 |
 |
 |
|||||
|
| ABOUT TRaC |
Dance TRaC Winter 2004
Butterflies From My Hand It's so hard for me to formulate a response to Donna Uchizono's Butterflies From My Hand. I had a very mixed reaction to it. The piece starts off strong but wears thin after constant repetition and meaningless moves. As I'm waiting for the performance to begin, I see a long red cloth draped across the seats in the theatre. It then snaps and is dragged behind the curtain. The curtain opens to reveal a woman dangling from it, snipping away at it slowly. She falls down as the curtain is cut completely. The next series of movements is almost identical to the next; abstract movements of despair and shock. A dancer's hands clamped to her forehead, swaying back and forth, standing first and then doing the same motion on the floor. Other movements in the beginning looked like seizures. They were violently shaking themselves and each other. It was very violent and rapid. They looked like they were trying to fight something we couldn't see. There was also a lot of backwards action; crawling, jumping and running. A lot of it was performed really slowly. One of my favorite moments in the piece was when two female dancers, dressed in beautiful colorful clothing, came out. They were intertwined on the floor, moving as one. This is the one part in the whole performance that really stood out to me and resembled an actual butterfly. The first half of the performance was pretty engaging but towards the middle I found myself disinterested and bored. Even the strong movements that occurred seemed monotonous. For example, a female dancer struggles to drag the red cloth with another woman sitting on it, as the woman sitting is frantically waving at the audience like a child. Events like these in the piece make me curious as to what Uchizono is trying to say with all these awkward moments. Donna Uchizono says that the inspiration for this piece comes from the despair caused by the 9/11 tragedies; this is something I didn't notice at all while watching it. I am so sick of hearing about 9/11 that it makes me even more skeptical about Uchizono's true intentions for her piece. A storyline or theme is not clearly present, although Donna Uchizono says the theme is "letting go," something I didn't see at all. The redundancy and movements that just didn't seem to fit all overshadow any good moments the piece had in the beginning and left me feeling slightly annoyed and confused. The piece was relatively short but it seemed to drag on forever. In conclusion, I feel like a piece, whatever it is, needs to stay consistent in its structure. This piece suffered because the beginning was clear. It made a path for the rest of the performance, but instead of staying along the same road, it steered away. New ideas were presented toward the end when the audience is getting ready for the end of the show. If Uchizono wanted to present a theme she should've been more clear and consistent about it. I don't think Donna Uchizono was really thinking about the audience when she put together this piece and it severely lacks because of it.
|
|
