Philosophical debate

[bethlakshmi]

I'm not usually this esoteric, but what the heck. mermaidlady's concerns about her own dancing mojo, have me begging the question - "what is a good dancer?", and the corallary "what makes a GREAT dancer". Theoretically a great dancer is a good dancer plus more of same? But what is same?

I think it ends at an individual choice. A good dancer is someone you like watching - she/he is good for you, the audience. Collectively, I guess, a good dancer is someone most people like watching. A great dancer is a dancer even more (than most) people like watching, and/or someone most people like watching even more than they like "good" dancers? But that's awfully subjective, non?

In a particular style, there may be specific things you must do to be good. For Indian that would include:
- ability to hit beat with movement
- ability to do hand gestures in a precise, codified way
- ability to control hands, arms, feet, legs, head, and eyes simultaneously and continuously
- a certain breadth and depth of familiarity with the core practice exercises
- a certain precise posture


Some of these can be abstracted:
- able to hit movements on cue
- isolation of some flavor
- control of speed and sharpness of movement
- flexibility
- posture
- control of all the limbs

Those are technical aspects. But there's a reason we don't make dancing robots. There's something more, something soulful about dance, something that even the most precise dancer must bring to the table to be better than "average". Different dance forms use different aspects of it. Indian is slightly abstracted - not a true one-on-one with the audience. Middle Eastern is more flirtateous - some directed connection. Burlesque is even more direct - right there, reaching out and touching the audience, and pulling them into your world. But, even couples dance has some flavor - though not audience directed - of just thoroughly enjoying the dance.

There's also aspects that don't immediately hit you - use of costume. A dancer using her costume well (tribal vs. cabaret costuming comes to mind) will be more striking than one who does not. Sally Rand comes to mind.

Similarly - whether this is dancer or choreographer depends on structure of performance - the ability to make a dance that suits the music it is set to. There has to be some connection there. It can be as direct as a number in a musical - where the dancers act out the words - or as ephemeral as a drum solo - where the dancer simply moves joyfully and precisely to the drum beats... but it's there. A slithery dance to a drum solo would be wierd.

The Abhinaya Darpana verse often danced as a slokum calls out these aspects:
- aangikum - the body
- vaachikum - the words/the song
- aaharyum - the costuming
- satrikum - the soul

But it's not always and equally balanced set of criteria. And it's probably only one way of judging what is a "good" dance or dancer.

What are your thoughts on this? I know I'm not the only dance geek out there who's spent hours after a show pondering why she liked best the dancers she liked best...

Comments

[dreda.livejournal.com]

Wow, what a profoundly philosophical question - seriously! It's so subjective, and it falls into that pile of rhetorical chewtoys like the nature of talent and the definition of art. If nothing else, it will chase itself around my brain for days and that will be fun.

But to pluck a semi-concrete answer out of the air, there is a distinct feeling of the dancer being present in her body, of breathing the dance from the neck up as well as the neck down. And it's about tapping into the full sense of the music - not just beats, not just rhythm, not just correctness, but the full multisensory impact. It's about being fluent in the language of music as well as dance, even if the music is implicit.

It's the same difference, for me, as you find between a technically brilliant musician and a musically brilliant musician - you get the sense that there's somebody at home.

[lakshmi-amman.livejournal.com]

As Anne says - "no doing taxes from the neck up". :)

[ladysprite.livejournal.com]

It's a fascinating question, and not one I'm sure I'll ever fully figure out the answer to.

Parts of what make a good dancer are simple - awareness of the beat and an ability to move in time to it, knowledge of what the dance is supposed to look like and ability to perform those specific movements, fluency in the body language of dance and knowing how to properly suit the style of motion to the style of music and dance.

A lot of it, though, is harder to define - I think it comes down to charisma and empathy, though those are small and imprecise words to hold a big concept. Dance is as much expression as it is motion, and if the dancer can't convey that aspect of the performance, the most precise movements in the world won't have much power to captivate the audience. There's a level of dancing at which one can be utterly immersed in the dance itself, and at the same time expressing and projecting that immersion to the viewers - I *think* that's what can make a dance, or a dancer, great.

Ask me tomorrow, though, and I might have a different answer. :)

[siderea]

1)

Sprezzatura and mesura, are two additional things which leap to mind.

Sprezzatura is an effortlessness in virtuosity, that makes virtuosity look "artless", casual, unstudied, "natural".

Mesura -- literally "measure" or "measured-ness". It can refer to a lot of things in a performance, but one particularly useful place I apply it is in the harmionious/paradoxical tension between simultaneous full-hearted, head-long, throw-your-back-into-it commited passion and total, iron-willed, high-precision self-control.

2) Theoretically a great dancer is a good dancer plus more of same?

I don't know that that's true. If you haven't read Understanding Comics, esp. chapter 7, "The Six Steps", I strongly recommend you to do so. I have found it an enormously illuminating paradigm as a performer/entertainer, as to "where do I go next; what is the next level I can take it to?"

[suba-al-hadid.livejournal.com]

I was thinking the peer-pressure thing myself. It really does color your perception of who is or isn't a good dancer. But you're also right about soul, or even attitude. One of the things that struck me about Omar was that attitude is a really big part of his charm. Apart from his incredible technical proficiency of course.

[lakshmi-amman.livejournal.com]

That's funny - I guess I'm my own individual. Many are the times where I fail to grok why someone is so great, even when they are famous. It's usually about that "soul" thing - if they don't have it, I'm not buying. But I'll watch my peers go ga-ga and be completely confused.

note about sloka

[chio-chan.livejournal.com]

the last one is sattVikam (not r). and i think for "aaharyam" - better use "a" because "yu" i would read as "u"...