Aviles’ Art Found in his Body

To the Editors:

Arthur Aviles is a remarkable dancer who seems capable of making the human body move like hot fudge syrup. Bones, muscle, flesh could hardly account for this facility. His ability to sweep through the space, gather its energies into himself, and release it in infinitely varied manners transcends physicality and its compliment, sexuality. Indeed, this transformation of the body provides the narrative and thematic components of Aviles’s choreography.
Aviles loves his body despite the fact that being short and squat and compact it hardly approaches Eddie Bauer perfection. He loves it because it is a finely crafted instrument. He loves it because it is emits vitality. He loves it because it is capable of creating shapes of exquisite beauty. When he shares his body with his audience, he presents corporeal delights that are typically neglected by the popular media, family values and religious teachings. Aviles demonstrates that the body is not merely a sexual object.
Several of the artistic strategies Aviles utilizes to convey this theme were in evidence during his performance at Oberlin. First, Aviles remained naked long enough for the initial shock to dissipate and more thoughtful considerations to become activated. Second, during the performance Aviles continually urged the audience to perceive his bodily movements as abstract. Third, he defused any audience tension by verbalizing their unspoken accusations and concerns.

None of these observations, however, account for Aviles’s invitation to participate in the Emerging Arts Program. Aviles was invited to teach the Emerging Arts students his unique method of creative construction. In the workshop, choreographic movement was derived not from the body, nor from an emotion, nor from a musical score, nor from a story. Instead, the movement structure was provided by the movie Star Wars. Students analyzed all the movement components of the film. These included moving actors and robots as well as moving camera shots. The students then returned these two-dimensional impressions to the third
dimension by enacting the moving elements in each scene. Thus one student would perform the eye-balls that moved at a different pace from the movement of the head to which the eyes were attached. Other students became a window that moved across the screen from left to right as the camera panned right to left. Despite this formal structure, the students delighted in the opportunities that Aviles’s technique provided for collaboration and interpretation. The workshop demonstrated that formal
structures are capable of liberating the imagination.

–Linda Weintraub
Henry Luce Professor of Emerging Arts