Here’s a new idea for you to ponder. What makes a movement art? What makes it beautiful? What is dancing?
I don’t have the perfect answer, so today I’m asking you.
An Intellectual Exercise
You probably didn’t feel like a dancer the first time the teacher put on music. As beginners, we learn a LOT of steps. If you’re like most of us in our first class, you moved awkwardly to the beat, hoping you didn’t mess up too badly.
But at some point things start flowing, you feel the music, you jive with your partner. And you say to yourself, “Ah, now I’m really dancing!”
Later, you may see yourself in a video or photograph and instantly change your mind: “It feels so good, but it looks so… blah…”
Anyone who cares about dancing will feel disillusioned at one time or another. If you’ve ever reached that point, this is the perfect question to ask yourself:
She's doing yoga, but could she be dancing? It's beautiful, but is it art?
What makes movement beautiful?
- When does walking become dancing? What makes movement art?
- Does dancing require music? Creativity? Self-expression?
- Is the intention of the person moving the deciding factor?
- What about coordination, efficiency, body mechanics, alignment?
- What is good quality of movement?
In the comments below, please share your answers to one (or more!) of these questions.
By talking about what you think makes movement art, you can define what you’re working towards and overcome disillusion. Will you add your voice to the discussion?
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{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Rebecca, I love these questions! I started to answer one of them here, and then my answer kept getting longer and longer. So I decided to write a blog post about it instead! Short answer is that your question “When does walking become dancing?” got me thinking about the difference, if there is one, between dancing and acting, and how some kinds of dancing are basically pantomime set to music, while there are some actors who never seem to stop dancing, and, well… anyway. Thanks for opening up this discussion!
Yeah! I began thinking about this question more when I was doing squats as a rehab exercise. I have to get the form juuuust riiiight, or it won’t help me as much. It reminded me of working on my dance forms, and I started to think about how beautiful a simple squat could be if I worked hard on it.
Looking forward to reading your post. I need a bit longer to gather my thoughts before I write a lengthy answer.
Thought-provoking! I’m not going to weigh into the beauty/art aspect just yet. But I’m a drummer and I would propose that if there’s a clear sense of rhythm in your movement, then it’s dance. It doesn’t require music, but there must be the intent of a rhythm. The rhythmic movement also *has* to follow a beat; if it’s done to music, the it should follow the beat of the music.
The rhythm could be manifest in a simple “pulse” or “bounce” in your step (bouncing down the street would be more dancing than a “regular” walk). It could be manifest in a change of rhythm such as double-time steps versus single steps. It could show up in any part of the body.
As a side note, it seems that in general, most dances I’ve seen tend to have more movement of the lower body than the upper body. I wonder, is this an indication that dance generally requires horizontal movement of the entire body, or is it easier to move our lower bodies than upper bodies, or do we humans prefer to see steady faces while the rest of the body is moving, or…?
Some juicy ideas at the end there, Nigel. :-)
I like where you’re going with rhythm. So my question for you is: What about walking? Or just tapping your foot? Both are usually quite rhythmic. But by themselves, neither are dancing.
I suspect there are more elements which identify dancing. On my Google Plus page, a commenter mentioned communication. That idea is worth some more thought.
Hmmm well that’s the “problem” with art: you can’t put a line around it. For instance, I’ve heard a professional (jazz/ballet) dancer talk about “car dancing” which is where you’re sitting down and just bobbing your body to the beat and maybe turning your shoulders a bit and tapping your hands. Where’s the line that makes that dancing but foot-tapping is not?
Part of it may be the fact that your body (i.e. torso) is involved. Though that doesn’t exclude walking.
Alright, here’s what I’ve decided: complexity is the key. As an analogy: I seem to remember hearing recently of a painting of the colour orange selling for an exorbitant amount. That doesn’t sound like art to me. But I’ll go out on a limb here: if I do the basic step of a partner dance for an entire song, I wouldn’t say that I was dancing to that song.
Further, if I stand motionless on a dance floor with a partner and at some random point I do a really complex 2-bar dance move and then stop again, I also wouldn’t say that I was dancing. I merely did a move.
If I was sitting, or standing, or pulsing, or bouncing while tapping my foot for an entire song, I wouldn’t call that dancing. BUT, if I danced to a song and spent 2 bars tapping my foot in the middle of it, it WOULD be dancing, because it’s within a greater context which provides for more complexity.
Another example: music starts, I walk onto the floor, in time to the music, but with no extra “non-walking” movement, then go into some other dance moves. In that case, the walking was part of the dance, even if, by itself, it would not be considered dancing.
Lastly, to come back to my car dancing description above: this is dancing because of the complexity of the movement itself (torso + arms + hands + shoulders) … as long as the movement is dynamic in that it changes with time instead of endlessly repeating the same sequence of movement.
