Dancing in the galleries

The Trisha Brown exhibition (which, unfortunately, just closed) turned out to be a lot of fun with the kids. We were there on Saturday, while a group of dancers were performing Plances, a dance by Brown from 1968.

Both the kids were fascinated — the dancers were scaling a wall in the gallery, on which was projected a film. The dancers moved very slowly and deliberately, from one impossible-looking gesture to another. 18-month-old baby J. kept saying “Uh-oh!” over and over, and when it got really exciting, she ran in circles around the bean bag chairs in the gallery. And her 7-year-old brother was mesmerized, too.

I’d seen the exhibition on my own, and it didn’t even occur to me that the kids would love it. But they both loved it — the projection of a dancer at about life-size on the wall as you entered the gallery was a hit, too. Unexpected fun. I’ll have to try to be more open-minded about which exhibitions might be good for the kids.