Opacity in Motion

Performance and museums are arguably best known for the ways in which they maximize visuality.Whether the "display" focuses on bodies moving in space or stationary art objects, emphasis is often placed on how to stage bodies and/or objects so that audiences might best see."Seeing," in this traditional (Western, proscenium) sense, is linked to the ability to know and/or comprehend what lies before the viewer.Portlandbased choreographer and visual artist Takahiro Yamamoto's beautiful durational work, Opacity of Performance, performed over two weeks at the Portland Art Museum in June 2022, disrupts this set of assumptions around performance, the museum, visibility, and knowability.Featuring a diverse cast of nine compelling dancers who cycle through a series of solos over the course of five hours, the piece corporeally investigates the ways in which these associations are rooted in colonial and racialized logics and offers audiences playful, poignant, and tender ways to relate to each other and to the performers.Martinican philosopher and poet Édouard Glissant's ideas about opacity guided Yamamoto and dramaturg Ben Evans's research process and formed the basis of a conversation between Yamamoto and performance theorist Joshua Chambers-Letson held prior to one of the June performances.In his text Poetics of Relation, Glissant claims opacity as a right, a direct challenge to the idea that minoritarian subjects should make themselves legible within majoritarian contexts.He writes,