The
challenges of writing about music can be compared to the challenges of writing
about dance. Here is an example of good
descriptive writing about dance. It
describes the beginning of Alvin Ailey's Revelations.
Six dancers
are grouped center stage, arms reaching high, fingers spread, heads tilting
back. The men are bare-chested, wearing
only body-hugging pants. The women's
long, sleeveless dresses are plain but drape loosely around their thin bodies
to reveal breasts and hips with a similarly plain, unsensual beauty. Warm light pours down from above, fixing the
dancers in a moment of the exaltation and yearning. "It looks so simple, and it is," Dorene Richardson
said. The dancers move very little in
what follows, and after they separate as a group they return and pull together.
. .
. those elements -- bodies that contract and hinge, sudden sinkings and almost
instantaneous rises, sashays across a crowded stage -- are used not so much to
narrate or to suggest but as direct expressions of emotion. Ailey's sense of theatrical effect and
pacing served him well in the steadily building Revelations.
From Alvin Ailey, A Life in Dance, Jennifer
Dunning, 1996.
Usually
when I watch dance, I am most interested in large choreographic designs that
use at least several dancers. For many
years, I tended to find solo dances much less interesting to watch. The following essay helped me to see more, to
notice more of the fine points of execution.
When you watch ballet dancers dancing
you are observing a young woman or young man in fancy dress, and you like it if
they look attractive, if they are well built and have what seems to be an open
face. You notice the youthful spring in
starting, the grace of carriage, the strength in stopping. You like it if they know what to do and
where to go, if they can throw in a surprising trick or two, if they seem to be
enjoying their part and are pleasantly sociable as performers. All this is proper juvenile charm, and it
often gives a very sharp pleasure in watching dancers.
But you are ready too for other
qualities besides charm. The audience
soon notices if the dancer has unusual control over her movements, if what she
is doing is unusually clear to the eye, if there are differences of emphasis
and differences of urgency in her motion.
Within single slow movements or within a sequence you enjoy seeing the
continuity of an impulse and the culmination of a phrase. Now you are not only watching a charming
dancer, she is also showing you a dance.
When she shows you a dance, she's
showing how the steps are related, that they are coherent and make some
sense. . . . at other moments you
notice especially the changes in the dancer's energy, the dynamics of a sequence,
which contrasts motion as taut or easy, active or passive, pressing or
delaying, beginning or ending.
Dynamics, space and time -- the dancer may call one or the other to your
attention, but actually she keeps these three strands of interest going all the
time, for they are all simultaneously present in even the simplest
dancing. But the dancer who can make
the various factors clear at the proper passage so as to keep you interested in
the progress of the dance is especially attractive become she is dancing
intelligently. She makes even a
complicated choreography distinct to see.
. . . And just as you become really absorbed
at a play when Romeo is not only distinct and spontaneous, but also makes you
recognize the emotion of love, which has nothing to do with the actor personally
or with acting in itself or with words in themselves, so the dancer becomes
absorbing to watch when she makes you aware of emotions that are not
make-believe at all. Some of my friends
doubt that is possible to give so much expressive power to dancing, though they
grant it is possible to performers of music or of plays. To recognize poetic suggestion through
dancing one has to be susceptible to poetic values and susceptible to dance
values as well.
from
"How to Judge a Dancer," in Looking at
the Dance, Edwin Denby. First
published in 1949. Horizon Press, New
York, 1968.
When watching good dance, some gestures just click with me as
being "just right" or "beautiful" or "true." Exactly why seeing a particular gesture in
time and space causes this emotional spark remains a mystery to me;
fortunately, it is a pleasurable mystery.
If you go to a dance performance, I hope you will experience it
too. While we may not be able to
explain the mystery, we can least try to say and write words that describe what
that moving movement looks like.
May 2006
David
Meckler
Cañada College