This video from “The Atlantic” shows a Pas de Deux from the visual perspective of the dancers. However, without experiencing other senses such as embodied movement, position in space, and the physical presence of the partner, etc, it is impossible for the viewer to substantially feel the dance. As a complete novice to dancing ballet (a few classes only), I find the video is jarring to my senses – as the introduction warns. It gives me no real feeling of what it is like to dance. I would expect the viewer’s sensual response to the video would depend significantly on their own experience of ballet dancing. It would be interesting to hear from professional and student dancers what they experience when they watch this video. Tell me how it makes you feel and what your level of dance experience is. Also, what do you think of the argument I have made?
Failure of the visual in dance – a dancer’s perspective
May 30, 2012 by mikebarnes50
5 Responses
Leave a Reply
Participation
Pages
Site Updates:
-
Recent Posts
Twitter Updates
Error: Twitter did not respond. Please wait a few minutes and refresh this page.
-
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Categories
- Anthropology (52)
- Ballet (58)
- Ballet Classes (7)
- Blogs (12)
- Body conditioning (4)
- Classical Ballet (27)
- Culture (19)
- Dance (46)
- Dancer's diary (1)
- Guest Post (9)
- Motivation (17)
- Queensland Ballet (1)
- Questions for my readers (36)
- Questions from contributors (3)
- Research (8)
- The Australian Ballet (5)
Archives
- May 2013 (1)
- April 2013 (1)
- March 2013 (1)
- January 2013 (4)
- December 2012 (3)
- November 2012 (1)
- October 2012 (2)
- September 2012 (3)
- August 2012 (1)
- July 2012 (2)
- June 2012 (1)
- May 2012 (3)
- April 2012 (3)
- March 2012 (3)
- February 2012 (6)
- January 2012 (5)
- December 2011 (8)
- November 2011 (11)
- October 2011 (14)
- September 2011 (13)
That was beautiful! As a pro dance photo/videographer and wannabe dancer who has taken more hip hop classes than ballet, i found this video very well done, not jarring at all, and with a refreshing perspective and point of view. When reading the description of the video, before watching it, I thought there was going to a camera mounted on a dancers head—to get the dancers POV completely. That might be interesting too but the way this was done was really nice.
It would have worked better with a camera mounted on the dancer’s head since then there may have been some appreciation of a feeling of movement.
Thanks for sharing this, Mike! I never would have found this on my own – this is a very neat idea and quite creative. However, I, too, found the video jarring but mostly because the footage keeps shifting perspectives. Most of it is not from the viewpoint of the dancer, rather directly in front of, as if the audience were right on the floor.
At any rate, this is not what I experience when I rehearse or especially when I perform. What I see when I’m dancing, particularly with the “parallel world” I enter as the adrenaline fills my body, is not anything that is meant to be “seen” as if in a video. The darkness penetrated by bright lights, the occasional sight an audience member’s face in a split-second: these are registered and yet barely there in my mind.
I’m concentrating and yet enjoying the moment – time always moves faster in this parallel world and usually a thought enters my mind sometime at the middle of a piece, “Wow, I’m already here?” or “Now the fast section. My throat is so dry; how am I going to do this? Do it!” but it lasts only a fraction of a second. I’m in the moment. Awareness of my body, the music, the scent of the theater in the air, and whatever I see – they are al integrated into the entire demi-monde experience. It’s seamless, unlike the quick cuts made by the camera in this video.
I think what causes the jarring and fragmented sense in the video is that when dancing, you are moving, and what you see travels with you and hence it is not a surprising part of the experience. Here however, as a viewer, you are still, while the camera tries to do the moving for you. It’s a tough order!
So by that token, I agree with you that the video doesn’t really give a real sense of what it is like to feel the dance. However, as Paul points out in his comment, it’s a wonderful experiment and I am so glad that people are interested in ballet and want to distill the essence of a piece through cameras.
A well thought out comment Susan. I really understand when you say “What I see when I’m dancing… is not anything that is meant to be “seen” as if in a video.” Representation of another person’s experience is always problematic, yet somehow we need to express their perspectives to better understand each other. So there is nothing sinister with attempts at representation – if there was, anthropology would be an “outlawed” practice. However, representation does need to have some regard for notions of accuracy (avoiding the word authenticity). Trying to do this with dancers or any group where notions of embodiment are involved is very hard, as I discovered on reading about “embodiment” (see Thomas Csordas on my bibliography page).
There are also comments to this post in the following LinkedIn groups:
“Dance Writers”
http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers=&discussionID=119659897&gid=3112094&commentID=82749446&trk=view_disc&ut=0_QEfhVPb-DBg1
“Contact Improvisation Dance”
http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers=&discussionID=119659921&gid=123508&commentID=82706742&trk=view_disc&ut=13ZBdf5fk2DRg1