Art and Beauty

What is the responsibility of an artist?  How should they make marks on a page?  Where should the line be drawn between the eyes and the mind?  What's in it for you?  Do you like it?  Yes?  No?  Is it beautiful?  Well, let's get in our boats and drop the nets in the water.  Lets see what we can catch!  And when it emerges gasping and shining and reflecting the light, lets devour it with our eyes and after it beams its brilliant rays into our brains lets devour it with our hands and feet and teeth too.  Oh, beauty.  Now we are left to re-create you.  Now we are left to laminate your remains.  Now we are left with the bones of a saint.  Or did we get ripped off?  Are those just the bones of some small animal?  Oh well, we paid for them either way and goddammit, now they are going up on the wall.
Tell me about beauty.  Tell me about the line between sight and judgment.  Paint and thought. Intent and outcome.  Skill and boredom.  Now and then.  You and me.  Tell me about all of the lines in beauty's face.  Tell me about all of the lines.  What is the responsibility of an artist?  To cross them.

on Bobbevy's "Palace of Crystal"

Last night I went to see Palace of Crystal by Suniti Dernovsek (choreography) and David Stein's (visual design) performance company, Bobbevy.  This is a talented group with a distinctive style and it is always a treat to see what has emerged from their collective efforts. 
The Piece featured the movement of Keely McIntyre, Richard Decker, and Jessica Hightower who opened with faint smiles and pastel colored clothing that matched the shade of a surrounding backdrop of clustered crystal sculptures.  The smiles of Decker and McIntyre quickly became mockingly perfect as they froze for brief moments into stereotypical photographic poses.  At this point in the performance it seemed that these two dancers represented the physical side or surface of humanity while Hightowers movements, ranging from tranquil to desperate, showed the spiritual truth to the situations.  If this was an intentional theme though, it did not last.  Instead Palace of Crystal unfolds as abstract and multidimensional. At times seeming to parody itself, while other times sincere. It develops into a sort of new age myth to the backdrop of electronic beats and computer animation.  The choreography is for the most part highly polished and deliberate, but there are also frantic moments of movement that (at least it seems) could easily be different each night.  These are the holes poked in the jar, the moments where beads of light shine into the cave and where perfection is allowed to slip into something broad and uncontrolled.  Overall, this is a very human narrative, but it is certainly not spoon fed to you.  It will require you to chew and digest and process what is being presented.  In the show program there is a quote:  "Man is a seeker.  He dwells amid shadows and seeks light" (Sri Ananda Archarya) which mirrors the performance.  Palace of Crystal places you in the dark and hands you a candle, the rest is up to you.

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now

We are pressed against our seats and pinned there as sound folds before us and cracks.  Memories are dislodged and we try to scoop up what we can.  The present is the line that is drawn between what could have been and what actually took place.  Now is a reference and we keep it in our pockets to consult, but the more it rains, the more the ink of now bleeds.  The more now becomes then, or what could have been.