Metaphors, Moments, and how Dance reflects Life.

Sometimes I write the titles of posts first, as in this case, and I opted to capitalize only the nouns as one might in German. I find it interesting that these nouns are not solid matter, but constructs of thought and energy that take place in time! 

2001 - with Maureen Mansfield costumed for Taylor's "Black Tuesday"
Photo: Lois Greenfield

I had once been told that as a dancer, "you are a metaphor". The statement caught me off-guard, but it sort of made sense to me. I have since made use of that concept in my teaching and coaching when appropriate. 

2001 - stage setting for Taylor's "Black Tuesday"!

I love that dance is able to transcend words and yet audiences can often ascribe literal meaning to what they saw. We watch people and the world around us move through life, and we draw meaning and associations to our emotions sometimes calculatedly, but mostly unconsciously. For example, you might have a favorite city or place in the world because it is where you fell in love. If a dance somehow draws your thoughts to that city, or to how you felt in that city, you might have a very specific judgment of the work, unlike the person sitting next to you. The converse might also be true where you had an horrific experience in your life and a dance triggers an unpleasant reaction. 

2017 - Michael Apuzzo & Michael Novak in Taylor's "Black Tuesday"
Photo: Paul B. Goode

In both of the above examples, the value of a dance for an audience is that it remains as a work of Art that can spark visceral associations to moments in their lives, whether good or bad. Then the audience can choose to take those feelings away with them, or leave them in the theater. 

Performing dancers can never be a mirror to every audience member, but they do embody many of the things people observe on a daily basis. Great choreography frees dancers to seem as fluid or as hard as elements in nature, to reflect emotions in their postures and interactions with others, and to allow audiences a metaphoric window to their own life experiences retrospectively or aspirationally.

My perspectives on dance are certainly borne out of my own experience and the times in which I live. As such, I appreciate just how much I and my audiences learned from a broad range of the dance repertoire that I had the privilege to perform. Inside of this education is recognizing how brilliantly various choreographic devices are used repeatedly by choreographers. At the root of choreographers making their dancers recognizable for their humanity is their use of gesture within the movement vocabulary of a dance.

Borne out of critical analysis started by François Delsarte into movement expression, "gesture" in dance can be roughly categorized into (my descriptions) emblematic / culturally iconic, illustrative / mimetic, and directive / active.

Paul Taylor's "From Sea to Shining Sea" (1965)

Emblematic / culturally iconic gestures create identifiable images that intend to be recognizable. As an example, Michelangelo's Madonna della Pietá has become a classic image of a woman cradling an adult male on her lap, an image that is often associated with grief, loss, and quiet strength. This visual paradigm shifts when placed in context, but there is still an understanding of vitality in upright stillness and death in a prone body.

Alexei Ratmansky's "Solitude" (2024) for New York City Ballet. Photo: Erin Baiano

2022 - news photo that inspired "Solitude". Photo: AP
"Heart-wrenching image of the teen's father kneeling beside his dead son as he wept and clutched his lifeless hand has emerged, highlighting the stark reality of the brutal consequences Ukrainian citizens face at the hands of the warmongering Russian president.

Illustrative / mimetic gestures are used to amplify words and emotional intent through movement. Without speaking, dancers' actions can evoke a sense of joy, or share in concern for each other, and so much more. 

1997 me & Lisa Viola - Taylor's "Eventide"
Studio shot by Howard Schatz

1997 Francie Huber & Patrick Corbin - Taylor's "Eventide"
Performance shot by Johan Elbers

Directive / active gestures are when movement is intended to communicate an action-reaction type of dialogue without words. This can also hold true for solos and group choreography that seems conversational or narrative by design. 

2005 - Robert Kleinendorst, Patrick Corbin, Michael Trusnovec, and me.

"Offenbach Overtures". Clip from "Acts of Ardor" broadcast.

Tapestry. Life. Dance.

 

Paul Taylor's "Eventide" (Laura Halzack, James Samson, Michelle Fleet, and me)
- 2008 rehearsal -

I recently read a Substack blog post titled "What Uncle Barry Taught Me About Naming". The author muses about her memories and experiences with Barry Moncrieffe, a long time icon of Jamaican dance and culture, who passed away in 2020.  I too knew "Uncle Barry", a moniker of affection often used in reference to Mr. Moncrieffe by many who were not family. 

Barry Moncrieffe (1970s in performance). Photo: Maria LaYacona
- copied from Facebook -

As I read the article, I remembered the multitudes of people who influenced my development as a dancer and as an artist and as a person, most of whom never knew the extent of their impact on me. I was honored to know and be recognised by Uncle Barry throughout my life whenever I was home in Jamaica, and about fifteen years ago I did tell him how much his performances and teaching meant to me when I was a youngster growing up.

Woven tapestry inspired by Gustav Klimt painting
- copied from online post -

However, my momentary thoughts are imagining myself (and anyone) as a tapestry that is woven from distinctive threads that represent individual people (whom we may or may not have ever met), and who add color and dimension to my unique place in the world. A tapestry weaves myriad threads to form a piece of art in which it can be impossible to trace the role a single strand might play, and still each thread holds it together and makes it unique. If each thread were a person in our life... then where we intersect is how we become more than just a single thread. And still each "thread" has its own beginning and end, its own "lifespan".The joy and privilege of human intelligence is that our imagination is not bound by the physical world, or even our mortal existence. Art is one way in which this fabric of lives illustrates the complexity of navigating life itself. Dance, as an Art, has the capacity to transcend words, and when distilled into a singular performance it is a tapestry of tapestries. Choreographers, designers, composers, artists, performers (onstage and off) all bring their own life experience to the moment witnessed.

Paul Taylor's "Speaking in Tongues"
- screen capture - Great Performances video.

The longer we live, it is impossible to not face our mortality, and hopefully recognize how our experience is colored by a multitude of other lives. Looking back at my posts in this blog, I have mentioned only a few of the dancers and artists who have been a part of what made me the dancer I was, and the teacher and coach that I am. Mostly I was writing to aknowledge their ongoing influences on me, whether they have died recently or long past.

Arturo "Artie" Fernandez

This week Arturo Fernandez lost his battle with cancer and I am only one of so many who have been acknowledging the indelible color he added to our tapestries! When I first moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, I would follow "Artie" through Oakland Ballet Company and end up dancing alongside him for ODC/San Francisco. There is something deeply poignant to look at photographs and videos of our generation dancing together, and to not know who will be the last to see the end of our threads. 

1991 (clip from "Loose The Thread" with ODC)

Artie (cream suit), Ney Fonseca, Frank Everett, and me.

A recent view of Golden Gate Bridge from the Presidio!