CONFLUENCES 5 HIGH CULTURE, MASS CULTURE, URBAN CULTURE- Whose Dance?
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CONFLUENCES 5 HIGH CULTURE, MASS CULTURE, URBAN CULTURE- Whose Dance? Proceedings of the Fifth South African Dance Conference Hosted by the UCT School of Dance Director – Gerard Samuel University of Cape Town 16 – 19 July 2008 Conference Convenor: Sharon Friedman Conference Committee: Sharon Friedman Proceedings edited by: Sharon Friedman Dr Eduard Greyling Natasha Lock Natasha Lock CD Rom compiled by: Eduard Greyling Catherine Martine CD Rom design: Elizabeth Triegaardt Gerard Samuel Assoc Prof Elizabeth Triegaardt Published and distributed by: UCT School of Dance Woolsack Drive ROSEBANK CAPE TOWN This collection of papers has been compiled from electronic copies provided by individual authors. In order to achieve a volume speedily available to the conference, any editing and proof reading has been done in the interest of standardised formatting. Individual Contributions: © 2008 by individual contributors. Collection as a whole: © 2008 UCT School of Dance. ISBN: 978-0-7992-2343-9 1 Part I – Keynote Speakers 2 Brenda Dixon Gottschild, RESEARCHING PERFORMANCE – THE (BLACK) DANCING BODY AS A MEASURE OF CULTURE Guided by the premise that dance is a barometer of society, Prof. Dixon Gottschild measures the pulse of contemporary American cultural practice. By means of a slide lecture augmented with demonstrations on her own dancing body, she examines the pervasive Africanist presence in American culture and the sociopolitical implications of its invisibility. With dance as the focus and race the parameter, she reveals Africanisms in modern and post-modern dance and American ballet. 3 Researching Performance – The (Black) Dancing Body as a Measure of Culture ©«GreetingLine», 2008 (author permission required for reproduction of any part of this essay) [THIS MS. IS BASED ON THE AUTHOR’S ORAL PRESENTATION] Acknowledging that we stand on the shoulders of our ancestors, I pour this libation and dedicate this presentation to two of my aesthetic ancestors—the two “Big B’s,” for whom the year 2004 was their centennial celebration and who are equals in greatness and in changing the climate of our cultural landscape from hot to cool: George Balanchine and William “Count” Basie. And I pour this additional libation to honor the living legend of Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela, and the memory of Stephen Biko and the army of freedom fighters who made the ultimate sacrifice that allows me to stand here today in post-apartheid South Africa. Achè! ==================== “I’m trying to get close—make contact—with your warmth body, your aura body, your kirlean energy field body, your infra-red body. .” Those lines are spoken to me by my husband, Hellmut Gottschild, in a movement theater work we created together titled Tongue Smell Color. As a German and an African American, we explore nationality, memory, guilt, gender, and race, sometimes zeroing in on the white male obsession with the black female body. In a scene titled “Touch-Skin Memories,” as he approaches and pursues me, Hellmut says, and let me repeat it for you: “I’m trying to get close—make contact---with your warmth body, your aura body,” and so on. I tell him he is trespassing, that those astral bodies he’s addressing are only a dancer’s imagery. He takes offense, saying that these bodies are real, exist, and can be sensed—that we all have many bodies that aren’t static but in constant flux. This statement sends me into a tailspin of body memories—black body memories, black female body memories, black enslaved female body memories and, as though in a trance, I slowly repeat the word “memories, memories, memories” until he cuts me off. Yes, indeed: memories! The body remembers, the body re-members. The body speaks. The body tells us what is valued in the culture. Bodies are mirrors that absorb, remember and reflect society’s politics, art, religion, aesthetics, hopes, fears, strengths, failings—both the officially sanctioned versions and the sub-rosa, closeted taboos. Bodies are barometers measuring the pulse of society. Let me begin by giving you a context. Probably all of you know that there are many kinds, many forms of dance and that dance is as old as humankind and has served many functions in different societies and in different eras. For example, in African and African American cultures—I use the term “Africanist” to embrace these two—so, in Africanist cultures, dance is an integral part of religious practice, and the deities present themselves to the community through the dancing bodies of the religious devotee, who dances when and as the spirit moves her. On the other hand, in many Protestant Christian sects, the dancing body is a “no-no” in religious practice and is regarded as the vehicle that leads to evil, rather than enlightenment. This is one example of what it means for us to think about dance as “a measure of culture” that points out what is valued or repressed in a given society. 