"keep dancing" by Wendy Houston

About one month ago I went to see a performance called “Keep Dancing” by Wendy Houston at Battersea Art Center.

At the time I saw it I found that it wasn’t even worthy to speak about it. After our last seminars with Douglas, where we spoke a lot about the relation with the audience, the role of it and its expectations that are being fullfiled or not…I thought I could refer to it.We are speaking a lot lately about the spectators leaving the space of the performance, being irritated or bored or seeing something without a clue…
“Keep dancing” was playing a lot with the expectations of the audience but (according to my opinion) …it disappointed it in the end. The performer was speaking to us in a way like…”Now you are probably thinking that I came to see one of these performances that nothing happens” for example. Anyway….there was some action…some videos… a voice from a computer… and in the end what we were watching was her dancing in a silly way for about half an hour, singing the words “keep dancing, keep dancing”. She stopped and started again!Everybody was waiting for something to happen, something to change… or at least to stop. So she stopped. And we clapped. And we left.

In my opinion she shouldn’t have stopped. It should have been the audience to give the end to the performance by leaving the room. Like this we could challenge the limits of our patience and of her physical strength. By finishing the performance like this I think it was unfinished. I couldn’t see the point.Anyway, I am not sure if making some people leave from your performance is a success, unless you have made some others love it.

It is interesting to play with the expectations of the audience but it is really difficult because you can never predict the response of it. And it is really easy to fall in the trap of doing something just to shock or provoke the audience, without any meaning.