is dumping flour dancing? more at 11.

Last night I got to catch up with an old friend I haven't seen in years, which was great. She's a dancer and choreographer, so we went to the American Dance Festival after dinner, which was educational. There seems to be a movement in dance now involving screeching and dumping things on the floor. Also, in one dance several plants got harmed, a metaphor for the screeching girl's broken heart I think, but I was honestly more concerned with the plants than her messy emotions. I mean, those little plants worked so hard to grow from little sprouts, and were all bushy and healthy, and here come these abstract people spinning them around and pulling their leaves off. I'm sure the plants were thinking, "hey, look buddy, I have nothing to do with your problems or your metaphors for them. now get me some miracle grow and go fucking deal with yourself." Personally, I suspect that plants have a much healthier outlook on life than people. You don't see ferns making messes as a metaphor for their bad relationships, do you? Hm.

Two of the three dances we saw involved dumping things on the floor - dirt to plant the girl to be a tree in the first one, which ended with her hitting herself on the head with a microphone, and the last one with guys sifting something that looked like flour after a series of girls crossing the floor on their knees. I wondered if the choreographer cleaned that up, or after making the dancers work so hard they had to sweep the floor, or maybe some poor shmuck who makes $6.50 an hour had to run out and sweep behind them.

It's not that I don't appreciate a good metaphor. It is that I have also come to the age where I appreciate a clean floor. Am I less artistic than I used to be? Perhaps, but my plants are healthy and my flour stays in the jar.