Looking Ahead
Embodying Childlike Play in Dance:
How do we use history as well as our own past to reinvigorate others through movement?
There is so much to unpack and explore here. Take a look at "The Event of the Thread" by Ann Hamilton ...
This is where I am headed and where I hope to take you. Lie on your back, look up at the clouds, jump onto a merry-go-round. As my own mind has battled between the left-brain (logical) and right-brain (creative), I thought that the two could not be merged. This concept of non-dualism has changed all of that. In the text, The Alphabet Versus the Goddess, Leonard Shlain shatters so many notions about "The Conflict Between Word and Image." This is an important read for my future iterations. I am obsessed with language but also with movement as a form of expression, as another mode of speech. The battle for me has been feeling like two parts and honestly, unsure of how to create unity. By enacting with those around me and embedding myself in their environments, I have found an extension of myself; I feel like one embodiment. I believe that is the goal here--to locate my center through both stillness (observation) and also by throwing myself in head first, how a child would toss aside all abandon, all fear, and just go for it. There are so many artifacts to explore.
Here are just a few (some just to make you smile and consider play as part of your journey again) ...
Emily Dickinson's "The Child's Faith is New"
The Child’s faith is new –
Whole – like His Principle –
Wide – like the Sunrise
On fresh Eyes –
Never had a Doubt –
Laughs – at a Scruple –
Believes all sham
But Paradise –
Credits the World –
Deems His Dominion
Broadest of Sovereignties –
And Caesar – mean –
In the Comparison –
Baseless Emperor –
Ruler of Nought –
Yet swaying all –
Grown bye and bye
To hold mistaken
His pretty estimates
Of Prickly Things
He gains the skill
Sorrowful – as certain –
Men – to anticipate
Instead of Kings –
AND FINALLY, MY THOUGHTS ON PLAY ...
Selection #1: A Sense of the Sacred
“You remain embedded in the daily activities of life, while transported beyond—accessing unknown realms” (Olsen, 2014, p. 235).
The prompt for the final day of practice brought me immediately back to Juri’s classes during residency and this idea of play as movement in lieu of formal dancing and intricate choreography as the vehicle. Didn’t contemporary dance use gestures in order to move away from the always technical, non-pedestrian influenced movements of dance?
Olsen’s quote above spoke to me and helped with this writing as I remember playing the Cat’s Cradle game as a child. You can work solo or with a partner and all you need is string. Shapes created include the basic cradle, the butterfly, stars, hammocks, etc. If you worked as a pair, the experience was either a successful collaboration or one partner became frustrated with the other’s lack of finesse. This game never took just a few moments. One was always transported somewhere, and often you were transported as a duet.
Why did I find a sense of the sacred here? You can’t get much more simplistic than maneuvering strings between your fingers to create shapes, and yet, you could make these really amazing patterns with just a string and your hands. This carried with me as I am still completely intrigued by the possibilities available in hand, wrist, and finger choreography. We touch through our hands, showing empathy to others or perhaps pushing them away. Sign language is performed through the use of the hands and continues through the body, up to the face, and literally radiates everywhere. The important point is that it really starts with the hands.
When looking forward to a possible thesis idea, I return back to the feet and their role in the Spanish Dance Plague and how that was depicted through art forms, including dance. This is where I began my writings in Module 1. As I considered the dance community and how cellular phones, COVID, etc., have altered the world, I realized that dance has also been impacted, and I would say negatively in many ways. We so often don’t take the time to simply be in a space and to acknowledge not only the space but the others who have gathered with us in that environment. I would like to move from this idea of the feet to the hands where many of us no longer see our own hands due to the device being cradled within them. How do we keep community and play in the dance world? By putting our phones down and reaching out to another human through an extended hand, we as dancers can engage not only with other performers but also with the audience. Thus, we “move the dancer and audience toward each other—they find a common ground when the dance is successful” (Horton Fraleigh, 1996, p. 61).
During the residency, I was reminded how important touch is, how integral it is to engage all the senses when possible. I realized that I have been creating images and moments for others through choreography and writing, but I wasn’t allowing myself to be present, to experience it with them. Touching another person, breathing and feeling their ribs expand and contract, gently laying your fingers on their back, or pulling them in for a full hug create community and “transcend self-limitations” (Horton Fraleigh, 1996, p. 61). There is a quote from Jean-Paul Sartre: “Hell is other people” (Horton Fraleigh, 1996, p. 60). I was feeling so much conflict from others that I stopped reaching out and became uninterested or perhaps fearful of any vulnerability. I shut myself off and found that I could exist there. Honestly, that is not a very rewarding place to find oneself. I want to “experience myself as seen, touched, understood, misunderstood, loved, or despised” (Horton Fraleigh, 1996, p. 58). All of this is certainly superior to numbness.
Maybe I should return to the Cat’s Cradle game and teach some of my dancers the basics. We could turn it into a full choreographic work, creating the shapes and then moving through the string’s negative space. I think it may be time to add a bit of child’s play back into my work.
Selection #2: An Experience in Nature
Within the Zodiac signs, Cancer lies in the water element. Thus, my time at Jacksonville was spent by the ocean waves and the river lapping to and fro at San Marco’s Riverwalk. The ebb and flow is where I find comfort—flooding and receding. Really, a metaphor for life is offered here as sometimes we as humans are so filled, so lit up, and then in the next moment we feel the loss, the hollowing out. We need both of these contrasting elements to live well as we can’t always be so full to bursting.
As someone who has felt rather hollowed out recently, the allowance of seeing others and of being seen was flooding. I find I cry easier now, and I suppose that is the natural recession. This leaves me with questions or as Juri Nael put it: “There will be some unpacking to do” (personal communication, July 18, 2023). I thought the unpacking would scare me as it entails vulnerability, and while I wish I could run back to the ocean just sitting and listening to that ebb and flow, that fulfillment and release, I know that I have to deal in my current environment.
As I reflect on this text, The Place of Dance, and specifically the “Living” section, I take with me this idea of “transformative energies” and “accessing realms beyond personality” (Olsen, 2014, p. 235). Juri Nael’s residency week broke so many barriers for the entire cohort—gender, race, political, etc. Who cared about any of this as we were a community sharing energy, just as the ocean waves transfer their energy to the earth upon crashing. We weaved the creator, the participant, and the viewer (the triadic) into one morphing energy. I am very grateful for this experience and at this moment, feeling blessed for the opportunity to put it into words. Thank you for that. This text has been a lovely exploration!
References
Horton Fraleigh, Sondra. (1996). Dance and the lived body. University of Pittsburgh Press.
Olsen, A. (2014). The Place of dance. Wesleyan University Press.