Wednesday, May 2, 2012

dance as an act of survival

To be a mature dance artist is a particular act of survival. It requires both a hardening of political resolve and a softening into the complex flux of physicality. There is a richness of expression, personal and technical, that lives within the mature dancer's body—textural detail and virtuosic nuance that emerges from the experiential. There are emotions and truths housed in this physicality that dancing can access, offering possibilities beyond the misogynist glossary of pubescent nymph or lusty seductress. Even in our globally "enlightened" times, dancers remain hung between tutu and g-string by the mass perceptions that objectify women, deny the intelligence of the body and continue to worship at the altar of the young and air-brushed.