Allegory of the Cave

Today I saw a dance performance that for me, reinvigorated contemporary dance. Criticisms of modern or contemporary dance have often been that it lacks rigour, and achieves only theatrics, instead of emotion through controlled movements. But today's performance, seemed to blow away all previous tired dance performances I have seen, seemed to make laughable every other dance company's effort to be original and most importantly, the dancers themselves, whose hearts flew on their sleeves, transcended the form to achieve something truly and profoundly moving.

Plato's cave allegory is a parable that shows clearly how truth and the perception of truth are vastly different, and that as we move away from the shadows and into the light; along with enlightenment comes sadness, wisdom and ultimately knowledge. This 'theory of the forms' is repeated in many myths and religions; from the Egyptian Book of Knowledge/Book of the Dead, to Eve and the Apple etc. The ideas encountered are the cost of knowledge, the fall of humanity, the loss of innocence, the concept of ignorance as imprisonment and the tragedy of experience that cannot now be unknown.

To see all these ideas expressed through dance, which felt new, original and visceral was astounding. Light, sound, movement, expression and passion coursed through the performance which was both controlled, but was so expertly controlled that it seemed genuinely spontaneous and free.

I felt my heart sing. 

a pale horse

I looked, and behold a pale horse; and his name that sat upon him was Death; and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.

Revelations, Chapter 6, verse 8

"In a democracy, we get the government we deserve", Alexis de Tocqueville.

"The devil came here, and it smells of sulfur still" - Chavez, at the United Nations General Assembly, 2006

Hardly

While I

Saw morning harden upon the wall

Unmoved, unknowing

That your great going

Had place that moment and altered all

Excerpt from The Going by Thomas Hardy

shame

No movie in recent memory ripped out my insides and handed it to me on a platter, as did Shame. I will not say more about its visceral impact; there are enough reviews that gush, and enough reviews that dismiss it both. I was struck only by one thing; it received a great critical reception outside of America, but within America it received decidedly mixed reviews; with most film critics out of New York remarking on its failed ambition.

How does the gaze of an outsider inform 'insider' views? Sometimes when a mirror is held too close by an outsider, the 'insiders' cannot see their reality; cannot see their face; can only see a blurred indistinctness. I think this is what happened to Shame. The consumeristic, hyper-sexualized world which is more distinct in America than anywhere else I have ever been, at least to me, is unrecognizable to Americans.

I am sorry that the movie has not sparked the debate about sexualized mores that the director has stated he would have liked it to. I think it was way ahead of its time. Certainly there were a plethora of great movies last year; but this movie felt like it was bloodsport and utterly remarkable.