Gina DeCagna [an undergraduate in the Department of Fine Arts at PennDesign] explores the intersections of performance and postmodernism in Ally at the Fabric Museum and Workshop -- Artblog editor.
In our modern day, the personal is becoming intertwined with the technological. Handheld gadgets—objects of the twenty-first century’s own kind of industrial revolution—connect us across our unique identities through social media and other messaging platforms. Much of contemporary art, in turn, is responding to this cultural phenomenon. Artists make their art more socially provocative so they, like technology, can also have social impact.
An apt model is Ally, a collaborative series of performances at the Fabric Workshop and Museum opening on April 21, led by artist Janine Antoni (b. 1964) in collaboration with two preeminent choreographers Stephen Petronio (b. 1956) and founding postmodernist Anna Halprin (b. 1920)—all of whom are in residence at the FWM.
Guarded play, group performance
I visited and previewed “Rope Dance,” one of the three performances of Ally. It surprised me with its intentional involvement of the audience, who touch the rope and each other, body to body. The performance begins as Petronio lays out a rope on the dance floor for Antoni to follow, blindfolded, with her bare feet. Petronio and Antoni then shoulder-tap and loop audience members in with the rope—pulling it, stretching it, and releasing it in an improvised dance.
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