Modern in the Plaza

Culture is important, that's why I decided to take my oldest to a dance performance for Mommy/big boy afternoon out. 

I was searching for something other than the normal let's go to the park and have you run around like a drunk monkey. Lucky for me, oi Futuro in Flamengo had an 1130am modern dance performance scheduled.  I thought, Perfect!  It's dancing, which all kids love to watch, and modern, which means a lot of rolling around on the floor and fake falling. I don't need to tell you how that goes over well with 4 year old boys. 

So we get there and are told to go to the 8th floor of the building. Strange, seeing that is the coffee shop.  Oh, you have got to love modern dance these days since there weren't any actual dancers there. Nope, video screens, lights, and a sound system. Oh there were dancers, but they were in the plaza across the street. The show was "special" because they mixed it with other videos while doing a live stream of the dancers in the plaza.

Now call me traditional, but when I go see a dance performance, I like to see dancers.  I can watch a video at home. So even though my son was down to sit and watch the big screen, shocker, we left to go watch the actual dancers across the street.

That is where it became interesting. My 4 year old and I started a game of who in the plaza is the actual dancer.  You see, if you aren't familiar with modern dance, it can sometimes be a dance which uses common day movements as dance.  Fun but confusing for a 4 year old when in a plaza mixed with other people. Thankfully, at one point, they grouped together and stopped, like statues, for a period of time.  We finally got to identify the performers.  Made it easier to play who's a dancer and who's just crazy?

The crazies snapping at the performers, the other crazies trying to play with the pigeons the performers were manipulating, and the people just getting in the way, made the whole experience interesting enough to watch. Of course, my 4 year old has far more sophisticated taste than me and started asking to leave to go sit on the riding toys in the gallery. Oh kids, art critics by nature. 

All in all, it was fun enough, at the very least different from the norm, as the big boy asked me to write about it in his school agenda in the 'what we did this weekend' slot.  Something tells me he'll have an entertaining review of the whole thing. I'm guessing something along the lines of 'Modern dance is when people walk all at the same time and fall down'.