Oh, and my previous bit about rhythm and beat still holds as the framework for all of the above. Moving your body in complex shapes with no rhythm or beat is not dancing.
:-)
I’ve had dances where just doing the basic over and over WAS dancing. I think there must have been something subtle going on, some slight variations in response to the music. Do you suppose dancing could be just a simple matter of “moving in response to music”? Can you think of exceptions?
Modern dancing. Sometimes the music is picked as an afterthought… or there is no music at all.
Well, you CAN put a line around art. But not everyone is going to agree with you. I think the effort of defining the art helps you figure out what you identify with.
“Moving your body in complex shapes with no rhythm or beat is not dancing.”
Have you ever seen modern dancing? ;-)
That said, it’s nearly impossible to have no rhythm at all. http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/scott_rickard_the_beautiful_math_behind_the_ugliest_music.html
It takes a mathematician to create a rhythmically non-patterned piece of music. Even then, you could argue that the lack of pattern is a pattern. Or that the repeated use of the piano is a pattern. Or that using notes at all is a pattern!
Thanks for the thoughts!
When does walking become dancing?
The postmodern dancer might suggest walking is dancing, all movement is dance, Life’s a dance. Actually John Michael Montgomery sang that last one.
What makes movement art?
I am an artist therefore art is what I do. If I say this is art it is art. If I dance and say it is art it is art.
I am a dancer therefore dance is what I do. If I say this is dance then, unless the judges disagree, it is dance.
If anything can be dance, then the questions need to directed at a particular dance, category of dance (e.g Swing) or in the abstract, form, Discussion can then follow on what the answers maybe.
Just some thoughts…..
There are two ways to look at it. (1) What do I call it when I do my art, and (2) how do I identify a particular art?
You answered the first question, and I’m interested in the second question. I’m okay with being inclusive and saying, “It is dance if the person doing it calls it dance,” but that presents some problems. I could paint a rock and call it dance. Or the dancer could call their dance something entirely different. Or I might not be able to have a discussion with the artist at all, and I’d be left to wondering what they are doing.
See, I know a smile when I see one. I don’t need the smiler’s opinion to figure it out. We can dismantle what makes a smile and describe different types of smiles.
The same is true of dance. The dancer’s opinion is not absolute truth, but another source for talking about this thing we call dance.
how do I identify a particular art?
A good question! What do you make of this? –>http://www.juxtapoz.com/Gallery/image?format=raw&id=30338&type=orig
Unless familiar with the work of Alyssa Monks, most people would say that it is a photograph. To be able to establish what it actually is, more information is required. If you were aware that paint was used and the image is 2d then it becomes more apparent it is an image of a painting. These two elements may not fully describe a painting but they do go a long way.
Now look at this –> http://www.thebroadstreetstudio.com/images/bet_real/president.jpg
Same idea, but now you have more information, you may look at it in a different, perhaps more intense, way.
How do you recognize a smile? There are elements that need to be in place for a smile to be perceived. A smiley :) only evokes those elements.
If I paint a rock and because I am both an artist and a dancer say it is dance, does it make it so? Are there any agreed elements in the painted rock that make it dance? I would suggest there are none. It does have agreed elements of sculpture or painting though. I use agreed as in you and I agree that painting requires the use of paint and sculpture is 3d. So the object could be a painting on a rock or a sculpture but not a dance whatever the artist says. In order to make that statement, we of course need to go back and find some agreement on what elements are required for dance.
What is dance (revisited)?
In trying to agree the elements of dance Nigel suggested rhythm. Yet, as you replied, modern dance may lack rhythm yet still be defined as dance. Maybe rhythm is not an essential element for dance even though it may be essential for particular structured dances. Another potential element could be movement, which you implied in your follow on questions.
If movement is a requirement, it is enough? Walking is movement though it is also something else. It is the transition from one body state to another. Let us, for simplicity and general agreement, call the movement from one body position to another a step. A step then consists of a starting body position and a movement into another body position. It could then be said that dancing is a series of steps.
Going back to a musical theme. perhaps steps are like musical notes. This opens up a world of possibilities. For example you could dance without music just playing the steps. You could dance with music thus becoming an additional instrument or even improvise over a piece of music. It can also be seen that steps, like notes, can have accents and various other characteristics. Notes make good, bad, great music, steps do the same for dance.
To identify dancing we could look for steps and how the steps relate to each other. You could be playing notes and not making music. In the same way you could be using steps but not dancing. Which brings us to the difference between walking and dancing. Could walking be like playing the same note over and over and calling it music?
Perhaps this analogy works then again others may not agree and then again it may only work partly, 4′ 33″ anybody? :)
I’ve actually seen the dance performance to accompany 4:33. Much sitting and blinking.