What Can Be Learned From Dance And Dancers?

What can be learned from dance and dancers? Could the success story of one art-form, turned entertainment and therapy, be a cultural response to the challenging times we live in? Could today’s renewed popularity of dance be a reaction against all evils rather brushed under the carpet? The collapse of capitalism, war mongering, gross global inequalities caused by short-sighted excess and greed, waste, the food industry causing obesity and cancer to feed the fitness and pharmaceutical industries... Help! There is plenty of reason to want to forget and dance. This article takes you through the history, the rapid growth and explosion of dance as the cheerleader of all professions.

In high art public funding circles (the Arts Council), dance still carries the nick name “The Cinderella of the Arts”.

Dance companies, like poets, are at the bottom of the public art funding budget. It may take another decade for public funding organisations to wake up to Cinderella’s three charming princes: Michael Jackson, YouTube and TV.

Elvis wriggled his sexy hips, Jerome Robins brought us "West Side Story", and Michael Flatley got people tapping, but Michael Jackson on a par with Chaplin, is one of the most original and influential choreographers of all times.

Verging between high art, entertainment, competitive sport, and therapy, dance has broken all barriers. Together with her 4 sister-arts:

1. “music” (quality of sound)
2. “costume” (fashion), and
3. “scenery” (sets as fine-art for location / environment),
4. libretto (story / script)

Rudolph Benesh, inventor of Benesh Dance Notation, coined the slogan for dance: “All Art In One”.

Ballet was born during the 15th century at the King’s court. Later, it was performed as interludes in operas to give the singers time to change their costumes. Most classical opera scores contain one or two circa 20 minutes instrumental passages purely for ballet.

The idea of an independent dance company detached from opera occurred as late as the 1930’s. The best choreographers (Massine, Fokine), composers (Stravinsky, Delibes), and designers (Alexandre Benois, Natalia Gontchavora) were united by Russian art critic, patron, and impresario Sergei Diaghilev to launch the famous Ballets Russes.

Peaking popularity for dance occurs shortly after troubled times: the twenties Charleston craze, followed by the fifties’ Rock ’n Roll. More recently dance dominates popular TV competitions judged by both experts and the voting public alike. Like never before, dance today has a global theatre, a world-wide stage.

A few decades ago it would have been inconceivable to mix classical ballet and modern dance. They were two enemy camps – either you were crazy enough to dance on your toes, or you had re-gained your common sense. Today, dance companies are liberated from dogma. Ballet opened its doors to other physical languages like modern, yoga, martial arts, gymnastics, street dancing, ballroom, to name but a few. All dancers love to learn new steps, new moves, share tricks and styles. The communication and competition between various disciplines, the erasing of borders, became an all-win situation. It brought dance to the upper echelons of the cultural pyramid.

Dancers' keenly curious attitude towards new steps, new moves, their endless self-competition towards excellence, their discipline and stamina has enriched the profession through:

• Diversification
• Accepting and integrating the competition.
• Seeking to share and learn from each other, rather than fight.
• Competing on a multi disciplinary scale.
• Discarding bad habits.

If the above qualities have worked so well for one profession, one very diverse social group (dancers), then I wonder, could those same qualities work for other groups? Can you imagine lawyers, politicians, university professors, and scientists keenly co-operating, sharing their latest discoveries with their peers like dancers do? Could the world of big bad business, with its obviously failed "growth for profit" doctrine learn to change its way by recognising the success of dancers' ideology?

Unlike in business and politics where everything is about "beating the competition", and applying the law of the jungle: "eat or be eaten", dance and dancers have finally grown up. Through the exploration and acceptance of many new styles and different ways of moving, dance and dancers in all areas of the profession have evidently gained in ardour, vocabulary, communication skills, virtuosity and popularity. Dancers and choreographers' healthy competitive urge, with an emphasis on curiosity and a desire to freely share and learn from their brothers and sisters in different niches of the profession, is a positive working model for a successful win-win situation for all concerned.

Shall we Dance?

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