The passion a dance gives you is something you can hardly put into words. However, we will try to express this pleasant emotion using “Dancing is…” which is a collection of articles that present the feelings of different people towards the dance.
Part one includes professional dancers’ thoughts-dance performers, teachers and choreographers.
“Dancing is a perfect example for art, for something that brings you joy and a feeling of fullness because it combines form and content. The heart of the dance is the one and only place where form and content are so close together that our pure desire to combine them would be enough to do that. It is an articulation of reality; our direct representation of reality-no languages, no logic, no culture… Dancing in its primitiveness is so self-filled that you need no context or convention. When you dance, the code itself, the gesture itself is a complete expression, it is the complete reality of that art. Since it is the primitive sense of the reality (it is not a coincidence that these two conceptions combine when it comes to dancing) it is an absolutely indispensable way to work with our energy and be happy.”
“The dance is something really nice. It is to be there and to move. Even when you are standing still, you are moving. It is your heart that jumps inside of you and sings so you are excited and happy but yet calm and it is because you are alive, otherwise you won’t be able to move… I mean you would be dead after all. And besides that, you are feeling good because to move is the best thing to do. I mean, just something GOOD, that is the only word. So if you move because you feel the urge to do it and you can’t just ignore it, then you dance. Because you want to, because you feel like it, because you breathe. Dancing comes from inside out and not from the outside… the scientists understand these sublime stuff, according to me it is something very simple. Try to explain what love is! Well dancing is love. Try to explain that. Everything else is nonsense. It is your soul that is important. Without a soul there is no dance. Add to a movement a little bit of a soul and voila-dance!”
“I’ve always found dancing exciting, even long before I got to know what a technique, class, rhythm and pace are… When I was little everything was an inspiration to imitate the energy that leads the dancers to dance and makes it impossible for the audience not to look at them (no matter that in my case the audience was just my mom in the living room on a Sunday evening). Dancing was an opportunity too- to reveal yourself in front of others and at the same time put a mask so they don’t judge you. An opportunity to experiment, explore, demonstrate, be free or limited by your own fears. It is an opportunity to overcome yourself. It satisfies many needs. For me personally, it is often the ego satisfaction- everyone is watching you, they want you, they examine you and this way they create their own energy field that you can experience only “there”-on stage, in the darkness or under the lights. You need to step in the dance naked and pure and only then it lets you in a whole new world. I don’t know whether the emotion runs the dance or the dance rules the emotion, but they are bond together. While I was trying different styles I realized that technique is as important to the dance as the words in order to talk, but if there is no filling you can’t write a bestseller-just a chalga song’s lyrics or a poor rap. Everyone would understand it, but they would never feel the thrill or shed a tear, they would never make the connection and share the special energy with the performer. Dancing is not some stairway to glory and greatness, but opening and closing, falling and flying.”
“Dancing has always made me feel like a toddler-brave and inefficient with very bad coordination. The dance is infinite and wild. You can never be good enough. This feeling helps me in the moments when I think I am “sooo good”. This is probably because I can’t dance at all. I guess the ones that are good feel different.”
„Creativity is a secret and private process that remains closed for the connoisseur. We cannot see how Michelangelo was creating. We can only imagine the actual process of the great artists and sculptors; but when it comes to dancing we are given the unique opportunity to watch the creation of a masterpiece right in front of our eyes. I do think that dancing is a spiritual condition that is set in us as a primitive emotional expression… like a smile-just a gesture of joy or some other emotional state. Of course what I am talking about is the primitive existing inside of our soul and not about the great trained ballet virtuosos, for example. Dance has been developing a lot through the years in thousands dusty dance studios around the world, but I think that before it got tangled with the studios and the opera, it came from within ourselves. Using its therapeutic feature, dance becomes a drug for the dancers, it cures. We all know it and that is why we dance.”
“For me dancing is an inspiration, feeling, rhythm and a lifestyle. Once you learn to communicate through dancing, you learn a lot more about movement as a movement in all its forms; you get a different type of esthetics and a perception of space.”
“Dancing is like air to me. Without it there is no life. Once you start dancing it is a lifelong thing. Your body and soul would suffer without it. Dancing is love!”
Idea Jeni Petrova, 26.05.2015
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