Episode 57: A Critique of Interpretive Dance
In a novel departure from their “special relationship” to classical and experimental music, Alec and Nick take up the topic of Interpretive Dance as a discursive foil to their ongoing inquiries into music. The duo give bewildered accounts of the aesthetic experience of interpretive and experimental dance performances—and ask basic questions: are music and dance the same thing? Sibling rivals? Two towers? Or, why does interpretive dance often evoke laughter, humiliation, or come across as potentially overstated and ridiculous? How would would you choose to express yourself through dance? The conversation also recounts comfortable and joyous experiences of dancing and probes critical assumptions and entrenchments within the music/dance dichotomy. The conversation touches on John Cage and Merce Cunningham, The Club, musical theater, Yvonne Rainer, Simone Forti, ethnomusicological accounts of movement and music, improvised music, ballet and classical music, music and dance’s extensions into visual culture, Kim Gordon’s new album, and more.