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Painting and Dance
Jessica pi-hua Hsu
A dancer and a painter mix their medium to create a new art form; their work was presented at the Taipei International Art Fair in November ,2001.
Pushing the Envelope in Art and Dance at TAF! Jerome F. Keating Ph.D.
O chestnut tree, great-rooted blossomer
Are you the leaf, the blossom, or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
(“Among School Children” – W.B. Yeats)
Can the essence of a tree or of art be known? Can a part or participant be separated from the total work, especially in a flowing temporal performance such as dance? Yeats’ provocative lines have left many a literary reader alternating between admiration and questions.
As the Taipei Art Fair (TAF2001) approaches something else has been thrown into the mix. What artistic essence is created if you mix two art forms and artists in the act and process of creation?
Two well-known local artists, the painter Hsu Pi-Hua (Jessica) and Liou Shaw-Lu the founder of Taipei Dance Circle have done just that. On Thursday November 8th they present “Deep Play of the Soul in Art and Dance” on the 6th floor of New York New York.
In this expressionistic performance/happening viewers watch the interplay of painting, dance and artists in both the dramatic portrayal of and the process of creation. Is it painting? Is it dance? Hsu and Liou have pushed the envelope a little further in the search for the essence and encompassing definition of art.
What brought these artists together? Not surprisingly it was a mutual respect and a search for different dimensions in each one’s own art form.
“As a dancer, I always envied the painter and sculptor who could leave behind a finished product. Our art (dance) is temporal, moment by moment until it is over,” explains Liou. “True we can have videos, but they also end and the dance vanishes into air. All that is left is the feeling.” Liou saw in Hsu’s work much of the rhythm and feeling he expresses in dance and at the same time he saw a chance to leave something more permanent behind.
“I had been thinking of doing something more three dimensional like sculpture,” states Hsu. “Dance also is three dimensional in time and space. In its moments of movement and stasis, it contains both emotion and tranquillity; it is like my paintings.”
This combined performance is not spontaneous. That is, it is not done at the drop of a hat. Hsu and Liou begin the process off stage. For about an hour they perform warm up exercises in breathing and meditation. Once on stage, they still have two minutes of recollection. All this time they are getting in touch with their inner spirit, with each other and with the painting surface.
Next follows physical interaction and gestures to make contact with each other and with the canvas. They dance in front of it and feel its texture, foreshadowing the art process to come.
The first color applied is black. Painter and dancer guide each other in sketching the outline. The dancer follows the strokes from the painter but at the same time provides the painter with energy.
Art? Symbolism? Expression? How do we tell the dancer or painter from the dance and/or painting?
Soon, the three-way dialogue emerges. Painter, dancer and canvas share motion, energy and resistance. The painter releases her energy on the canvas; her excess energy is dispersed by painting the dancer’s body. In turn the dancer returns his energy both in movement and by painting the artist. Both interact with the canvas that is already alive with color.
In a past performance such energy was released that a photographer (another art form) felt it and joined in. After capturing the performance with his camera, he stripped down, danced and asked the audience to paint him.
Hsu sees art as a balance of reason and emotion. While emotion can sometimes cloud our brains, it can also provide a base for the artistically rational.
Liou Shaw-Lu whose background includes gymnastics and physical education feels art must identify with the flow of energy and the rhythm of life surrounding us all.
When the public views a painting, they see only the finished product and can only guess at the process that led to it. The performance art produced by Hsu and Liou takes the viewers through the process. As the artists internalize the process for future works, so too the audience internalizes it. After this experience, the other art works at TAF cannot help but be seen with new eyes.
Jackson Pollock is said to have freed the artist from the limitations of elbow to wrist movement. “Deep Play of the Soul in Art and Dance” holds open a different doorway of interplay in the arts. What new changes will emerge in future individual works of Hsu and Liou remains to be seen?
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