D: …it was hilarious, but there was still something poignant and tragic about the lengths they would go to, or the inner turmoil that they were obviously having.
c: Oh, yeah, that reminds me I want to say something about their relationship with “the absent people”. In the last piece, it really felt like there was another set of characters they were playing with offstage. That was really convincing. At one point I even looked behind me to see if there was someone back there who Monica was reacting to. Did you feel that? There was this other imagined audience during the first piece, a Las Vegas sized audience out there behind us who they were also winking at and playing to. Then there were times when they were playing to us actually sitting there. A disconcerting amount of eye contact, which I like....
Photo gallery of Liz Sargent Installations, at Mount Tremper Arts on July 18 & 19, 2009. Click read more to view the gallery.
I never much liked modern dance when growing up. Once I remember arriving at Lincoln Center too late to get in to see Martha Graham’s company perform. We watched her on a TV set from the lobby and it all felt cold and very far away. Another time I saw Merce Cunningham’s troupe perform at Westbeth, a loft on the lower west side of Manhattan, and was left feeling like a private ritual had been performed in front of me, one that was not to be understood by the uninitiated....
Here’s the thing: I’ve never seen anything that didn’t intrigue me at Mt. Tremper Arts. Kudos to AynsleyVandenbroucke and Mathew Pokoik for offering such a variety of work to the audiences and supporting the artists with such heart during these celebrations. This has been true since the first one I attended and the one I performed in with Vincent Thomas and was absolutely exemplified last night. Here’s my stream of consciousness response, followed by a translation into more follow-able, critical thought: Lots of solos and duets on the program. Why are those lights flashing so much? The space is filling with water and baritone. Ocean, piano, opera, nascar racing...
“…This was back in the 70’s. I was sitting with my dad and his friends in a cloud of blue pot smoke looking at cigarette ads for subliminal messages. That’s how I learned about photography—that there could be a lot of meaning packed into a photographic image, whether it’s real or not.” Thus began “SIGNS and the Language of Photography,” the final installment in Mt. Tremper Arts’s Thursday Night Lecture Series. The above quote is from Tim Davis, who along with Lisa Kereszi and Mathew Pokoik (who curated SIGNS) showed slides of their work and talked about how and why they photograph signs....