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Rachel Howard on How to Approach Dance


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Ari added a link in Sunday, 17 April's Links thread to a San Francisco Chronicle article by Rachel Howard advising people how to approach dance in general, and the "Bay Area Celebrates National Dance Week" programming in particular.

The quote that Ari posted part of,

Don't be afraid to say you're bored -- or thrilled. If you went to a bad movie, you'd complain about why you didn't like it. You wouldn't decide that you don't like movies. But often with dance, viewers stop trusting their guts. They've been told this is art. Something must be wrong with them, not with the dance itself. It's healthy to realize no one has the final say on whether a work is good, but it's folly to deny how you really felt about the dance in the moment. Be honest with yourself about your emotional response to the dancing, and you'll be all the more moved when you find that performance that makes you say, this is for me.

made me think of carbro's comment on the "Advice to Giselle, Ask Amy thread that,

In the late '80s I took my brother to NYCB. The first ballet was The Four Temperaments. Well into the Sanguinic Variation, his discouraged whisper: "I don't understand the story." huh.gif I don't think he's seen any ballet since.

When people go to the movies, they often stick with their genre and don't go to "chick flicks," "blow 'em ups," "movies I have to read," "Films," [fill in the blank]. I think it would be helpful if people felt comfortable articulating what they might want to see -- "a contemporary story," "no sappy music," etc. -- and agree with Rachel Howard that most feel too intimidated to do so.

Like with film, people have been known to expand their taste when they find the "hook" into what they like.

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I missed seeing the original link -- many thanks for pointing it up here. I agree absolutely wiht Rachel Howard about this. The "art" card cows people, which is a shame.

You comments at the end about 4T's made me smile. Several years ago I took a relative who'd seen very little dance to a performance at Pacific Northwest Ballet. I don't remember the opening ballet, but the middle was Who Cares, and they closed with 4 T's. He was a big fidgety during the first two works, and then dead still during the Hindemith. His comment at the end was "now I get it."

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