By Alex Maravillas

It was a long drive from San Marcos to downtown San Diego where I attended The Snowbirds live performance.

Notably called their Winter Dance Residency, it was a bourgeois experience to feel the ambiance of the art world of the dance community. I got to see friends who happened to be choreographers themselves. It was my first Snowbirds show ever, and I did not know what to expect.

I noticed an on-site specific performance venue. It was filled with people of all ages, a diverse audience. I observed the art that was displayed upstairs. During the performance, the dancers were only mere glimmering silhouettes. There were a group of that dancers wore a sequined garment in the first sequence. I saw the dancers transition in movement, speed and through the pace of with or without the beat of music. I found a story through dance.

I saw dancers move in an organism type fashion. I saw a dancer take off her clothes, stripped down to her underwear and topless. She spoke in a different language as she danced and interacted with the audience as she was nude. At the end, the last sequence had two dancers in beach attire portraying a satirical representation of people tanning in an Americana postcard like fashion.

It reminded me of a moving picture if you will. A movie, or like a play. With live music and live dancers, portraying a metaphorical experience. One could denote difference between experience from every individual person from the audience. Everyone may have a different explanation of what they just saw. It reminded me of life in general. The dance movements were so ephemeral and sporadic that they were hard to distinguish; however, it portrayed a story that related to me in a subjective kind of way.

Kinesthetically I felt like the performance inspired me to dance any way I wanted because it is my body and if I wanted to dance soft and classic, so be it. Some dancers dance rough while some dancers dance softly. I believe dance is subjective and it can be in any way it wants to be done. Emotionally, I felt touched by how raw the whole experience was for me. I love dance, and it gave me a form of expression which I am grateful to have discovered.

When the nude girl performed and talked about Disco and Freedom, I wanted to go and dance with her. Dance is a form of stress relief for me and it is also a liberating experience. Watching her dance provoked me to think about the ways I can liberate myself so that it can then liberate my form of kineticism in my dance form. Intellectually, I am numb to the nudity and I appreciate the shock value of the performance.

Improvisational dance is beautiful when performed right and I believe The Snowbirds did me justice. If the performance had a metaphorical story behind its context what is it?

I think this was a revolutionary piece of art and the way dance can provoke an audience and create a discussion about critical thinking on what constitutes dance.