Recently, I've been thinking about the value or non-value of dance as an art form in our culture. Dance as an art form tends to be the least recognized and valued, and as a result the least supported. Dancers are considered less intelligent and dance itself is considered to be something that does not have merit and is an intellectual void.
In a conversation with a friend about my experience in the dance program at Virginia Commonwealth University, and in my experiences applying for a masters program, she was stunned that getting a BFA or an MFA in dance might be difficult and require more than just flinging ourselves around all day—that we actually write papers, create work, and have to think and justify what we do.
Why is this specifically? Is it because our culture society sprang largely from a protestant religion that believed that the body was something to be hidden and that movement (other than for daily activities) lead to damnation? (I have an image of a poster from the late 1800s that describes all of the horrible things that happen if someone participates in dance, including divorce, adultery, and damnation.)
Or does it have more to do with the value of cognitive intelligence which is placed far above experiential intelligence that comes with the scientific method in our culture?
What do you think?
~RLS
To draw parallels with other arts, painting is also regarded as a soft or easy subject to study in higher education. There is an obsession with right brain left brain thinking that believes there are only polar opposites.
ReplyDeletePerhaps dancing is disadvantaged because it has less of a documented history. Painting can be traced back to caves. Music and literature have been written down for ages in various forms of notation.
Theres also an issue of technique versus the idea behind the artwork. What I mean is that Jackson Pollock couldn't paint as well as Rembrandt but he obviously had more going for him than pure technique. A good dancer isn't necessarily a good choreographer. This distinction is a relatively new distinction in painting and maybe(?) new in dance.
Dance is also something people do for fun that seeks to exist along with modern dance in people's mids. (Dance clubs, etc.) There is a misplaced definition of "high art." It seeks to be exclusive. Maybe we shouldn't be trying to define what art is. Maybe we should just be talking about what is dance.
Maybe people just don't get it.
In my opinion dance is not undervalued as a result of the protestant/puritanical/etc history of our society. This is partially from my own experience of our culture not being particularly puritanical now, and also from the understanding that cultures without that puritanical background that we have also place less importance on dance and movement. I think that you are right in the second suggestion - dance is less valued because it is less about cognitive intelligence and more about physical intelligence. Our society has a substantial preference for viewing our existence in terms of a Cartesian duality/split between mind and body, and as a result, places more emphasis on mind (I _am_ my mind, I _have_ a body, or as my friend put it to me today, a body is "a minivan to take my mind to parties".
ReplyDeleteAlso, I think that Sir Ken Robinson's TED talk is really valuable for thinking about some of these important questions. He attacks the education side more than the arts side, but both are quite valuable and important to think about. He's also hilarious. http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html
While I planned to comment on this blog it looks as though my points have already been made by amazing "com-mentors." I would just like to add that the religious influence on what we think of the body goes back much further than any Purtain or Protestant. It is a tradition out of the Judeo-Christian paradigm comming right out of the exodus of the Jews from Egypt. I highly recommend Leonard Schlain's work to better illuminate the fragile and impressionable nature of the human mind to shifts in belief systems and ritual practices. While he does not have a book directly addressing dance, he is amazing about using his neurosurgeon expertise to speak about the connection between the "oh so holy" sciences and the "mut" arts. I highly recommend his work.
ReplyDeleteI think dance is devalued in our current society because it does not function well within Capitalism. There is nothing to buy or sell, no object, like a painting, or recording, like a track on a CD (remember those!?).
ReplyDeleteI think is also devalued as a result of mysogyny. Dance is still associated with femininity in mainstream, white culture.
Finally, we have a general dislike of the body: it's mysteries, it's inability to be fully controlled, how it fails us, shows our humanity, and disintegration as we age. Dance, as a medium of the body, is always suspect.