This post is inspired by Free Play, a book on improvisation by Stephen Nachmanovitz, which encourages us to be open to experiencing the art and world around us with freedom and virtuosity.
It was a late evening heading to Chicago with the whole family (me, Ed and our three children,) to visit my sister for the first time in the city of Chicago. It was a much-anticipated visit as she had resided there for 5 years already. The San Antonio airport always has interesting art installations in the check-in area. Our check in line was right under the rainbow loom installation pictured above. My five-year-old daughter Maria looked up in awe and said, “Wow, look at that rainbow.” Five minutes later in our same spot in line my 3 1/2-year-old daughter, Hope, looks up in disgust and says “What’s that butt crack doing there!” This anecdote exhibits the very improvisational and free thinking response of my daughter Hope. It started my eyes on art interpretation going on around me and it’s improvisational nature.
Thanks to my sisters, who took the children to the Millenial Park playground, my husband and I were able to have the great pleasure of visiting the Art Institute of Chicago. It held a serious collection of artwork the likes of which I had only experienced at the Met. (Tangent Indulgement: There was one regrettable day in Paris, when I sat outside the Louvre, not wanting to spend $18 Euro for the 1 hr I had to go in. The outside was amazing but in retrospect, I slap myself on the head and shout “idiot.”) As I wandered through the endless galleries there, I stepped into a room with just one man facing a statue of a pink lady. He was standing three feet away from ‘her’ and with his hands in his pockets, his feet 1 1/2 feet a part, his head straight on to the work of art, he just grinned a quiet and large smile. Being rude, I grabbed my camera out hoping to capture his moment of experiencing the art but he saw me and walked out. All alone with the art, was his body language and interaction different being undisturbed by the intrusion of strangers until I came into the doorway?
A Moment with Monet
I took a moment to glance very closely at a Monet. I was examining the underpainting. I wanted to know what the Master Monet had laid as a ground. What I found was not burnt sienna, what I could see was white. I told my teacher Sylvia about my discovery and she wondered wether or not he had painted in Grizelle. She is very good about pointing in the direction of Art History. I appreciated her wealth of knowledge. According to my research, he prepared his canvas with white or tinted colors. I would never have been able to even attempt to analyze the painted layers of this great artist before taking Landscape painting this semester. It was excited to apply some of my new knowledge to my art museum experience. I never seriously thought about how the art was made before, I was mostly interested in how it made me feel or what it said but now I can do one more thing. I can ask how. I found it empowering to be able to engage these paintings on a new level.
I would never have been able to attempt to analyze the painted layers of this great artist before taking Landscape Painting this semester. It was exciting to apply some of my new knowledge to my art museum experience. I never seriously thought about how the art was made before, I was mostly interested in how it made me feel or what it said but now I can do one more thing. I can ask how. I found it empowering to be able to engage these paintings on a new level.
The Hubbard Street Dance Surprise
Ten years ago, while living in NYC, I had gotten a discount teachers ticket to see the Hubbard Street Dance Company of Chicago. Since that night I’ve claimed them as my favorite dance company. I’ve mentioned it to my sister a few times, and being the wonderful sister she is, she looked it up and they were performing the weekend I was in town! She bought me, herself and my sister Emily tickets for their Saturday night season performance, but that wasn’t the only surprise.
I expected a variety of powerful, communal, personal, and gritty, but I did not know in what form. The company was performing two works of the Black and White dance series of acclaimed Hungarian Choreographer, Jiri Kylian. The two dances were “Falling Angels,” with all women and its’ all-male counter piece “Sarabande.” As I sat in my chair before the curtains opened, I proudly and gratefully thought how relevant going to the show was, having just read choreographer, Twyla Tharp’s book, who mentioned Hubbard Street several times.
“Sarabande” begins with 6 hung Victorian dresses, which are quickly raised to half the height of the stage to reveal a man in a fetal position under each. Then quickly the men fall straight on their backs, a light shines down on them through each dress as if being beamed up by an alien ship as they make a warped sound with their mouths. I straight up hollered in laughter for a brief moment. I was the only one at that moment to do so. As the dance progressed the moments of irony and the language of humor emerged more rapidly. For example, the picture to the left shows the dancers as they have run down stage and giggle straight at the audience. It was at times enough to make my sister blush and giggle as the men positioned themselves as some type of chip and dale dancers or covered their breasts as if they were naked women. We were totally taken in an unexpected place with this dance from funny to sick, to grotesque, to bizarre, to beautiful and so on. The audience was clearly struggling. Should they laugh when it’s funny or should they hold their laughter and remain ‘dignified’ and distant in their response to the dance. I laughed, my sisters laughed. The older gentlemen to the right of me, who on my third cough offered me a mint, did not laugh. Not only did he not laugh he was furious at us for laughing. During intermission, he berated me with his complaints against us. The largest one being that ‘we obviously have no idea about dance’ because we were so immature to laugh during the performance of “Sarabande.” I quickly established myself as a theater educator and dancer and went on to inform him that it is ok to laugh when the choreographer leads you directly to it. I went so far to inform him that this was our show too and if he didn’t like it he could leave because I had waited 10 years to see Hubbard Street again. (Actually in the heat of the moment I exaggerated and said 15 and he looked at me as if to say how old are you?) At that point, I think he appreciated my return banter as I ended our scuffle by complimenting him on the flavor of the mint he had offered me. Nonetheless, this made the rest of my show experience uneasy and perhaps took away some of the enjoyment.
