an attempt at a minimalist dance

Documenting a dance choreographed and performed by Karl Frost

I would like to tell you about my performance. I thought it best to write, rather than talk with you, as I didn’t want you to mistake my telling you about my performance for my performance.

I choreographed a performance, and also composed the music and designed the lights and set. I also am the dancer/actor in the piece.

When I began thinking about this piece, I wanted to do something minimalist. I began thinking of myself on stage without moving, but then I thought that I could actually subtract my physical presence from the piece. By announcing that I was going to be performing the work, my body would be clear, and so there would be a clarity around the perception of my performing an ongoing choice to not walk on stage. I thought, in order to avoid confusion about whether I was intending some sort of tension around expectation (an added element), I decided to remove this element by alerting you, the audience that I would not enter the stage for the duration of the work.

I originally envisioned this work on the stage at the University Club at UC Davis in a simple square of light. The music, I originally composed for the work was 5 minutes of silence. I had planned to alert you, the audience, to the beginning and ending of the piece by the sounds of bells, a fact which I had planned to communicate to you, the audience, in the original program notes.

The original piece, as choreographed, had a bare well lit stage, for 5 minutes of silence with me waiting in the wings, not entering, as I again, did not want to confuse you, the audience, by sitting in the audience. I had worried that my sitting amongst you might make you, the audience, wonder whether the performance was on stage or, through some sort of experiment with agency and defying authority, in the audience.

Then, I thought, the lights were actually a very strong element, so I thought to remove them. This would then leave you sitting watching an empty blackness denoted as a dance piece for 5 minutes of silence.

Still, there existed in this modified version, the troubling aspect of duration and physical extent, even if you, the audience were blind and unable to see or hear it.

At this point , I decided to remove the aspects of time and space from the work. So, the piece, as performed, has no duration and does not have a specified space.

I have already performed the piece.

Since there is no existence in time or space, there is no way, really for you to apprehend it through your sense organs, which is why I am writing you these notes about the work.

These notes, then, are a way to facilitate your reflection on your experience of this piece. Even though you have not actually experienced the piece in a conventional sense, the piece exists in the same way that any other piece can be said to exist, which is in your brain. Now that you have read these notes, the piece exists in your mind, even if just in the under the label “imaginary”. Is there a fundamental difference, experientially between a memory and an imagination, other than the label and the perceived referent to past physical experience?

My performance is just like any other performance, continuing to have impacts on you and out into society through your reflections on the work, as well, as through your unconscious processing of the work via your body.

The piece has no name.

I hope that you will come to find it a meaningful work.

Any and all feedback is appreciated.

Regards
Karl Frost, director of Body Research