So is it the seeking of perfection, the self-absorption, or the dance itself that invokes madness?
#Musicality in dance meaning professional#
What’s more, professional dance’s all-consuming nature demands physical, social, and psychological sacrifices. When dance is more than a hobby, the ecstatic freedom begins to be eaten up by the intense restriction of aesthetics: technique, musicality. While the prospect of artistic perfection is intoxicating, its pursuit can paradoxically spell loss of creative freedom.
To be obsessed with dance is to be obsessed with yourself.
Since a dancer’s body is at once brush, paint, canvas, and artist, self-involvement is practically a prerequisite. Dance as self-absorption that bloats beyond the bounds of sense and reason. This dual perceived competition, with another and within herself, leads her to seek a level of artistic perfection that ultimately can only end in self-destruction. Throughout the film, our main character is haunted by increasingly intense hallucinations involving her rival/understudy, a talented up-and-coming dancer who happens to bear a passing resemblance to her. Near the beginning of the film, the prima ballerina who’s being forced into an early retirement walks into traffic, a not-so-subtle message that without your art, there is nothing. “erely associating with ‘the world of ballet’ … can prove fatal.” As for the protagonist of The Red Shoes, McLean notes, “Vicky is doomed merely because she is a ballerina.”īlack Swan grows the roots of this artistic annihilation theme even deeper. McLean writes in Dying Swans and Madmen: Ballet, the Body, and Narrative Cinema. “In some films … the desire ‘to dance’ itself is toxic,” Adrienne L. At the end of The Red Shoes, our female protagonist jumps in front of a train, showing us that to dance is to forget the world, to be swallowed whole. Their obsession with dance consumes them, and in forsaking all other aspects of life, they destroy themselves. The films The Red Shoes and Black Swan feature leads who are driven to demise by seeking perfection in the art of ballet.
History and culture offer a treasure trove of attempts to interpret dance’s unique power over our bodies and minds. Once the music ends, I emerge from a trance to find I have no idea how I got to where I am in the room or what movements got me here. Coming from the restrictive, highly choreographed world of ballet, improv feels as freeing as skipping naked, newly feral, through a lush, flower-soaked field. I quiet my over-anxious brain and allow the music to guide my body in carving out a path through space. This being an improv dance class, my body is mine to do with whatever I wish. Arms reach and retract, spine twists and tilts, legs stretch and sweep across the vast, golden wood floor. As the drummer beats his rhythm-the heels of his palms resounding against stretched animal hide-I move.
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