Go-Go

In accordance with Gonzalez-Torres’ original instructions, the dancer performs for only five minutes each day at an unannounced, unscheduled time.  (Anne Cusack/Los Angeles Times)

The dancer moves to music only he can hear. Hentschel varies what he listens to from day to day: “Sometimes it’s a real dance track, sometimes a piano solo, happy, sad, it’s all over the place.” On this day, it was Evanescence’s “My Immortal.”  (Anne Cusack/Los Angeles Times)

Hentschel has training in many different dance styles, including ballet and hip-hop.  (Anne Cusack/Los Angeles Times)

Yes, the silver lame shorts are mandatory per Gonzalez-Torres’ original instructions. But the hat is Hentschel’s addition: “Wade wanted me to be completely vulnerable and not ‘perform.’ So that’s why I always wear the same hat. I have it really low. I’m not really paying attention to anything. As soon as I really see, and my eyes come up, it turns into a performance, and I just don’t want to go there.”  (Anne Cusack/Los Angeles Times)

Guyton found Hentschel while searching nightclubs. The dancer finds the change from that scene’s patrons to the museum visitors enjoyable: “They don’t come from a place of, ‘Oh, let’s go out and drink and have a sexual experience,’ ” he says of the Hammer crowd.  (Anne Cusack/Los Angeles Times)

On the occasions that his unnanounced, unscheduled dance is seen, Hentschel says, most observers “just watch and they walk on, which really makes you feel like part of the art piece — they read the description and go on to the next.”  (Anne Cusack/Los Angeles Times)

Curator Gary Garrels, who has moved from the Hammer to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, thinks the visitors who miss Hentschel’s brief daily dance may have an advantage: “Somebody who actually sees it maybe has lost a little bit of the mystery. “  (Anne Cusack/Los Angeles Times)

After five minutes, he’s done -- until the next day. “Oranges and Sardines: Conversations on Abstract Painting” continues at the Hammer through Feb. 8.  (Anne Cusack/Los Angeles Times)