MoMA PS1
May-October 2010
I invited all styles of dancers and choreographers to come to the museum to teach me their craft. On October 16, in a work titled The Finale, I performed a museum-wide choreographic score that would have been impossible for me to do on the first day.
I’m fascinated by the gap between what I want my body to do and what it ends up doing, as well as by the frisson of the “real” promised by failure. This “reality” is very clear in dance (Martha Graham: “Either the foot is pointed, or it’s not—no amount of dreaming will point it for you”), but the rift between intention and fact is also evident in social behaviors (wanting to be charming at a party), through the creation of artwork (wanting a video to evoke a certain mood), and through words (wanting to write something “total” that puts down on paper everything going on in your head).
“Though clearly awkward, the resulting spectacle is engaging, brave and makes for compulsive viewing. As each move is layered on top of the next it becomes apparent that the transitions between moves are really where the dance and its choreography take shape; how foot connects with hip connects with shoulders and ultimately the thinking part of the cerebral cortex that defines bodily rhythm. “
-Mark Beasley, Frieze