Contemporary Dance as Discourse of Resistance
Contemporary Dance as Discourse of Resistance
When I say contemporary dance, what comes to your mind? If you practice some form of dance, you will most likely think of a genre with specific movements that draw from different genres and try to deconstruct those movements by combining techniques. You may also think of some jazz influences and a lot of floor work. If you are not a dance geek, you will probably think of that weird performance you once saw in which some people were dancing naked on the floor. And to be honest, that is fair. Contemporary dance language and codes are a blur to most people. As an extremely mixed style, it is easy to get confused by its symbols. Its variety doesn’t help in setting a clear interpretative frame that spectators can make sense of when watching a performance. So let me try to shed some light for you by taking the perspective of contemporary art as being a possible discourse of resistance. Let’s try to think together about how the content and the way that content is presented can convey a form of resistance and can be a strong asset in contesting a social reality or a situation of injustice and giving a voice to minority groups. This way, next time you see those naked people on the floor, you might get a clearer idea of what exactly it is that you are looking at.
What is that again?
Voyeurism: Although the concept has been used in different fields of studies and, thus, gained diverse connotations, I am using here the term as defined by the Cambridge Dictionary.
“The activity of getting pleasure from secretly watching other people in sexual situations or, more generally, from watching other people’s private lives.”
Dance is, already in a broad sense, a direct confrontation with the body. The performer on stage presents themself only as a dancing body. The spectator doesn’t hear their voice or hear their innermost thoughts. The focus is on the movements that a person executes with the physical attributes they possess. In contemporary dance, that confrontation goes even further because the dancer is the character itself. Indeed, in movies, for example, it’s okay to have the voyeuristic pleasure of picking on someone’s life and watch that person actively. That is because we don’t necessarily have a strong association between actor – character (although some exceptions could be argued here.) But with dancers, that free, easy and attentive observation is somewhat harder. Ballet as a genre still protects us from the shame of spying on someone by creating a barrier through highly conventionalized movements and, usually, a clear narrative that requires characters.
What is that again?
Voyeurism: Although the concept has been used in different fields of studies and, thus, gained diverse connotation, I am using here the term as defined by the Cambridge Dictionary.
“The activity of getting pleasure from secretly watching other people in sexual situations or, more generally, from watching other people’s private lives.”
We are, face to face, confronted with vulnerability. We are staring at a body that is not protected by the frame of fiction.
However, contemporary dance focuses on the more symbolic representation, on conveying feelings or featuring a concept instead of a story (by the way, that is probably why we sometimes can’t make sense of what is happening on stage – there is no action or event per se, it’s just a highly abstract representation of an abstract idea). This means that we can’t construct a fictional idea of the dancer in front of us. We see them as they are, as a person exposing themselves on a stage. We are, face to face, confronted with vulnerability. We are staring at a body that is not protected by the frame of fiction. And that’s hard to truly look at. Thus, the first tool of resistance is confronting the spectator with the difficulty of having to look at a person, at a body, and preventing them to make sense of what is external to the scene. They don’t represent anything. Instead, dancers are presenting themselves.
Another powerful tool that the language of dance has in order to create discourses of resistance is the use of different media within one single performance. Their combination appeals to our feelings. Of course, each element in a performance requires our interpretation. But they also instigate a more primordial, involuntary and irrational part of our minds. When we hear the music, while seeing the choreography with the lights guiding our eyes, we are not thinking: “Oh, I am so curious to see what will happen next in this story.” Instead, we feel. And to entice a certain feeling, various techniques are at the disposal of the practitioners. If, for instance, the music and the movements are not in synchrony, if they form a dissonant pair, this will give us the impression that something is wrong. If the lighting starts to blink and confuse us, and the colours on stage tend towards red tones, it will entice a state of alert on us. If the performers start dancing in saccade movements that show a body in difficulty or pain, it will make us feel apprehensive for them. All these elements combined might trigger uneasiness, discomfort, fear, agony… And we are obliged to sit and feel whatever is that we are feeling, be it pleasant or unpleasant.
When we see a dancer on stage, it is difficult not to empathize to some extent with that body, even if it is suffering. It’s the principle of inner mimicry that John Martin explains in his book The Dance in Theory (2004) as a process of sympathetic response to other’s motor experiences. He argues that before any interpretation on our part, we go through this mostly unconscious process of experience. Only then, we will be able to bring it to our rational minds and construct something out of it. In other words, first, we have to sympathize with the dancer’s movements, begin to feel. Only then, we can assume a reason for those moments, a goal behind each step.
PAUSE
Before you continue, take a small break from this reading. Watch this short clip and let’s think about it.
How did you feel? Can you name some emotions or thoughts that went through your head while watching the video? I felt touched. I thought of the connection with one’s body and intimacy. I felt sadness with touches of gracious anger. I tilted my head in moving moments, and held my arms as if I was giving myself a hug. What did you feel? What did you think about while watching it? How did your own body respond to the dancer’s movements?
It is not only the fact that we can sympathize with bodies that are somewhat different than ours that give power of resistance to contemporary dance. The very fact that some dancers can go on stage can already be controversial. When we speak of the dance industry, we are talking of a highly white-dominated industry, we are thinking of majoritarian, slim, athletic bodies. And when someone who deviates from that norm goes on stage, and we, as a spectator, notice that this body is different than the normative rule, it becomes a form of resistance. When we are forced to confront that dancer who is different, going through suffering or joy, feeling and sympathizing and we are stuck in our chairs, forced to be confronted with those emotions, it becomes a form of resistance.
It is important to point out that this sympathy created through performance can go two ways. It can create a connection or it can trigger reluctance. No matter how good the performance is, spectators understand it with their own biased frames of the world. That is exactly why a body can’t be neutral. The interpretative frames that guide us through the social world are not left behind when we enter a theatre. We carry them with us wherever we go. Thus, a female body on stage will be read differently than a male body. But let’s not enter the discussion of female dancers covering their breasts on stage while males go wild. Let’s move on, shall we?
To give a recent example of dance as a form of resistance, we could think of the project Back2Back, a series of videos made by young people in commemoration of KetiKoti². Videos such as UNCHAINED or SILENCE reflect on the past to think about the complex future. They use dance as a way to think about silence and freedom, try to escalate their way to the top or else surrender. Dance proves itself to be a powerful tool to fight, to reflect, to resist. By deciding to show their moving bodies, they resist because they don’t let themselves be forgotten.
Let’s be clear that not all contemporary dance is resistance. Some revolves around other goals and concepts. What I am trying to say here is that the genre has great potential power for resistance. And that it has been used by different artists to move away from more conventionalized genres, to find their voice in this style. It has become a field of exploration and controversy. Not because people dance naked on stage, but because they dared to force us to watch it, because they confronted us not with a pleasant narrative but with the hardship that is letting ourselves feel. And what can be more defiant than being vulnerable enough to feel?
