silly to me because, while music is certainly at a distance from writing, dance is directly in conversation with architecture — in the same way that painting is inevitably in conversation with the rectilinear canvas. A more apt but much less interesting statement is that "writing about music is like writing about dance."
The floor was littered with garments and fabric, which he utilized throughout the performance to go through a series of transformations. He would stuff a large piece of fabric in his shirt, fill his Adidas sweatpants until they became lumpy and disfigured. Layers would be removed and another put on — intentionally and haphazardly at the same time, a bolt of cloth stuffed in his shoulder became a cape, pants removed to reveal a dress underneath, then that dress pulled over his head to become a giant void. Near the end he'd managed to cover himself with nearly every piece of fabric in the space — including a large bundle of ropes trailing behind him. He became what to me resembled a giant hermit crab, galloping around the perimeter until he settled in a lump at the center.
Throughout this progression he was also dancing in the most conventional sense, moving between styles as the music and sound design led him along this path. At times he seemed to reference Flamenco, ballroom, African dance, even club dancing. At times his movement was naive and exuberant, skipping around or just letting his limbs flail. And at times it got real quiet, the lighting dimmed as he rummaged throughout the garments to prepare for his next transformation.
I used to write a lot about dance. This was not so much out of a love of dance but an institutional side-effect of my weird art degree. It was a technology-focused interdisciplinary art program that was situated in the Dance building because ... well I guess because they had to put it somewhere? It was more a consequence of how the program was started, few of us had come with an even basic interest or understanding of dance. But, we had to follow the same rules as the dancers — one of those being the requirement to go to X amount of dance performances per semester and write responses to them.
But, honestly, it was great. Sure, sometimes it was a chore and I phoned it in. But still it forced me to engage with and think about an art-form I had no real intrinsic interest in. And I learned to appreciate it. I never became a dancer, and I have rarely sought it out since graduating, but I feel lucky to have learned to see dance.
I think one of the most difficult things it forced me to learn was to suppress that part of my brain that wants to narrativize everything. I'm a lifelong reader and a lover of stories, but that doesn't change the fact that narrative is only one (completely optional) component of dance. So often it's about space, movement, shape, line. It can be intensely emotional, or in the case of modernists like Merce Cunninham, almost completely emotionless.
The end of the performance was the slow process of removing layers, dragging his assemblage around as he shed one garment after the next. He finally emerged wearing a long-sleeved leotard with a narrow bottom — so narrow that his penis was barely contained and his ass was out for all to see. Suddenly he was free, grinning, and mischievous — shaking his ass at the audience and strutting around. This was how it ended as, he circled the stage, posing, and we began to clap.
Watching Collado's performance I found myself playing this game again. While it did follow a narrative structure — it had a clear beginning, middle, and end — I still was challenging myself to look past the story and see the rest. How is he using the space? What do the shapes he's making evoke? What about his gaze, how he's engaging with the audience?
I'm grateful to have learned this skill, even if I don't always use it as an adult. So many of the problems we encounter come from seeing narratives where there is none, telling ourselves stories that narrow our perspective and leave out the rest of life. Stories can be helpful, but they can also harm. It's good to practice seeing what lies outside the narrative.