Final Draft of Dance Paper

The Language of Dance

            Dance is an art form that is full of awe; however, it’s different from other forms of awe. Dance may seem like a bit of a foreign thing to some people. “One of the basic problems is that understanding dance depends largely upon one’s experience with dance” (Ellfeldt 10). The complexities of dance are certainly less known by people than a different art form, like music. The vast majority of the human population has experienced some form of music at some point of their lives, and it’s something that is very important to our culture, unlike dance, which is a less understood or known art form. Because this form of art is more common, people know more about it, and are able to find more awe when they see something amazing done with music. To illustrate this point, I will use an example: when you listen to a concert pianist perform, you hear the way that the pianist blends the notes together and creates pleasing harmonies. In some cases, as the listener, you find the skill and practice that the pianist put into learning the piano to be incredible. While finding awe in a performance is vital, what’s more important is what that awe inspires people to do. Being impressed by the beauty and power of the piano can lead members of the audience to want to learn more about playing the piano, or about the mechanics of music. Awe inspires a desire to learn, and to become capable of being as talented or skilled as one can be. And as a learner becomes more proficient in their desired skill, in this case the piano, they gain a deeper understanding of the skills and technicality of the piano, and the work involved in becoming proficient at it. When this happens, they reach a state of amazement, where they marvel at their own abilities, and find meaning in the notes that they are now able to blend together and produce to inspire others to learn more about music. Awe in art is cyclical, and its effects branch out and affect a large number of people at a time. Furthermore, music is an art form that is able to completely rely on itself. Music is often paired with words, to add meaning to the lyrical beauty of it, but it can be just as awe-inspiring, or some would say even more awe-inspiring, on its own.

            Now that I’ve talked about music, I’m sure you’re wondering how this relates to dance. Allow me to explain. The awe that is found in dance functions much the same as it does in music. More often than not, an audience is left breathless by the beauty of a well-performed dance. There is a moment of collective pause between the final note and step of the dance, and the audience jumping to their feet in applause, where they take a second to absorb and appreciate what they just saw. “Because humans are multisensory, they act and watch or feel more often than they verbalize and listen. The dance medium often comes into play when there is a lack of verbal expression” (Hanna 4). Dance has an awe inherent in it that speaks to everybody. It has the power to inspire others to express themselves with their bodies, and explore the movements that their bodies are capable of making, without relying on the structure of words.  And just like music, once you delve into the world of dance and learn more of its complexities and learn more about the beauty that rests in each moment, you’re able to find more awe in dance as an art form and mode of expression. However, dance, more often than not, relies on music to bring it fully to life. Dance is a powerful art, because while it relies on music to give it more life and a beat to move to, it doesn’t rely on music for meaning.  Like Hanna says, dance is an art that relies on other mediums to add to the layers of it, but these other mediums do not define, they enrich by speaking to the human spirit on multiple levels. Another “affective function of dance is to provide an immediate and sensuous experience. The appeal of the processual, sequentially unfolding dance form, with its arresting, seductive essence, is made through all or some of the sensory modalities” (Hanna 26). An audience that experiences dance is able to have an experience that helps them to connect with that sensuality and arresting essence that speaks to the parts of us that are most human. “Dance is human thought and behavior performed by the human body for human purposes” (Hanna 5). The ability to awe and inspire an audience that the dancer is performing for requires proper thoughts and behaviors from within the dancer. Without the necessary emotions and thoughts from within the dancer, there isn’t as much awe and power in the performance.

I’ve talked about music, and I’ve talked about dance, but I haven’t yet talked about how one really understands dance. “Some people believe they have an intuitive understanding of dance. Lay people, social scientists, and even dancers often use the term dance with the vague and uncritical connotations of ordinary speech” (Hanna 17). After having danced for almost twenty years, I have an intuitive understanding of dance, but due to the sheer scope and breadth of dance, it’s nearly impossible for me to articulate that understanding into a definition. Because of this difficulty, most people are unaware of the complexity of dance. What most don’t understand about dance is that it is a language that is just as complex as French or German. It has different levels and aspects to it; they’re just different than those you would find in a spoken language.

“Dance is a whole complex of communication symbols, a vehicle for conceptualization. It may be a paralanguage, a semiotic system, like articulate speech, made up of signifiers that refer to things other than themselves. Substantively information necessary to maintain a society’s or group’s cultural patterns, to help it attain its goals, to adapt to its environment, to become integrated, or to change may be communicated. Dance may support or refute through repetition, augmentation, or illustration, linguistic, paralinguistic, or other nonverbal communicative modes. Obviously dance may not communicate in the same way to everyone” (Hanna 26).

