for Chamber Orchestra

Winner of the BGSU New Music Ensemble 2019 Call for Scores

The word ‘Camp,’ at its simplest, stands for an aesthetic ideology that values the exaggerated, the artificial, and the extreme. Camp seeks to push the boundaries of good taste, “soliciting a verdict of outrageousness.” (Bryant et al., 2016.) “Camp is a descendant of the baroque. And as such, it is a symptom of modernism.” (Pero, 2016.) In the 1964 article Notes on Camp, Susan Sontag describes the phenomenon as a measurement of artifice and stylization– before proceeding to highlight fifty-seven further conditions of the aesthetic and concluding with the statement “it’s good because it’s awful.” Among these conditions is the claim that “concert music…, because it is contentless, is rarely Camp. It offers no opportunity, say, for a contrast between silly or extravagant content and rich form…” While Sontag’s fifty-eight theses on the qualities of the Camp aesthetic have been equally praised as they have been disputed over the last fifty years (see Mark Booth’s 1983 article Campe-toi! On the Origins and Definitions of Camp), this declaration on the campiness and ‘contentlessness’ of concert music seemed to me to be a challenge.

Perhaps one of the most prominent artistic exemplifications of camp is the vogue ballroom style of dance. Voguing evolved in the underground drag ballroom scene of the later twentieth century and became a significant part of LGBT culture, particularly that of people of color. The dance was popularized by Madonna’s 1990 pop hit Vogue as well as the 1991 documentary Paris is Burning. Voguing is said to have been invented in an argument between two bickering dancers mimicking the poses of the models in the Vogue magazine, each attempting to outshine the other.

The vogue ballroom style has diverged into three distinct forms since the nineties. The ‘old way’ is traditionally a true dance battle, loosely rooted in hip-hop and breakdancing. It consists of the formation of “static, balletic poses” imitating ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and the awkward, contorted postures of the Vogue models. (Lindores, 2018.) The ‘new way’ is based on the original dance but incorporates more extreme flexibility and moves derived from martial arts. Voguing has steadily evolved from a dance “based on elegance and restrained gesture” to a third style, consisting of frantic, flamboyant, even violent acrobatics: the epitome of the camp aesthetic. (Monforte, 2010.) ‘Vogue fem’ entails “ultra-feminine choreography with intricate posturing, hair whips and deathdrops–”(Lindores) a move “in which the performer literally falls backwards onto the floor in what appears to be a suicidal thrash executed perfectly to the hard beat of a song.”(Monforte) Fem is built from five main elements: the catwalk, the duckwalk, hand performance, floor performance, and spins and dips.

Camp was inspired by, and in many ways imitates the art of vogue dancing. Many of the rhythmic motifs are rooted in the fleeting, erratic motions of the contrasting vogue styles. Various solo instruments and sections are briefly displayed to showcase color and character, sometimes competing with each other, but most often interjecting in agreement. Throughout the piece, a sort of evolution occurs- the reserved, almost stiffly classical beginning gradually morphs into a boisterous, vibrant display of virtuosity and personality. The music dabbles in jazz, minimalist techniques, and some occasional pop rhythms. Above all, Camp attempts to prove that concert music can in fact be “silly, extravagant, and rich in form” because it is not contentless, but simply dripping in content.

Becquer, Marcos, and José Gatti. “Elements of Vogue.” In Collected Work: The Subcultures Reader.445-453. London: Routledge, 1997.

Bryant, Marsha and Douglas Mao. “Camp Modernism Introduction.” Modernism/modernity 23, no. 1 (2016): 1-4.

Lindores, Mark. A Brief History of Voguing. Mixmag, October 10, 2018.

Pero, Allan. “A Fugue on Camp.” Modernism/modernity 23, no. 1 (2016): 28-36.

Smith, Martez D. R., Leeja Carter, and Jahmia Phillips. “Vogue Dance, Flow, and a New Dimension for Performance Psychology.” The Humanistic Psychologist, May 16, 2019. doi:10.1037/hum0000135.

Sontag, Susan. “Notes on Camp.” In Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject: a Reader. Edited by Fabio Cleto. 52-65. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1999.