A Puzzlement Regarding the Avant-Garde

To my mind, the perfect piece of avant-garde theater is Stomp. It has no story, no characters, no dialogue, no conventional dramatic structure. It's pure theater. It's a celebration of rhythm and movement for their own sake.

And it works. It works like gangbusters. It's never boring; it's never artsy or pretentious; it's visceral and exciting and life-affirming and even funny. It's the kind of show you walk out of feeling grateful. It's an experience worth having. It's worth having more than once.

The funny thing is, I've never heard any advocate of avant-garde theater mention Stomp as a point of reference. If it comes up at all among theater insiders, it's spoken of dismissively, or even with contempt. I can only assume this is because it's too popular. After all, if a lot of people like it, then it can't really be art.