The other day, Bill (the Dance Department director) subbed for my dance composition class. We were talking about different approaches to choreography, and several interesting questions arose.
Bill asked me how I thought being involved in a technical field influenced my thoughts and actions in dance. This is not the first time this question has come up, and not the first time I had no idea how to answer it. I am a firm believer in the mind as a whole unit - that it is not possible to distinguish someone as "right-brained" or "left-brained", because everyone has their individual strengths, and creativity draws on logic, and vice-versa. Therefore, I know there is a connection between the two seemingly separate parts of my life. It is just not yet apparent to me.
On this topic, Bill mentioned to the class that engineers describe admirable solutions as "elegant". This took a few of the dancers by surprise; I thought it was common implementation of the adjective! I suppose they had never thought of describing technical issues with a word generally reserved to label people. Perhaps this is a clue in my science-arts connection dilemma.........
Our class assignment was to create a triptych. While discussing a fascinating piece one of my classmates had presented, the choreographer seemed frustrated with the responses she was getting. While her movements were very abstract representations of each concept, as she talked us through the piece, it became apparent that every moment had a very strong connections to the three ideas. I was surprised when she said she wanted everyone to know exactly what her triptych was after observing the dance, and thought she had not developed her piece well enough because the audience had their own interpretations. Is it backwards to try and make modern dance literal?
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