The whole discipline of philosophy/logic is alien to me. Give it to me straight. Is it right or left, black or white? Two plus two is not equal to five and my logic doesn't aim to prove that I'm the Pope either. I can be analytic but I can never engage in Socratic discussions. Maybe I'm lacking the brains for deductive reasoning or maybe I'm too old for anything that requires serious thinking. Proving theorems in plane trigonometry was about my caliber but that was a thing of the past. Heck if I remember anything about the subject now.Where are we going with this?
On the evening of Inang's birthday August 5th, I watched a performance by the Buenos Aires Dance Troupe at the LPAC Little Theatre. It's a two-part contemporary program which was choreographed by Colombian-born Luis Garay. He combined, "gesture, text and live music" to explore concepts and transform them into dance.
Parto was accompanied by bouncy Latin-inspired music and danced by two young fellows hurling themselves into lifts, sometimes throwing themselves on the floor, talking out loud or leaping while a video plays in the background. Words unrelated were projected onto the stage walls. Text that did not make sense to me and images that carry no messages made the whole performance hard to understand. It was different but in no way am I suggesting that these were the easiest dance moves I've ever seen.
As difficult to grasp as philosophical concepts, is the second part of the program. Gag is an exploration of the definition of the word "gag" by the Austrian philosopher Wittgenstein. That being "something that can not be expressed or said". Whatever that means.
The brief research I did on Wittgenstein and his teachings left me more unsure, confused and feeling inadequate to handle this business called logic. A flat-chested young woman wearing nothing but short shorts and looking almost like a man, danced to the beat of live music. It was weird. There was no erotic element - just what appears to be unrehearsed moves - marching, walking and pacing all over the stage. I was so totally lost.
I'm sure Garay must belong to some group of elite choreographers and this was no easy task to produce but he did nothing for me. It was beyond my intellectual capacity for dance interpretation. The music was fabulous though.
Was that a gag? Did I gag? Was I gagged?
Let's just say at the end of the program, most people in the audience walked out of the Little Theatre speechless. That was it? Art form, you either appreciate it or not.
