READ THE BONES

READ THE BONES

LORETTA LIVINGSTON & DANCERS

 

A dance concert that I attended is “READ THE BONES” at the Central Library Mark Taper Auditorium, Downtown Los Angeles on Saturday, September 20, 2003.  “READ THE BONES” is a new dance combines with the live music and video performance, projected by Loretta Livingston and Dancers.

The video images and performing concepts are inspired from SPINE, Jud Fine’s art plan in the Maguire Gardens, There are several water fountains made out of rocks and steps where lots of different languages are engraved in. There is one SPINE in the middle of the main water fountain.

The format of the stage was small compare to stages I am used to. The live musicians were to the left side of the audiences, just hand percussion and a marimba. The center of the stage had big screen where the video was playing, the screen is about 60 inches but not very wide. The stage was so close to most of the seating that the audiences could really see the dancers quite well. There were stones and small water glasses with written words in them on all the shelves throughout the auditorium.

As the musician’s signal sound echoed, the lights moved to the stage, the blurry video screen turned to the clean images and each dancer came out with a couple of stones in their hands. Each with their own shapes, heights and colors represent each of bones in our body. I began to realize what was going on by each dancer. The dancers all flowed together, all with their unique look and rhythm. The music and spot lightening uniquely following each dancer’s movement throughout the performance was sharp and clean.

The video presentation while the dancers were performing was at times hard to relate to the dancers but I was trying to understand the visuals with the dancers. Each dancer, with different body shapes, all had their unique style but yet harmony with each other. I realized that the choreography, music and video presentation were related and joined together to express the inspiration of the SPINE.

          I felt the music was trying to reach out and express the beauty of SPINE to the audience and realized the dancers were capturing the inspiration to the audience. Especially the duo dancing displayed the human’s feeling and romance just like the real world has. Realizing that each dancer was the bone and releasing their self-conscious to society allowing the intensity of the particular part was enormous to the heart of the music. I can tell that the music and dance as well as the video was very hard work to coordinate with each other to come together took strong minds to express their inspiration of the Director for us the audience to feel emotionally.

          In conclusion I enjoyed the performance, the ｅxpression of Art by the way of dancing, music and video. I understand the movement of the body and the way of the communication. I appreciate the Art further. The dancers representing different body shapes and capturing the representation of bones was unique in that it touched the inspiration of the gardens of Central Library.

 

 

September 29, 2003

S. Rhee

Dance 19ab