Our culture is in the throes of crisis:
I have a vision of dance working in the service of healing.
I invite you to join me in this quest.
Anna Halprin
I caught something most people can’t see even when they’re staring right at it. Not the performance, fuck the performance, anyone with a decent camera can shoot a performance. I caught the moment before the lie becomes necessary, when these bodies are still figuring out what story they’re supposed to tell.
The black and white isn’t an aesthetic choice. Strip away the color and you strip away context, what’s left is just bodies outside the museum trying to conjure something real while the institution looms behind them.
Halprin’s talking healing and I’m there with my Leica like a war correspondent at a séance. I knew what I was after: not the polished thing, not the myth, but the actual labor of people reaching for each other in circles that probably felt ridiculous until they didn’t. Outside, in the weather, in the actual air, not sanitized by the museum’s climate control, but exposed.
The fact that it’s a rehearsal matters. The fact that it’s outside matters more. They’re not performing for the institution’s blessing, they’re working something out in the open, trying to figure out if communal gesture still means anything when everything’s collapsing. Most photographers would’ve waited for the real thing, shot it like it was precious. I love to shot the preparation, the build up.
Anna Halprin rehearsal for her Planetary Dance
at the De Young Museum led by Dohee Lee…