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!
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Paul Taylor's "From Sea to Shining Sea" (1965) |
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| Alexei Ratmansky's "Solitude" (2024) for New York City Ballet. Photo: Erin Baiano |
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| 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.
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| 1997 me & Lisa Viola - Taylor's "Eventide" Studio shot by Howard Schatz |
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| 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.
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