Bump and Grind: Dances of the Youth

"Fear and restraint of buttocks power, especially the dancing buttocks is a fundamental component in Christianity's dialectic on the corporeal capacity for sin. In an essentialist fashion the early church differentiated itself from 'pagan' practice by its radical stance regarding the (dancing) body." - Brenda Dixon Gottschild

"Perhaps in common with many other women, my butt memories take me into the larger cultural arena where women are ogled, commodified, and categorized according to degree and volume of 'tits and ass.' How can I explain, or explain away, that backward but primal female desire to attract that, scurrilous though it may seem from a position of critical distance, at a certain tender adolescent age seems to celebrate and affirm one's entry into the mysteries of womanhood? It is a craving to be included in the culture's contexted narrative of femininity. . . ." - Brenda Dixon Gottschild

As a recent chaperon of a dance held for teenagers, I realized I'm officially old. But in addition to any personal nostalgia and realizations, there has been debate and discussion about the "quality" of the dancing with teenagers. Various adults find the dancing offensive and inappropriate for teens. My first reaction is: "Well I was that kid that had to be pulled apart at dances and at that point had yet to even have a first kiss." It has never made sense the presumption that risque dancing is a "gateway drug" to more inappropriate sexual behavior. It certainly wasn't true for me. My experience was that those few hours of risque behavior were in a way carnivalesque. Dances allowed me to express and release the first feelings and urges of sexuality. These dances allowed me to explore, in a safe space, urges that I had little to no experience acting out. It gave me a moment to purge pent up sexual energy and explore the burgeoning womanhood into which I was blossoming. These dances were moments wherein I could express a side of myself that was inappropriate to express at every other setting in my life. It also gave me a power of a fuller knowledge of self and voice in terms of how I chose to dance and with whom I chose to dance. For me, my upbringing as a southern belle dictated that I did not speak unless spoken to. I did not assert myself too forcefully but instead acted with grace and decorum. Until these moments of powerful expression at social teen dances, I had not experienced the courage and power to either accept, reject, or influence the interest of males. It was deemed inappropriate no matter what my hormones were telling me at that age.

But that was my own personal experience. I would not expect or demand that my experience be the rule. So beyond my personal experience, I had curiosities about how to talk about this phenomena of adults objecting to and feeling uncomfortable about the dances of young teens. My first thought is that the phenomena is part of some sort of cultural cosmic order in which teens push the limits and adults establish where that limit should be. Is this sort of issue a sort of social yin and yang in which adults and teens keep each other in some sort of balance by pushing against each other? By objecting do adults simply make the actions more appealing to youth? Where is an appropriate boundary and how do you articulate or define that boundary for kids? Are children challenging us as adults to define and articulate our own sexual boundaries to then expect them to abide by the same?

In asking myself why I found this particular topic so fascinating, I realized that it was part of my research interests around dance, religion, and society. Much of what I hear as the issue of concern from adults is that teens are expressing publicly with their bodies ideas, urges, and curiosities around their bodies as sexual objects. But what I think is important to understand is that our ideas about sex and ways of expressing one's sexuality are culturally relative. Each individual's way of expressing themselves with their bodies (sexually or otherwise) is dependent one's culture, personal experiences, personal preferences, and family upbringing. I think there are some adults that are under the assumption that their expectations of propriety and how one expresses themselves are static, clear, and universal. I think some may be unaware that even one's expectations of how one expresses their body differs from household to household, from culture to culture, from country to country. The expectation of appropriate dance may vary from a conservative Muslim Moroccan-American household, to a catholic Latin-American household, to a Protestant French-American household.

What I find valuable about this dialogue on teen dance is the potential to learn about various points of view, various thoughts in terms of the causes and effects of risque teen dance, and various connections to each individual's personal values around dance, the body, and sexuality. In this discussion what I think is most important is to realize that each person's value and expectation is culturally specific and not necessarily the belief of others. So should we tell teens to avoid provocative dancing as a way to avoid unwarranted advances, or should we tell teens to practice taking ownership and responsibility for their corporeal voice, values, and expression? I don't know. But I find the discussion to be a valuable one.

Embodiment in Screendance?

             For the past several weeks I’ve been debating whether or not to pursue a certificate in Screendance. While the I love the process of making a screendance, I’ve had some doubts—mainly centered around the idea of embodiment. For me as a dancer, embodiment of my art form is very important to me.

            In deciding if and what type of graduate degree I wanted, I went back and forth between a PhD and an MFA. I love writing about dance. I love dance theory and dance history, but I eventually decided that I wanted to get my MFA. The crux of my decision had to do with embodiment. I realized that embodiment of my art and the theory of my art was still very important to me.

