Is It Dance? (PART I)

I loved Map Me by Charlotte Vanden Eynde and Kurt Vandendriessche. (See recent post for review.) The piece moved me and made me think. I also feel militant in my need to love it and support it. In her New York Times review of Map Me , Roslyn Sulcas wondered if the piece is dance. I have a lot of thoughts on this subject.

The movement in Map Me did not come out of a ballet class or a modern dance class. It came out of life. It was sparse and imaginative and wacky and poignant. I cannot strongly enough state how much I believe in this approach to performance making.

Any human body that is alive is, however subtly or radically, moving. It follows, then, that a live human body moves even in “stillness.” The movement within stillness includes breath and the many subtle ways we communicate deep parts of ourselves.

Movement that is sparse or subtle requires the audience to meet it half way. It’s a question of imagination and personal responsibility. As an audience member, do I have the capacity and patience to look closely at what is onstage? Do I give myself the authority to find movement and meaning in any human being onstage?

Movement onstage helps me look closely at the movement, and impulses for movement, in my own life. Like Duchamp’s readymades or good photography, it can wake me up to something that already exists.

Recognizable “dance” vocabulary can awaken in me parts of my own embodiment. But often it feels general and clichéd. My experience of life is much too varied and nuanced to express it only within a particular vocabulary.

If dance is truly an art form, we have to move beyond this question of “Is it dance?” We have to expand our definition of dance. We are an art form of the body. The body is mysterious and wild and multi-faceted. Are we committed to the range and depth of human body experience?

To be continued…