Visitors to museums often encounter dancers inside and outside the museum. Many often have questions about the need for this and the role that these dancers fulfill. The YouTube video “Why Dance in a Museum?!” explains why dancers are often found in and around museums.
Many museums have increasingly adopted performance art dancing as a part of the experience they offer, since they view dancing as a method through which abstract ideas can be embodied. The idea of dancing as an art form that can exist outside the confines of the theater was first pioneered back in the ’50s by Merce Cunningham.
Cunningham incorporated everyday movements such as leaping and walking as part of his repertoire and regularly collaborated with artists that made avant-garde music.
Cunningham conceived performance art dancing as an art form with its own separate identity that could coexist with avant-garde music. Cunningham’s ideas have had a profound effect on modern-day performance artists looking to explore the many ways through which body movement can embody art. Some have pushed Cunningham’s ideas even further, suggesting that art could be about how the public interacts with works of art. In conclusion, whichever way dance studio artists push performance art in the future, it is sure to remain a source of interest for art followers worldwide.