Duke University - Chanticleer Yearbook (Durham, NC)

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Writing about dance is one of the hardest assignments anyone could hope for: writers may think in print, but dancers think in mo- tion. The essence of movement gets lost in the syntax, and the writer can only suggest im- ages that will force the reader ' s imagination to recreate the dance. The result is frustration; the effort, in many cases, futile. So, novelists write theory, artists write manifestoes, dan- cers write autobiographies. I ' m faced with the criticism that dance is merely narcissism made performing art. It ' s painfully true. I would like to believe otherwise, but I ' m afraid self-love is implicit in the creative process — if it ' s not applause you ' re competiting for, its gallery prizes or National Book Awards or any smaller species of pats-on-the-back. Why does anyone create but to receive love? And yet there must be more to it than that, for all artists are not love- starved egomaniacs. Though some might argue that dance re- quires self-obsession, it precludes self- indulgence. Dance is a discipline as well as an art form. More rigorous than all the demands of of diet and exercise is the psychological discipline of belief in self — the confidence that, as a choreographer, one has something important to say, and that, as a performer, one ' s means of expression is worthy of so- meone else ' s designs. Priorities are delicately arranged, but the dance must always come first. Edwin Denby realized that, A fine dancer who believes in dancing more than in himself is a wonderful thing. This discipline of emotion is perhaps hardest of all. Self-pity manifests itself in new ways: adhering to old patterns of movement, breaking the diet, cutting a class. These are only temporary setbacks in along line of what must be called temporary advances. For children, movement is spontaneous. They jump for joy, they shake with laughter. As we grow, movement becomes more calculated, backed by a conscious design. Dance as an art form contains elements of each: composition and improvisation, choreography and performance. How is movement created? Perhaps more than any other art, dance involves every aspect of the personality in creation: the con- scious mind develops the intent as far as it may go in ideas, the subconscious mind creates the movement, and the body executes

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it. Dance unites the parts of the person segmented by our society, from Eighteenth- century rationalism right down to Twentieth- century specialization. Though coordination has come to mean physical aptitude, its mean- ing reaches further to the synchronization of mind and body. The body improvises movement, the mind improves it. This union of body and mind is, of all the arts, peculiar to dance. That which has always been labelled mindless in the arts has been renamed in the Twentieth century — the act of creation arises from the sub- conscious mind, guided or directed by con- scious principles or intent. The choreo- grapher may conceive of a theme — big, sustained, stationary movement or small, quick steps in a pattern — then the production of the movement ultimately rests with the body ' s experiments, the invention of rhythm in motion. The expressive virtue of any dancing is its rhythm, and its rhythm is felt only in continui- ty, Denby said. To dance is to surrender your movement to a higher rhythm, a rhythm which controls. This is the maxim which pro- duces effortlessness in dancers. If the spring of a leap is on the first beat and the landing is timed for the fourth, the dancer soars through the second and third, reluctant to come down. The rhythm, however complex, is non- verbal, subconscious. It is the driving rhythm, at the heart of one ' s nervous system, that provides the direct con- nection between the subconscious mind and the physical movement. When two dancers agree on a rhythm, they dance together. With rhythm as the impetus for movement, the dancer ceases to think in ideas or words and dwells on the throbbing rhythmic current. Accusations of stupidity are levelled im- mediately: dance requires no mind, dance is anti-intellectual. As for the former (made only by non-dancers, not because dancers haven ' t the insight, but because those who do not dance fail to understand the relationship of mind to body), the best contradiction is found in the fact that the best dancers are indeed the brightest. Once a rhythm has overtaken the central nervous system, manifesting itself in movement, the brain goes to work to im- prove the movement as art. To add a pause here, a burst of energy there, to look up, to raise the leg higher before bringing it down are all functions of the mind as critic of the body as performer. The mind perfects the rhythm which the body has assi milated. The mindless dancer can only last as long as someone else is thinking for her. The smart dancer is one who brings all that she has learned of life to dancing: ultimately, she is the more interesting, the more complex to watch. With the advent of modern dance came the introduction of a wide variety of