Blog 19- Dorothy

What are these dances trying to tell us? This is the question that constantly came to the rational part of my analytical mind while watching the performances on Sunday. Modern dance often makes use of symbolic gestures culled from different cultures and time periods and those repetitive motions seem as if they must be trying to tell me something.

The first piece, Esplanade, began with physical forms that reminded me of 17^th or 18^th century court dancing, and the musical accompaniment, Bach, certainly helped to set that stage. With this sort of formal context in place, the reoccurring transgressive breaks, a single dancer running around a formal tableau, the physically wrenching shudders of a dancer on the floor, etc., were striking.

The running, however, brings up a question that had reoccurring strains throughout each piece. What is dance? If running is dance, than is it dance to walk, is it dance to sit up and look chagrined (as in Straight Duet)? To paraphrase John Blacking, I think dance in these modern contexts can be defined as “humanly organized movement,” and feel most engaged by the movements that are not necessarily traditional in the canon of pre-modern Western dance.

The second piece, The Right of Summer, suffered slightly from its dated “experimental” musical accompaniment and poor costuming choices, but included some of my personal favorite physical movements. Women convulsing on the floor, epileptic mayhem and then the constant tacit play of the symbolic red petals.

The earlier three pieces seemed to contrast starkly with the crowd pleasing, culture sampling Nascimento Novo. Calling on different elements of Brasilian heritage, Spanish dance, African dance and featuring the dancers in contemporary street wear inspired costumes, there was a populist feel to this final dance. The performers united across color lines and gender lines to dance together and show an relentlessly upbeat “spirit of dance,” bringing the point home strongly with their gymnastic shout-out to Hoosier pride.