We Probably Know There's Something Wrong

(I feel like most of us want to say “no” when asked this question)

Is there such a thing as bad dancing?

I feel like most of us want to say “no” when asked that question (and it is a real question I’m asking, for the record- let the record show).

But in reality, moving our bodies in such an unnatural and cureless way wouldn't be something that is such an inveterated goal (and sometimes an unregenerate  achievement to reach) if we all could do it.

I think that most of us who've grown up inculcated in the more classical, critical concepts of technique, and what we think it means, and how we define it… can easily see someone on stage who we feel does not represent that upper echelon of the active hierarchy in an instant, and make a detailed list of exactly what we feel they are doing wrong.

In every way, we probably also know that there's something wrong with that.

That looking at another human form without knowing the elements that went into their personal Lego set- and judging them for a set of circumstances they might have put equivalent amounts of work in as someone who is lauded at the top of the raked stage- IS all sorts of adjectives… but none of them have to do with moving life, society, and humanity forward.

They all chain us to a zaftig step backwards- sifting through unsown seeds and creating a caste that we secretly (and likely unintentionally) have been conditioned into taking accidental pleasure in.

If we notice someone who has a worse arch in their foot than us? We feel a tiny boost of something inside of ourselves that has been pushed downward by the constrictive corset of classical arts since we were too young to understand what having our ribs crushed consciously could really feel like.

But the problem (though far from just one) is that we can’t see the multiple pieces that go into the final draft on stage.

We don’t know if someone had to leave dance for a few years because of a personal family tragedy.

We don’t know if someone had a learning disability and their dance educator didn’t speak a language that “clicked” until they could self educate at a later age.

We don’t know if their mother struggled to pay the bills and had to clean the bathroom at their regional studio, not being able to afford extra private lessons or personal training sessions to help them overcome components of their anatomy that were the ‘anatomy of the fall’ they fell into in this world.

We don’t know if their skeleton literally just doesn’t bend that way.

I get exhausted sometimes by the dance training industry and its marketing memes and modems that mean to make us feel as if “we could just master some specific stretching technique” or some form of micro muscle movement, that we would magically be able to do The Splits like all of our peers, when… perhaps we were born into a body that is never going to move that way unless we break it by doing so.

(And even then it doesn’t always work.)

During the pandemic, I became devoted to trying to increase my flexibility and heighten the height of my extensions in ballet.

I was consumed with deep diving into nearly every strategic stretching strategy and strength-based concept that had been invented in the last century.

But do you know truly ended up happening?

I ended up herniating my back so badly for the final time (after a lifetime of doing so whenever anyone pushed my leg higher in air)- that it could not be remedied by injections, or physical therapy, or rest… and 6 months later, I had what was the first spine surgery of the 7 or 8 I’ve since had (not all on the same area, of course).

I know that there is always going to be a standard.

If we meet most of those in the world of dance and ask, “Is there such thing as bad dancing?”, they (and we) will always have an answer.

And I know that answer will continue to change as we continue to push the envelope- pushing more and more devoted, creative souls away from the art form, because the hyper athleticism that held the artist of a Margot Fontaine on high, would now reject her wholeheartedly because the more we scream for excellence in the name of progress, the more we dilute the specificity of each style into something that is now equal part gymnastics, Olympian levels of athleticism, Circus contortion, and so much more.

(Yes, this is a shit ton of run-on sentences… but so is what we’ve made of dance.)

I am challenging myself to post “choreography catharsis sessions” where I let myself braindump in the same way that I do my stream of consciousness writing- a physical diary entry that I fight to not let myself pick apart, or perfect, or do more than a couple of times knowing that it will create an OCD loop that leaves me injured and empty.

But I also know that, in doing so more and more, I am willingly allowing myself to see myself as less and less.

To post what some (many) are going to view sometimes as: bad dancing.

But sometimes-good and sometimes-bad and sometimes ‘just neutral’ dance sessions allow even the demonic voice inside of myself (let alone anyone else that I love out there) to mollify the system that molds us into something far more sinister than we ever need to be.

The only way to fight back about the ways that excellence can actually lessen us…

Or the right for somebody born into the “wrong” skeleton to still be part of defining movement…

Or for anybody to allow every body to be part of redefining how different parts of us can move different ones of us…

Or how willing we all continue to be to literally (literally) break ourselves for something that should build us up

=

Is to show up exactly as we are.

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