            Now, I don’t mean to imply that those with PhDs in dance are disembodied or that they don’t value embodiment. Because that is not the case. However, when I looked at the course loads for PhD programs and MFA programs—there were more opportunities for the practice and embodiment of the art in MFA programs. And so, here I am—an MFA candidate at the University of Utah.

            Which brings me back to my original dilemma—where is the embodiment in the making of a screendance? Certainly, in the shooting stage of a dance video, the camera is apt to a partner, as is the person shooting the film. That part of the dance film is certainly embodied—especially by the cameraman. Unfortunately, though, the shoot takes much, much less time than the edit.

            And the edit is where my main contention lies. In the last dance video I made, I spent about two hours shooting and then almost twelve hours editing. One night I even sat in my chair without getting up (literally!) for five hours. All for a two minute video dance.

            I guess that’s where I’m having trouble. If I sit for almost twelve hours manipulating images on a screen, how am I furthering my goal of embodiment? I love making screendance, but am I selling out? Or is it that the goal of the screendance is to make the audience feel as if they have just embodied the dance screen? Or, to make the audience want to move?

            What are your thoughts?

The Perils and Power of Improvisation

As an expert or enthusiast in any topic, it may be difficult to fully get a sense of just how much knowledge you may have gained along the way from novice status to experienced participant. I've been working with students recently with movement improvisation. In working with the group, I've been confounded on just how difficult the process has been in facilitating improvisation experiences. Improvisation has been such a staple in my creative process for so long that I feel I have lost touch with what it felt like in the beginning, to feel the challenge that improvisation first presented for me.

In helping the students discover the power of improvisation, I've rediscovered that power for myself. Working with this group has brought me an empathy for the students in how potentially challenging the world of improvisation can be. I can remember the feeling of discomfort. As a young woman who was coming out of a culture of "universal" rights and wrongs when it came to being expressive with the body, it was a huge challenge for me. Coming out of a culture of ballet, beauty pageants, and dance competitions, improvisation was a huge and challenging breakthrough to the world of individual voice and choice. It was a discovery a place where experience was valued over product, where risk and exploration were valued over safety and protocol.

Working with this group has reminded me of the power inherent in improvisation. As I facilitated the class I found myself speaking aloud the virtues gained from improvisation, partly to spark an interest in the students, partly to remind myself. I mentioned the power of moving and being in your body with no apologies or judgment, with no cultural or social expectation being imposed. Improvisation is also a practice in exploratory rebellion, a rebellion that moves one closer to their unique stylistic identity and movement or conceptual fingerprint. No improvisation session is ever the same. And each individual experiences their own process of discovering movement ideas or conceptual ideas differently.

I spoke about how improvisation is about pushing the borders of the rules established in the improvisation score. Take for example, my direction given to do something that feels both important, impulsive, true, and uncomfortable or unusual for you as a mover. A student then asked me what would happen if that for her meant leaving the room. I explained to her that if I did not dictate the class remaining in the room, she was totally entitled to leave the room as long as she has a clear intention or curiosity she has committed to exploring. I hoped to provide a space in facilitating these improvisation scores that provided a safe space for the group to explore movement they dare not do in any other circumstance. I hoped to provide a space where their bodies were safe to physicalize whatever it was their bodies chose to purge or express. I hope to provide a space where it was okay to step outside of the boundaries and expectations of their other classes.

The fear of stepping outside of the bounds of conformity and expectation through improvisation is a place of power for me. It is a skill necessary for the creative ingenuity and innovation on which our country prides itself. It is a rebellion against our culture of testing, competition, productivity, and benchmarks wherein a person is free to be exactly what they are in every moment of the movement. The world of improvisation is not however a place of indulgent sensation with no critical motivation or processing. Instead it is a research process that requires people to create their own "scientific method." It is a rejection of the idea of being trained to conform to someone else's movement or someone else's expectation of productivity. It is a recuperation from the high stakes that our students often face with the pressures of school these days. But whether you are a student or an adult, I think it is a recuperation from what we currently value as a country. It is a rejection of thinking en masse, of idolizing the famous or powerful, of self-loathing, of looking to others to validate us. Instead, improvisation allows a person to think for themselves in every moment, to celebrate and to appreciate their own personal expressivity, to value who they are just as the are, and to look inside ourselves to discover our unique worth.

I would like to thank the students I teach. They have reminded me of just how powerful and yet foreign improvisation can be to the novice. The challenge that improvisation presents only confirms for me the value it provides in the lives of those who experience it.

Psychology and LMA

 

            Psychology and Human Behavior

Recently, I’ve been taking a psychology class on how human behavior affects the environment and how the environment affects human behavior. I’m learning many different approaches or models for studying the exact same situation or person. So far, I’ve found each of them lacking the kind of depth and breadth found in the LMA system. In LMA, we try to take into account the many different layers of context—both for the environment and for the person or persons we are studying.

