In my September blogs, I praised the Denver Art Museum’s “Summer of Dance” – four separate exhibitions all focused on American dance. However, I noted that the Denver Post’s art critic disagreed, claiming that dance was a far too trivial topic for a “serious museum” to tackle.
I suggested that the critic’s dismissive comments sprang from the fact that the real value of dance is best understood by dancing. And dance is not really embedded in the lives of everyday Americans.
The Denver Art Museum found a clever way to bridge this gap with its Dance Lab, one of the “Summer of Dance” exhibits. This locally-created interactive installation spans the gap between being a spectator of dance and a dancer.
The spectator enters a long, dark room. Various images of people dancing are projected along one wall. These projections are randomly edited with animated blobs and colored zigzags flashing intermittently across the dancers’ bodies. In an adjacent space, the spectator can become a performer by standing in front of a central pillar on which an outline of the body is shown. When the individual matches his body position with this outline, a video camera is triggered, and the museum-goer can create a two-minute solo.
Shortly thereafter, the solo will become one of the projections in the adjoining space. It is shown several times, at different positions along the wall.
I revisited the “Summer of Dance” with a colleague, and we had a ball creating solos and even attempting a duet. We were not alone. Other visitors wandered in and seemed to enjoy becoming dancers for a moment as well.
So hats off to the Denver Art Museum and its “Summer of Dance!”