The rope holds him, hugging him tight around his torso. It harnesses him, constricting his body as it holds him dearly to protect him from plunging off the building. He dances on the brick wall, in the gray tones of the film, trotting against gravity as if he were on the moon. “The accomplishment not so grand, but still the accomplishment in the dance world is like a step for all mankind. I come to the conclusion that the landing on the moon was also a dance.” The audience watches him anxiously, holding their palms together, squeezing each other with tension—a gasp or two every so often. He walks like they walk, moving upon an empty canvas as they become the image on the white surface…they are the art piece. They are the image, but they are not the image. They are the art, but they are not “art.” Two performances are shown, rotating one after another: Trisha Brown’s “Man Walking Down the Side of the Building,” and “Walking on the Wall.” Walking, walking, walking…wall, wall, wall, fusing together as if they were occurring in the same moment. They walk as if they were spiders on the walls; the strands of web invisible against the white surface. The lines of the film strip camouflaging the lines hugging them, holding them perpendicular to the audience standing on the ground.
The ground they stand upon becomes the canvas, and the audience becomes part of the dance, part of the art. The ground is a canvas—a canvas for him and for them to bombard with dance. A foreground, mid-ground, background of gray, black and white. We look from the ground, but with a bird’s eye view. We see everything; we see them colliding into each other as the webs of ropes hang from the roof. If one stops the other must stop behind their step. One runs into another, and bounces back with an invisible frequency between them. The space they create is a tangent, a residue from their touch in a second in time. It is not a magnet, but a moment of senses, sensuality, and sentiment that bring two people together. It does not bind them to each other, though the webs have the potential to entangle them for life. They merely hang perpendicular, walking about “normally,” as society presumes. The ropes become necessities—another material necessity in order to have the power to walk on the wall. If one breaks, they all break. He breaks, she breaks…they all tumble. It serves and presents them with a sensation that enables them to dance along the walls, and walk straight on as if on a path, serving their individual purposes. Each has a role; a role to play in this dance, a role to play in this moment in time as part of their lives. It is an action they chose to perform—to depend on these ropes, and let themselves be harnessed into the harnesses to give them the ability to perform…an ability not inherited by the ordinary human being.
We do not see a hint of color through this window of their world. The lines of the “black and white film,” though neither black nor white, appear sporadically, intercised between them and us. Black spots appear…then disappear, playing peek-a-boo with us. Splashes of black, splashes of white in the quality of the film become the colors. They become the movement, dancing along with the performers, but they are neither “color” nor are they “movement.” They move, and the people beneath them, in front of them, move. They shuffle around, touching and pointing, as he and they dance rhythmically on the white wall, on the brick wall.
They dance on an empty canvas…but is it empty? In historical Chinese painting, the empty space represents fullness, almost a suffocating fullness, as if an invisible mist consumed space. These empty canvases are not so empty after all, just simply awaiting the mist of people who walk on the white wall, shadows cast, following their every movement. The shadows move—with them, close to them…static-like. Hair falls from the side of their faces, swishing and swooping. It moves in the shadow, and the shadow moves with them. He, on the other hand, walks in between windows, some with shutters, some nailed closed with wood planks, exuding eerie desertion as he gallops on the orderly bricked wall. The artistic performances are quite different, yet similar in dance. They serve the same extraordinary purpose: to defy human abilities and normalize the abnormal act of walking on walls. The black and white quality, though neither black nor white, create similar moods for the dances—a mysterious, awesome spectacle.
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