Educational Media Reviews Online

Simone Forti: An Evening of Dance Constructions, presents a 2004 performance recorded at The Geffen Contemporary at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. This performance of six pieces is a reconstruction of a 1961 performance at Yoko Ono’s New York loft.

In Dance Constructions, performers experiment with movement, interacting with objects and sounds, and improvising with each other. In the piece See-saw, a man and woman ride a wooden see-saw rigged with a device that makes an occasional mooing sound. The see-saw becomes a device for a subtle experimentation in movement, as when the man raises his arms, when the performers turn to sit side-saddle, and at one point, the man reads a newspaper. Thus it is not dance in its most stylized forms, but the question of dance at its barest, in the form of motion, that seem to concern Forti in the works shown on this DVD.

The Q&A following the performance, along with Forti’s own descriptive DVD liner notes for each piece, make this DVD accessible to viewers new to Forti’s work. I recommend this work for academic collections with art and dance programs.