The best compromise I’ve been able to come is a combination of ecological psychology, cognitive psychology, and behavioral psychology. I feel that all three aspects would be important to gaining a full picture of the information I am gathering and that without one of those layers, I would be losing something. For instance, while an individual’s perception of himself or herself is very valuable information (cognitive), when that individual is placed in an actual situation, they may not act congruently with how they believe they will act (behavioral).

The Grandmother and the Punk: A Surprising Story

 For instance, I remember my grandmother always complained about the “punks” she saw at the mall, on the street and in the grocery store. She would tell me that if she ever ran into one, she would give him or her a piece of her mind. However, one year, I went to prom with my friend Tony, a “punk” with a bright red mohawk. My parents asked that he come to my house to meet them before the big night.

I’m sure you can imagine my anticipation and worry over him meeting my grandmother. He drove me home from school one day and when we got to my house, my grandmother was sitting out on the porch, waiting.  I remember cringing and imagining the scene that would follow.

            No sooner had he parked than Tony was out of the car, up the porch steps and introducing himself to her. By the time I reached them, they were already having a friendly conversation. And, up until she died, my grandmother frequently asked how my friend with the red hair was doing.

            So, even though my grandmother expressed her own words great animosity toward anyone “punk,” she loved Tony, who was and is the epitome of the punk subculture. She considered him a great friend after talking with him for five minutes on our front porch. In this situation the cognitive and behavioral results were incongruent. The ways my grandmother claimed she would act (rude and unfriendly) and how she did actually behave (polite and friendly) were in direct opposition to one another. If we only looked at how she claimed she would act, we would say that my grandmother does not like the punk subculture and she would not tolerate any member of said subculture. If we only looked at how she behaved, we would say that my grandmother was friendly and perhaps even liked the punk subculture. Which, then, is true?

           What Do We Take from This?

            The answer is that both interpretations are true. The context, which has not been looked at yet, provides some answers as to why. People never think or behave inside a vacuum. In my grandmother’s case, she was raised in a very strict background, where putting yourself on display was considered tantamount to a crisis. When my grandmother was young, my great-grandmother slapped her across the face for wearing lipstick. Later in life, when my own mother wore nail polish my grandmother made a snide remark about my mother “wanting attention.”

            Considering that background, it is not hard to see why a subculture, like the punk subculture, which strides with a purpose away from cultural norms would ride on the nerves of my grandmother who saw such behavior as negative. Naturally, my grandmother would think her way of behaving toward someone of the punk subculture would be negative because it espouses something that goes directly against her own value system.

            However, when she actually met Tony, the “punk,” she behaved very differently. Again, the missing piece here is the context. First, she was sitting on my parent’s porch listening to the birds and watching the plant life move in the breeze—something that set her naturally at ease. Then, when Tony approached, he went to her directly and as they talked he seemed to genuinely care about the things she said. While this was unexpected for her, she followed the precedent he set and was friendly in return. They ended up developing a natural rapport and mutual respect for one another quickly. In this instance, the environment was one my grandmother was comfortable in and she was greeted in a friendly manner.

            When we put all three of these together, we get a very full picture of my grandmother—how she thinks about herself, how she behaves and how certain contexts affect her. Each has important information to tell about her, and by leaving one out, we would leave out important information.

            The LMA Perspective

            Individuals are not one-dimensional, or even two-dimensional. Individuals are multi-dimensional and so the decision-making process they use is complex and unique to each of them.

            This brings me to a paper by Ed Groff that dealt with a similar topic. The paper began with several “scenarios” like this:

A man is running, he is leaning slightly forward, reaching in large strides, arms bent at the elbow but swinging freely at the shoulders. His brow is furrowed and his face is tense. He is glistening with sweat and does not veer from his forward pathway.

This man is:

1. returning home from an evening at the opera
2. late for his bus
3. being chased by a large dog
4. on his way to the grocery store
5. crossing the street (Groff, 1989, p. 3)

I picked “B.” So obvious, I thought to myself at the time. I was shocked when the answer was any or none of the above. Groff makes the point that without the full context of the situation it is impossible to tell why the individual might be acting this way. It is a not a one to one ratio—that A always equals B—as many “body language” theories espouse. The context of the person being observed is important, just as important as what they are doing.

So, to fully analyze and understand a situation, it is necessary to understand the person or people being analyzed, what their behavior actually is, and the environment they are being analyzed in. And that, is what I believe the LMA system is all about.

Groff, Ed. (1989). Procedings from Eurolab Conference March 1989: Creative Perception: Movement and the Meaning Making Process. Berlin: Ed Groff.