Dance as a language is complex and layered. There are hundreds of different styles of dance, each different style acting like a different dialect of the language that is dance. When you understand the different ways that dance functions and works as a language, you can understand the minute changes to the different and varied styles of dance. What do language and the ability to communicate with others mean? Certainly conveying ideas and communicating effectively with others is an important role of language. As I have already established, dance is not a verbal language. It is an emotional language that draws upon the collective human experience, to speak to the emotions and feelings residing in each person; or speaking to their soul, in a way. So it is by “drawing upon everyday life and special occasions, [which] choreographers and dancers transform and frame values, beliefs, and expressions of them through dancing. In this way we also introduce new ways of thinking and feeling” (Hanna 3). The ability to make the most ordinary, everyday experiences into something that rings with the power of the sublime is a gift that is not found in everybody, but this gift is capable of instilling awe in everybody that sees it. “In turn, the dances we do, see, and read or hear about often haunt us” (Hanna 3). The more powerful the choreography and emotion that is put into a dance, the more people it touches. Like music, you don’t have to be fluent in the language to fully appreciate the idea or emotion that it is conveying, although being fluent helps increase your understanding, the power that dance has is the ability to convey meaning without requiring perfect understanding, or even familiarity, of the language from the audience.

There are many different parts surrounding the art form of dance as a whole. However, to understand how dance functions as a language and the powerful appeal that it holds, it is important to first have an understanding of how dance is defined. “So varied are the forms of dance…that it is difficult to offer a single definition or description that encompasses all forms” (Kraus 3).  However, after extensive analysis of the different forms and motivations behind these forms of dance, Kraus comes to this definition of dance:

“Dance is an art performed by individuals or groups of human beings, existing in time and space, in which the human body is the instrument and movement is the medium. The movement is stylized, and the entire dance work is characterized by form and structure. Dance is commonly performed to musical or other rhythmic accompaniment, and has as a primary purpose the expression of inner feelings and emotions, although it is often performed for social, ritual, entertainment, or other purposes” (Kraus 13).

Dance is a difficult thing to define, if only because it’s such a fluid and complicated form of expression. The definition that Kraus gives is the most accurate that I have come across in my research, albeit a bit more clinical than some. However, my point doesn’t lie in the definition; it lies in the truth that whether or not we, as individuals, are able to express our emotions through the movement of our body, “there is an innate, creative impulse toward expressive movement in each of us human beings” (Taylor 5). It is because of this creative impulse that resides in each of us as human beings, that the language of dance is able to instill awe in audience and dancers alike. Because of this innate sense of creativity, there are humans among the population who are musicians, artists, or photographers. The desire to capture the awe that can be found in our daily lives is what inspires dancers and other artists alike to push themselves to greater heights, and in the case of dance, to develop the language of dancing further to allow a wider audience of people to understand the language that their bodies are speaking. Choreographers also seek out this inspiration and look for ways to be inspired by their daily lives, so that they can channel it into the steps they combine to make a piece complete.

            Mary Wigman states that “The dance is a living language which speaks of man—an artistic message soaring above the ground of reality in order to speak, on a higher level, in images and allegories of man’s innermost emotions and need for communication” (10). Certainly a large part of the language of the dance rests in the movement used. Movement is what gives meaning and significance to the gestures of dance. “When the emotion of the dancing man frees the impulse to make visible his yet invisible images, then it is through bodily movement that these images manifest themselves in their first stages” (Wigman 10). The movements that the dancers employ to convey meaning is deepened by the emotion and understanding that the dancer has of their own body. “Dance is a conceptual[ly] natural language with intrinsic and extrinsic meanings, a system of physical movements, and interrelated rules guiding performance in different social situations” (Hanna 5). In order for the movement of the dancer to be effective in conveying meaning beyond their own self, the dancer must be able to understand what his or her body can do, and what the dance means to them intrinsically. While body movement alone is not what makes dance a complete language, “…it is the elemental and incontestable basis without which there would be no dance” (Wigman 10). In my research on the languages of dance, I found that expert Judith Lynn Hanna adds to the evidence that movement is essential to the art form of dance by saying that “Meaning in dance is thus found internally, in the stylistic and structural manipulation of the elements of space, rhythm, and dynamics, and the human body’s physical control. In the embodied meaning of dance, one aspect of dance points to another rather than to what exists beyond the dance performance” (Hanna 24). The power to find meaning in the movements that a dancer makes is a skill that is developed as both a viewer of dance, and a dancer. It requires that a person is in tune with their inner thoughts and feelings.

