Dancing through Time

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Dance is often viewed as a form of self-expression.  But everyone expresses themselves through their bodily movements.  These quotidian expressions differ from dance in an important way however, for everyday expressive actions are spontaneous, un-rehearsed, un-premediated and largely unguarded.

Dance movements, on the other hand, are carefully chosen, rehearsed, and controlled.  One of the attractions of dance training is not only enhanced freedom of bodily expression, but also increased control.  Yes, dancers are control freaks.  But they are also optimists.  Dance offers the possibility to construct a new self – one that is leaner, stronger, more capable, more sexy — in short, more of whatever attribute a particular style of dance may emphasize.

As an aging person who has danced, I continue to exercise, in part out of a sense of duty.  But beyond mere physical maintenance, my moving and dancing is meant to lead to a renaissance, to a newer and better me.  Paradoxically, while I am concentrating on my physical actions in the present moment, I am simultaneously connected to the past.  I have practiced these movements many times and their repetition triggers a certain nostalgia for the person I once was.

Sentient moving creates an alchemy of time, in which the present action is projected towards a hopeful future and at the same time embedded in a remembered way of being in the world.  When I move I am, I invent, and I recollect.  When I dance, I transcend the limits of past, present, and future.

Form and Color in Painting and Dance

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The artist Wassily Kandinsky and the dancer Rudolf Laban were contemporaries and moved in the same bohemian circles in Munich in the early 20th century. Interesting parallels run through their theoretical works.

Kandinsky observed that “painting has two weapons at her disposal: 1) colour, 2) form”. He goes on to note that there is an “essential connection between colour and form”.

An analogous delineation of elements can be found in Laban’s notions of effort and shape. Effort – qualities of dynamic energy – give expressive color to bodily actions. Shape – the imaginary vapor trails traced by moving limbs on the space around the body – give dance its form.

Similarly, there is an essential connection between effort and shape, for as Warren Lamb writes, “We cannot move in making an Effort without an accompanying movement of shaping.”

In painting, both color and shape are fixed in time and limited to a two-dimensional canvas surface. In dancing, effort and shape are constantly changing, appearing and disappearing as the dancer moves through three-dimensional space. In motion capture recording, the dancer disappears but the dance itself becomes visible, leaving a tracery of lines that look as if the dancer has been scribbling on empty space itself.

Nevertheless, Laban observes that this scribble, “can be divided into sections which resemble the Arabic ciphers: 1 2 3”. The forms in dance are produced by the limbs of the body and governed by their anatomical structure. According to Laban, this restricts dance forms to simple shapes from which “innumerable combinations are made”.

In the forthcoming Tetra seminar in March, Cate Deicher and I draw upon Laban’s artistic background for source material to stimulate movement invention and the exploration of shape. Register by March 1 for the early registration discount.