Yes, I think I was so right to laugh and as I did research on the piece I was justified in my conviction. I judged this man sitting next to me because he was so foolish as to deny the choreographer his due of laughter and he judged me for not knowing appropriate show etiquette. We both wanted to engage in the work of art on different terms. Is that wrong? I don’t know for sure. But it is was inconvenient and it reminded me of the problem people have with being unable to improvise, as noted in Free Play. This man had gone to countless shows, I’m assuming. But he never expected to see a laugh out loud choreography at Hubbard Street Dance. I did not have as many firm expectations as he, so I was able to be more easily led into the comedy of the piece. For him, watching dance was simple, there is no audience test but to be quiet and not cough, chat etc. He was caught off guard when the choreographer tested his humor and ability to interact with the dancers in the form of laughing at them, which he considered a horrifying idea. I hope next time he sees a funny dance, he will remember me saying, ‘it’s ok to laugh if it’s funny.’ And I hope if I see a funny dance again that I won’t be sitting next to any version of him!
The “Bean” Experience. You had to have “Bean” there to understand it.
It was my first time to Chicago’s most famous piece of modern sculpture, referred to lovingly as the “Bean.” The sculpture was created by my husband’s favorite sculpture artist Anish Kapoor. (I even bought him his book for Christmas one year, $50 of beauty.) Its formal name is the “Cloud Gate Sculpture,” and it rests in downtown Chicago’s Millenial Park. I had seen many photos of the Bean from family members who were able to visit long before I was, and thought it looked cool but wondered if it might be over-rated. It’s not. It’s absolutely wonderful and a total playground for anyone with a few seconds to spare and a little imagination. It makes you connected to the ones you are visiting it with in a special way as it reflects and distorts you together. As you travel around and under it, you are big and the center of attention in one spot and in another, you almost disappear in the distance and still in another, you are infinitely multiplied!
But what could possibly make the Bean better? Maybe, a flash dance in front of the Bean at the precise moment you arrive at the Bean? At least, that’s what I thought was happening. Please watch the two videos below and please ‘pardon my French!!!’
I hope you were able to appreciate my embarrassing, and honest moment of experiencing art at the Bean. I was so excited and then so disappointed that the ‘art’ did not do what I wanted and imposed that it should do. These people, I was convinced, were going to dance but they did not. Yes, I do think this stuck out in the mind of anyone gathered in that circle hoping for a flash dance, as a disappointment. The sarcastic interjection at the end of the video my a man in the circle yelling “Whoohoo, that’s what I’m talking about,” testifies to that disappointment.
The sad thing is that I’m not so sure anyone was looking at the model’s clothing that the young artist had cleverly designed and who had planned this brilliant Bean hijack. I think we were waiting for the art to come alive. To move, at least as if on a runway, even if in silence. And yes, I do believe that even in this disappointing moment, God still loved me very much as he provided me a wonderful set up for this blog. In fact, I think he might literally have been laughing at me in this moment. God provides everything we need even before we know what that is. I think of the TED talk by the Amy Tan,“Where does Creativity Hide?” She talks about how the Universe provided for many of her creative moments during novel writing and how she was open to those creative invitations and walked through the doors that opened to her. I would like to brag that I set all these experiences up for myself over the course of two weeks, just so I had them to blog about but truly they just came to me out of the generosity of family members and of a loving God who cares even about our silly creative projects. Perhaps because He smiles to think that we are trying to create in likeness and image of Him the Creator. Alteast, that’s the narrative that I would like to apply to these providences of art discovery.
One thing I really enjoyed about Free Play was the consistent weaving of art and spirituality. In writing this book, Stephen, was really able to include references of a variety of religions as he explored his ideas. At one point he refers to Jesus, very poetically, as the greatest improviser, because he was free to act within his virtues. I found this personally to be a deeply profound moment of truth and understanding about Jesus… in a book about improvisation and art! Art can produce empathy, which can produce understanding, which can give way to serious contemplative thoughts. What I enjoy most about the creative process, is discovering with our own being, a truth, goodness, or beauty, as we use art to sift through our human experiences. Free Play is definitely a book of artistic contemplation and I appreciated the effort, to put into words, mysteries, that can be most clearly expressed when seen through poetic visions.
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