DISCOVERING MY PERSONAL AESTHETIC

In the workshop with Lerman, I found in choreographing a solo, the most important and pivotal movement was one where I was balanced on my sitting bones, the back of my wrists resting on my knees. I was fascinated that this movement had found its way into my solo. It was a position which recalled one of my early modern dance classes 40 years earlier, and a rare moment in a dance class when I received positive kinesthetic feedback. The teacher of that class had come around to demonstrate that if we had a good abdominal contraction, when she attempted to pick us up from under our arms, our bodies would remain in position. As she spoke, she put her hands under my arms, and lifted; my body remained in position. This abdominal contraction, characteristic of Graham technique, was something I had not practiced for many years. I loved the dramatic element of Martha Graham’s choreography, the sharply contrasting shapes, and the sensations deep in my gut. I felt those movements helped me express emotional anguish; that my dance was the silent song of my soul. Dancing in such a way took a strong internal focus and helped me find my centered self.

I have found repeatedly when dancing that when my internal focus is strong, it seems to draw the viewer in, despite my lack of technical prowess. The audience in Herman’s class provided feedback that that movement was compelling for them, and subsequently, the trio I worked in chose that movement to incorporate into our group choreography. Perhaps what makes a strong focus compelling is that it allows the viewer to find his or her own story in the particularity of the movement. Dance/movement therapist Lenore Hervey (2000), referencing Kant, Heidegger, and Schopenhauer, said that “art uniquely reveals the universal in the particular” (p. 13). Apparently, my strong internal connection acted as a magnetic force for the audience.

The fact that this movement emerged spontaneously from unconscious sources spoke to its authenticity. I found that movements that connected to memories or which elicited images brought a sense of meaning and coherence to the dance. According to Donald Blu-menfeld-Jones (1997):

A search for meaning ... is a search for experiencing connection with others in our world as well as with our physical and social environment. This connectedness carries with it an experience of wholeness (however temporary' this experience may be).

(p.315)

In another dance with Lerman, we were working with partners in a structure she called “One to Ten”. Each person was to move into a still pose, to which the other person then responded, creating their own pose. This sequence was repeated ten times. After the exercise, my partner noted my tendency to create movements which contrasted with hers. In these positions, she discovered an increased sensation of energy because of the dynamic tension between our contrasting shapes.

In addition to the dramatic contrasts, balance, strong center, and the dynamic tension of a strong internal focus on my kinesthetic sense even while looking outward toward the audience, I also appreciate the playfulness, spontaneity, and present-centeredness I experience when dancing improvisationally. Because my DMT teacher and mentor, Norma Canner, had studied with Barbara Mettler and encouraged her students to as well, I spent two summers learning from Mettler.

Mettler’s first movement structure each time we began was what she called “arrangement of group”. Later in this chapter, you will see how this sensibility has permeated my work as a DMT. As she wrote in Materials of Dance as a Creative Art Activity (1960):

Your first creative problem is both an individual and a group problem: go out into the room and find a place for yourself where you can be all alone with plenty of space around you ... not close to anyone else . . . everyone should have an equal amount of space so that someone looking down from above would see the space equally divided among you in a regular pattern.

(p. 19)

In this first problem (arrangement of group) the seed of all future creative work is sown by requiring the individual to adapt his own needs for free expression to the needs of the group as a whole.

(p. 18)

I remembered another element of my personal aesthetic in dance as I recalled placing myself directly in front of the drummer at high school dances and letting my entire body simply express the rhythm. I didn’t recognize at the time how deeply healing it was to let go of my conscious mind. I also came to understand later that that dance was mostly about the elements of Weight & Flow, that particular combination of Efiorts, or qualities of movement, that Rudolf Laban associated with dream state (Dell, 1977, p. 115). The Effort state of Weight and Flow is thought to be related to bodily sensations and emotional feelings (Bloom, Adrian, Casciero, Mizenko, & Porter, 2017), which was certainly borne out by my experience.

The elements of Weight and Flow are typical of West African dance. For many years, I took classes and performed traditional dances from West Africa and the Caribbean in a dance company. In addition to activating my propensity for Weight and Flow as we danced to the poly-rhythmic djembe drum music, the emphasis on the collective appealed to me greatly. Our place within the community of dancers was clear and equal; all of us were responsible for forming a clear line or circle. Fellow dancers in the West African dance classes were much more likely to assist in learning a new step than in the often competitive and hierarchical atmosphere of modern dance classes.

I continued to learn about my dance aesthetic by noticing what I was most drawn to as an audience member. I find that I am captivated by dances which move me emotionally and awaken my kinesthetic sense, the feeling inside my muscles of moving like the dancer. Dances which drive me to think about challenging issues or what I think of as beauty emerging out of suffering are especially salient. In fact, seeing Alvin Ailey’s lead dancer Judith

Jamison’s seemingly effortless floating across the stage and effortful scrubbing the floor in Cry in 1973 inspired me to return to see her perform the following two nights. After the third night, I dreamt that I would teach dance to children. Serendipitously, when I shared my dream with a friend, he asked if I knew of dance therapy, which I did not. He gave me the name of a dance therapist whom I contacted immediately and that was my first step in pursuing a career in DMT.

The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company is another company which moves me similarly. His works are always provocative, his company inclusive of diverse body types, and the physicality of the dancers inspiring. I also appreciate Twyla Tharp’s choreography, which I admire for the quirkiness and element of surprise. Sometimes I appreciate small, local dance companies more than acclaimed professional companies, when the former’s performances are defined more by excellence, commitment, and passion and less by a glossy veneer.

Until now, I have been speaking of distinct elements of dance which I find compelling. Importantly, however, the arts touch us only to the extent that the relationship between the parts and the whole is satisfying. It is not the colors or the shapes that create the aesthetic experience of visual art, but how the whole comes together. Elements such as proportion, harmony, balance, symmetry, or asymmetry may appeal to and move us. Similarly, as an art form, it is the dance as a whole that provides us with an experience that inspires. Sondra Fralcigh (1980) suggests:

Dance is the aesthetic archetype of a process understanding of life. Dance is a constant becoming. Perceptivity in dance is the awareness of changing values in relation to a total gestalt. . . . Because dance unfolds through time in a relentless process of becoming, we do not view the whole as we might see the whole of a picture.... As we follow the dance through time, however, the whole is manifest. The completeness of the work is sensed as we perceive its interrelated values ... as sense awareness of total patterns. If I can see only one gesture of the dance, I am nonetheless aware of this gesture’s contingency. It has lost its meaning apart from the whole. I am always perceiving total form because any part of a work relates to and calls forth the unified whole.

(P-25)

In the ensuing years since my first explorations, aesthetics has remained a vital lens through which I see my work. My understanding has become both simpler and more layered. The primary questions I am curious about are “What am I drawn toward? What do I avoid?” in relation to my aesthetics in dance, and by extension, the lens through which I see DMT with my clients: What are my clients attracted to, and what do they avoid?

If my personal aesthetic in dance involves dramatic contrasts, balance, a dynamic tension between internal and external focus, authenticity, meaningfulness, playfulness, spontaneity, present-centeredness, surprise, and the elements of Weight and Flow as manifestations of bodily sensations and intuition, individuality and the collective, do these elements manifest in my DMT groups with people with dementia, and if so, how?