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The Ephemeral of Dance and Nature

One of the features of dance as a performing art that has been often noted is that it moves and it changes, both during the course of any given performance and over time.

A catchall phrase for this sort of impermanence—reflecting the lack of entirely stable art “objects” in every case—has been to say that “dance is an ephemeral art”.

This does not mean that dance is insubstantial or unserious. Instead, something vital in dance is only experienced in the very moment of performance.

This may or may not distinguish dance from theater or music, although dance does seem to rely less on recordings and written notations in its creative process and performances.

Dance critic Marcia Siegel famously wrote that dance “exists as a perpetual vanishing point”, which means for Siegel that dance exists in “an event that disappears in the very act of materializing.”

With a change of seasons in the air, we are reminded that everything is in a constant state of change.

I strive to embrace and live each day.

Many of us know of Andy Goldsworthy’s work, but have you heard of Lita Albuquerque or Richard Long?

As I walk through the woods these days I can’t help myself!

All I see are art supplies everywhere! See it before it disappears before your eyes.

“It is natural to use the earth as a canvas. I think of earth as a sculpture in space.”

For Albuquerque, humanity’s landing on the moon in 1969 marked a seismic shift in artistic perspective, which she compares to the discovery of one-point perspective during the Renaissance. Indeed, her works are often best viewed from above to better reveal their position in the cosmos.

In the ’70s and ’80s, Albuquerque became known for her ephemeral pigment drawings, which she installed everywhere from the Mojave Desert to Washington, D.C., to the Great Pyramids of Giza. 

Funded in part by the National Science Foundation, Albuquerque’s Stellar Axis: Antarctica 2006 (above) epitomized this decades-long effort. The first artwork ever installed on Antarctica, Stellar Axis consisted of 99 fabricated blue spheres, which corresponded to the location of 99 stars above. The size of the spheres reflected the brightness of the stars. Over the course of the installation, the earth rotated and the alignment between the constellation of spheres and stars shifted, marking the passing of time and space.

“In realizing this work, my aim was to encourage the public to look up and out, not in and down,” Albuquerque explains,“to guide people from our everyday reality to the larger stellar movements and their energy.”

“A Line Made By Walking”

This formative piece was made on one of Actor Richard Long’s journeys from his home in Bristol, England. Between hitchhiking lifts, he stopped in a field in Wiltshire where he walked backwards and forwards until the flattened turf caught the sunlight and became visible as a line. He photographed this work, and recorded his physical interventions within the landscape.

Although this artwork underplays the artist’s corporeal presence, it anticipates a widespread interest in performative art practice. This piece demonstrates how Long had already found a visual language for his lifelong concerns with impermanence, motion and relativity.

Last Thursday, I hope that some of you saw the pink clouds dotting the sky.

We can all be artists and find bits of beauty around us.

Don’t forget to look up and out.

See you next Sunday!