04 Paul Phung, Sisterhood

… to encounter Paul Phung’s portfolio, Sisterhood, immediately after spending time with Jenna Westra’s Afternoons, is interesting to say the least… the parallels are significant… Phung’s project shoots women who are dancers… Westra’s project shoots women who are dancers… both make claims to displaying feminine intimacy, though Westra’s work is a deeper study of the feminine…

… costuming has removed the sexuality of female bodies as in issue in Phung’s work, the women dance in robes with copious amounts of fabric which hide features of the female body that could signify overt sexuality…

… largely, i react to Phung’s work as a study of dance and female dancers… the choreography is not that of the artist as it is in Westra’s work, and Phung remains removed from the work since he does not, could not, participate in it as subject, and he photographs from a distance, no close in crops…

… i enjoy Phung’s photographs, they are well done, but they actually lack the intimacy claimed, which is further made remote by dance representations of what intimacy amongst women is…

04 Arias for a New World

this article on dancer/choreographer M. J. Harper’s new dance production caught my attention…

… when i first moved to New York City, decades ago, i studied dance at the Alvin Ailey school… i also took beginning ballet lessons at a small studio around the corner… i was never more than a beginner and starting too late to even think about a dance career… at the time i was a young pup architect and i felt the dance training would inform me about movement through space… there were also a lot of attractive young women that i enjoyed being in the midst of as a single young man, though i don’t believe i ever dated one of them while i was there… in retrospect, i was as interested in being amidst the feminine as i was in finding a partner…

… the article doesn’t reference anywhere to see the production that i could find…