from “Agua” by Pina Bausch

Steve Hassan said recently in a conversation, “The meaning of communication is the response it elicits.”  Yesterday when I was teaching an improvisation class at Boston University, I demonstrated a movement twice.  The first time, I performed it “empty” without giving it any dynamics or bodily feeling.  The second time, I did the same movement, but waited for an impulse to arise in my body before moving.  Then I had them to do the same process, and asked them how they experienced the difference.  One young woman said that it was “emotional.”  I encouraged her to think of it more as “full,” rather than having a specific emotional color.  At the same time, I acknowledged that the emotional feeling could be there for the dancer as they inhabited the movement, but if their performance became to full of their own emotion, there was less room for the audience to have their own experience.

That got me thinking again about movement and expression and what response I want to elicit from my dancing communication.  What I really want is to ignite a bodily response.  I want them to be moved – bodily, sensually.  To be delighted.  To breathe deeper, to feel awakened, engaged.  Looking back over the decades of watching performance, those are the moments that I remember.  Watching “Agua,” or “Stomp” or Kazuo Ohno, or RIDE, and most recently, irresistibly, Crystal Pite’s Dark Matters,  I remember moving in my seat, having to remember to breathe, bodily feelings like waves rollicking through my body, or a deep, tender stillness. I also remember as a young dancer how important it felt to show my feelings in dance, and how long it took to navigate into deeper waters.  Steeping is a process.

I am reading Sherry Turkel’s Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other.  Her observations on the disembodying effects of technology, obsessive texting and digital life in general are troubling.  On the other hand, teaching at B.U. this week, I am heartened by students’ willingness to dive into the body, to try anything, to attend, to engage and to play.  My theme for this week  (and this life) is how to feel our own inner, sensual landscape, and how to feel its connection to the landscapes around us – even the rushing, noisy urban ones – maybe especially those.  They are game, they are brave and I love them for it.  So I am finding the meaning of my communication this week:  beautiful dances, wild surprises and heat in the room and the body.