Page 37 - SMCK Magazine - Issue #01

rect with the presence of the body, so overwhelmingly close to the viewer, be turned into a distant activity, a specta- cle that one watches on a screen? Does distance change the perspective as drastically as the discovery of per- spective itself changed painting in the Renaissance? Is confinement a confi- ning situation or an inspiring opportu- nity?
Dance is a social activity, but it also exists as solo performance. Dancers know that any object may serve the purpose of an exercise instrument, that space is a relative term and a challenge. From Trisha Brown’s exploration of the walls and roofs of the buildings of New York to Martha Graham’s spiraling of her Ariadne around the horns of a mythical bull to Mary Wigman’s floor ritual of the Witch, to Steve Paxton’s solitary “Gold- berg Variations” or the post-industrial gloomy abstractions in William Forsy- the’s work of the late 80s and 90s—just to name a few of the many existing examples—dancers and choreogra- phers have shown that space and everything related to it are malleable, relative, adjustable entities, and chal- lenges to be conquered.
NatashaHassiotisisa dancecritic, choreographer
and art histo-
rian. Her book
“Great Choreo- graphers Inter- views” is avail- able online ISBN-13: 978- 1496976376
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Photo: Giorgos Vitsaropoulos