The Dance-Language Conflict | The Body as Communication

Movement drives the human experience. The way the body moves is largely affected by its environment and its history. The body is understood by another due to known experience. This mutual understanding of gesture and expression is one of the most powerful arguments for why some might have reason to believe that dance is a language. However, it is important to note that dance is not the pure imitation of human gesture and expression. Rather, dance manipulates gesture in order to create a complex, aesthetic, choreographic experience.

In contemporary dance, mime-like storytelling and gesture choices are frowned upon. It is almost as if the choreographer's goal is to give subtle hints and hope that the audience catches on; to communicate without making it too easy. This results in a wide variety of personal interpretations that describe a single work, driven by each audience member's own experiences. Yet, dance embraces its lack of precise clarity.

Interpreting dance may also assume that the movement in question was clearly choreographed and correctly executed to begin with - performers have no chance to backspace, no universal gesture to signal the words, "wait, I misspoke!" With no time to edit or clarify, movement only continues to get lost in translation. True language does not suffer these losses to the extent that dance does. But do we want dance to be this clear, to take away the opportunity for ambiguous interpretation that makes art so puzzling and thrilling?

The following video is an excerpt from the original presentation of this work. Please note that it is easiest to view in a dark or dimly-lit setting.