            While dance most strongly impacts an audience and the dancer most strongly internally, dance also has the power to influence and enhance outside subjects as well. In a TED talk that he gave in Brussels, November 2011, John Bohannon discusses the impact that dance can have on other subjects. In his revolutionary speech, he uses dancers to illustrate his point, instead of a PowerPoint. His claim is that if dancers replace PowerPoint, it will be easier to convey difficult topics, and increase understanding in the audience. All this coming from the man who started the “Dance Your PhD” contest, which has allowed PhD students the opportunity to explore the creative side of their years-long work, and attempt to use dance as a way to explain a difficult scientific topic. By condensing the complexity of their thesis into a few minutes of dancing, it forces them to simplify something complicated into precise movements that the human body can make. After all, “humans do not communicate by words alone” (Hanna 4). As an audience, it’s easier to understand the movements of the body than it is to understand pages of academic jargon. When you’re trying to convey a thought or particular emotion through dance, “The way it is performed, the reason for the performance, as well as where and when it is performed are all important…” (Ellfeldt 12). In the case of what Bohannon is discussing, it’s important that he finds dancers who are capable of conveying the thoughts that he wants them to through the use of their bodies. “Dance is a physical instrument or symbol for feeling and/or thought and is sometimes a more effective medium than verbal language in revealing needs and desire or masking true intent” (Hanna 4). When dance is used to convey meaning instead of verbal language, there is often more feeling that can be expressed with dance than with words. When words are used to convey meaning, it’s very easy to get a point across, but when you convey that same meaning by using dance, there is a much more layered effect. In addition to the meaning that you are trying to convey, it is also easier to transmit a lot of emotion through the movements of a dancer, and that emotion will add richness to the original meaning. 

            While it’s important for the audience to feel a sense of awe in a performance, that awe wouldn’t be as powerful if it wasn’t impacted by the emotion that the dancers bring to the choreography. A pianist who doesn’t put emotion into a piece of music doesn’t lessen the awe that an audience can feel, because some of the pieces that they play inspire awe due to the sheer technical skill that is required to play the piece. It’s different for dancers. If a dancer doesn’t put emotion into a performance, it falls flat. When a dancer puts their passion for the dance into their movements and their love and emotion into it, their leaps are higher, their spins are faster, and their ability to move is bigger. At a minimum, “Dance is movement, organized and patterned to serve its particular “dance” purpose” (Ellfeldt 12). But at its best, dance can stir emotion into even the most stoic of hearts. In recent years, a television program has emerged that exhibits the awe that can be found in dance. This program, So You Think You Can Dance, pulls dancers from all over the country and allows them to work with critically acclaimed choreographers. The beauty of this show is not in the people that they pull onto the show, or even in the choreographers themselves; the beauty lies in what they are able to create together. In addition to creating many award-winning dance numbers, this show also introduces its viewers to many different and varied forms of dance. The hosts of the show will often provide additional information into the specific style of dance that is going to be performed, allowing the audience to gain additional information into the dance, to help deepen their understanding and experience of the performance.

            In the world of music, there are hundreds of different styles of music, and every listener of music has their favorite or preferred style of music. It’s the same with dance; it’s all about what you perceive dance to be. “To those who know and enjoy classical ballet, this is dance to them… to those who know dance as the intricate tapping of feet, tap dance is dance to them. Dance is what you have known it to be. Dance is what you expect it to be. And anything that does not equate with your expectations just is not dance” (Ellfeldt 10). Dance is the same as music in that some people really only enjoy watching ballet, while for other people, hip hop is the only style of dance that they enjoy. What one enjoys watching is vital, however, because if an audience can find enjoyment on an aesthetic level, they’ll be able to experience awe on an emotional level because they are open enough to the specific style of dance to allow it to move them personally. “Audiences and other members of society draw upon dance as metaphor. Written language about politics, economics, technology, and other social relations evokes the feelings and images of dance in order to clarify non[-]dance spheres of human life” (Hanna 3). Everything in life can be turned into a dance; it just depends on how creative a dancer is able to be, and how open and receptive an audience is to their creativity. After all, that is exactly what the “Dance Your PhD” contest is about. Pushing people to turn everyday topics of study and conversation into movements that the human body can make to convey meaning without the use of words.