In the closing scenes of Suspiria 1 , a group of women of varying ages, dressed in loose, wavy clothing, sit on short stools, forming a semicircle in the dark basement of a Tanzakademie in 1970s Berlin. A summoning ritual is underway, and the camera pans out to reveal two more female bodies arranged in a star shape; their faces are obscured by their long, wavy hair, hanging in front of them like veils. One dancer’s knees are turned inward, resting against the bare ribs of another body. The dancer’s limp wrists are held up by a woman with long grey curls covering her exposed breasts. She is mouthing the word “geboren” (German for “being born”). The camera frame keeps expanding to reveal a line of naked female dancers standing in front of them. They rise and fall to the floor as if already possessed by the entity they seek to summon. They start on their knees, jerk their torsos abruptly, and open their chests to the ceiling. They soon contract again, curling their spines and resting their heads on the floor, before they repeat the sequence. On the sidelines, a monstrously deformed female figure, with sagging flesh full of glistening blisters and poorly healed wounds, watches them gleefully. She is anticipating her rebirth, which, if successful, would signal a return to dark historical times.
Rant #6 (2025), an hour-long immersive dance performance created by choreographer and visual artist Ralph Lemon, marked the end of his retrospective “Ceremonies Out of the Air” held at MoMA PS1 in New York. In reference to Lemon’s acts of creativity— daily drawings, poetry, sculptures, and movement phrases— the retrospective highlighted the many rituals or ceremonies that Lemon has created “out of the air” in response to his decades-long examination of Black history, death, and regeneration. Closing out the exhibit in March of 2025, Rant #6 constructed a three-dimensional experience for audience members surrounded by performers on various stages that danced in continuous references to Lemon’s previous works. As Lemon shouted into a microphone, sharing a speech on liberation, Rant #6 represented a closure. Its use of trance, repetition, and duration, with flashes of Lemon’s vast movement repertoire, enveloped viewers in a whirlwind of his artistic gestures.
The opening of Ramsay Burt’s The Male Dancer always moves me: “Had I been younger I might have tried to become a professional dancer; I have ended up writing about dance instead” (1995, 1). Every time I read this, I think, “Well, this is it. This is the story of my life.”
