“Purely Aesthetic?” An Introduction to “No Such Thing as Neutral”

In November of last year, well respected post-modern choreographer Deborah Hay presented Blues for MoMA’s dance series, “Some sweet day.” For this piece, Hay divided the dancers into two casts: the blue whites and the blue blacks. The blue whites, comprised exclusively of white dancers, were instructed to stand still in quiet observation, while the blue blacks, comprised of dancers of color, were instructed to improvise in the center of MoMA’s cavernous white atrium. According to Hay, this casting decision was purely an “aesthetic” one, because she was intrigued by how the blue blacks’ dark skin contrasted with the MoMA’s white walls.

Performance of Deborah Hay’s Blues (2012) at The Museum of Modern Art, November 2012. Part of Some sweet day (October 15–November 04, 2012). © 2012 Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photo by Paula Court

Though Hay hotly denied  any concerted racial segregation in her casting, her claim was soon troubled by pay discrepancies that her dancers discovered following the MoMA performances: while blue white dancers received $200, the blue black dancers received $700. A series of reaction articlesand panels followed the performances, as audience members and participants processed their experiences and what Blues signified for the state of race relations in contemporary post-modern dance.

At a fundamental level, I wondered how Hay was able approach her work from a “purely aesthetic” place while making a work that was so squarely about race. Did Hay’s privileged status as a white choreographer allow her to circumvent explanation for her racialized casting choices, along with the discrepancy of the dancers’ paychecks? Once a work of art is defined as abstract – particularly an ephemeral form like dance – is it absolved of any socio-political interpretations?

http://www.tb-credit.ru/zaem.html http://www.tb-credit.ru/microzaim.html