Friday, March 20, 2009

thoughts on dancing together

Tonight, in the company of the lovely Emily, I went to see Smuin Ballet's 2009 Choreography Showcase. The performance was interesting for various reasons (more on that later), but Em and I started talking about dancing in the car, and now my brain is stuck on the thoughts we batted around.

When you're dancing with someone, and the dance is going well, it's at once the most pared down and the most textured, layered, and vulnerable kind of conversation that you can have. It's a physical thrill to crack yourself open and communicate everything inside to another person without having to confine any of it to the solid hallways of letters and words. You don't have to love them, or even like them, but for the space of a dance, you're stepping in each other, and it's a weird, vast kind of intimacy.

***
And, for some silhouetted, steamy goodness: The Mysterious Explorations of Jasper Morello is pretty much wonderful.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You are right. There's always competition and silly, petty s*** going on in companies, yet the dance always comes together on the stage. I call it the magic of the theater. You could be under-rehearsed, yet the theater always saves you. *sigh*

Anonymous said...

Yup, indeed - even with all the backstage drama and power playing, at the end of the day, you've got a show to do, and you can't afford to sell your fellow actors out too much. Now if we could adopt a similar across the board dynamic in writing workshops, that would be even more awesome.