ROGER COPELAND
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Or, as Brecht reminds us, "Theatre may be said to derive from rit–
ual;
but that is only to say that it becomes theatre once the two have
parted. "
The museum is the truest
theatron.
(One of the first lessons chil–
dren learn in the museum is that they are in a place for looking, not
touching.) Both literally and figuratively, postmodern dance can be
thought of as "the museumization of dance." Figuratively, because
it is made possible only by the perceptual conditions that the
museum brings into being. Literally, because so much postmodern
dance has been financed by and performed in museums.
In a discerning, early article about the nonparticipatory nature
of postmodern dance, which he refers to, significantly, as "objec–
tive" dance , Michael Kirby spoke of
a new psychic relationship between the spectator and the work.
It must be experienced with a state of mind that has not previ–
ously been called for in dance, making it unrewarding and frus–
trating to those who must empathize and project themselves into
the work. But it is a state of mind that has been necessary for half
a century when looking at certain paintings and sculpture,
explaining why objective dance has developed in close contact
with the world of painting and sculpture and why it seems to be
appreciated primarily by those who are involved with those arts.
Whether or not a wider and larger audience ever senses its
importance in performance, the steps that it has already made
are significant indications of a change in the mind and con–
sciousness of man.
It
would be almost impossible to overestimate the similarities
between post-Cunningham dance and the work of contemporary
painters and sculptors. Both place a high premium on detachment
and objectivity, on
seeing
rather than feeling. Clement Greenberg has
argued that one of the chief characteristics of modernist painting is
its emphasis on
purely optical experience as against optical experience modified
or revised by tactile associations.. .. Where the Old Masters
created an illusion of space into which one could imagine oneself
walking, the illusion created by a modernist is one into which
one can look, can travel through only with the eye.
This pure "opticality" results in a rigorous anti-illusionism
