Pina Reflection

Pina reminded me a lot of the staged photographs we have been learning about in class. The dance with the red clothe on the ground sounded like there was a heart beat in the background, so it felt like a moving representation of anxiety or abuse, similar to the staged photographs of the same things. My cousin is a dancer for the professional ballet company in New York, so I know first-hand how hard it is for the dancers and choreographers to covey emotions without the ability to use words. The same can be said of photography, since it is still life. I found it particularly on the misogynist side because the woman looked like a victim of violence in the first dance, and the man was looking angrily at her. In the scene where the woman had the polka-dot dress, she had to rely on the man to catch her every time she fell, instead of reaching out to check herself, and she looked like she had empty emotions that he had to fill, based on her facial expression. The women are always in dresses with the men having to catch and support, similar to traditional gender roles. I liked that Pina was so unconventional and didn’t strive to make things pretty and glamourous, like most ballet choreographers try to do. She uses very realistic and common life problems depicted in her work, like emotions of anger and sorrow. A lot of people can feel and relate to the emotions she reflects in her dances.