4 Researching Performance – The (Black) Dancing Body as a Measure of Culture ©«GreetingLine», 2008 (author permission required for reproduction of any part of this essay) For the moment let us also think about dance as an embodied language. In a culture like ours that privileges words over movement—and, thus, reinforces the dichotomy between mind and body—there often exists a tension between the language of words and the language of movement. Often those people concerned with the language of words give short shrift to the language of movement. But the language of movement speaks to us a profoundly as words, although through different means and layers of experience. Now, inside each verbal language there are dialects, jargons, neologisms, and so on. How does a language grow and change? Frequently by taking on elements of other languages. For example, in traveling back and forth between the United States and Germany, I find that I hear more and more American English words in German speech. Well, the same thing happens in movement, too. Like the spoken word, dance comes in many languages and they, too, receive impulses and infusions from other languages. A good example—and one of the focal points in my research—is the borrowing of Africanisms in so-called “white” dance forms. And, believe me, dance has been enriched by these imports—not corrupted. Now, here’s where we enter the realm of the politics of dance and culture: Europeanist body languages and Africanist body languages have been speaking with each other ever since they first met and clashed over four centuries ago. But they are different languages! To illustrate this point, here is a quote from my book, Digging the Africanist Presence in American Performance – Dance and Other Contexts: In traditional European dance aesthetics, the torso must be held upright for correct, classic form; the erect spine is the center—the hierarchical ruler—from which all movement is generated. It functions as a single unit. The straight, uninflected torso indicates elegance or royalty and acts as the absolute monarch, dominating the dancing body. This vertically aligned spine is the first principle of Europeanist dance, with arm and leg movements emanating from it and returning to it. The ballet canon is organized around this center. In fact, this structural principle is a microcosm of the post-Renaissance, colonialist world view. Like the straight, centered spine of its dancing body, Europe posited itself as the center of the world, with everything else controlled and defined by it. Africanist dance idioms show a democratic equality of body parts. The spine is just one of many possible movement centers; it rarely remains static. The Africanist dancing body is polycentric: One part of the body is played against another, and movements may simultaneously originate from more than one focal point (the head and the pelvis, for example). It is also polyrhythmic (different body parts moving to two or more rhythms simultaneously), and privileges flexible, bent-legged postures that reaffirm contact with the earth (sometimes called a “get-down” stance). The component and auxiliary parts of the torso—shoulders, chest, rib cage, waist, pelvis—can be independently moved or articulated in different directions (forward, backward, sideward, or in circles) and in different rhythms. As assessed by Africanist aesthetic criteria, the Europeanist dancing body is rigid, aloof, cold, and one dimensional. By Europeanist standards, the Africanist dancing body is vulgar, comic, uncontrolled, undisciplined, and, most of all, promiscuous.i Clearly, there is a “translation” problem going on here! Nevertheless, and despite different lexicons, the reason for dancing is like the reason for dreaming. Through dance or dreams we access thoughts, ideas, and metaphors that cannot be perceived in any 5 Researching Performance – The (Black) Dancing Body as a Measure of Culture ©«GreetingLine», 2008 (author permission required for reproduction of any part of this essay) other way. In fact, dance is a literature that is illegible in literal translation. Dance is dance, and words are words. Dancers know this to be true. And who am I in all this, you might ask. I am a performing researcher who researches performance. The body is my medium, and I recognize that the body—the dancing body, the black dancing body—thinks, speaks, writes it signature across world history, whether we know it or not, whether we recognize it or not. There’s a language of the body and a language of the word, and I simply do not intend to give the word the last word! The two are equal players—just as Africanist culture, Europeanist culture, and other world cultures are equals—none better than the other, just different. Writing is my choreography for the pageii—a dance in black and white interpolated in the medium of hard copy.