July 12, 2007

Article19 Review of My Blog is Perplexing

In a review highlighting both positive and negative elements of my blog, Article19's Michelle Lefevre writes:

Sometimes the posts [in Great Dance] can go off on an esoteric tangent, such as "Capturing the Essence of Movement" and "Dance Is No Longer an Ephemeral Art Form". When I showed these particular posts to some dancers they rolled their eyes and immediately lost interest. That type of writing has a place but for many, within the profession, it takes them back to the days of dance theory and dance history and for many it's not a place they want to be.

This assessment strikes me as perplexing and off the mark.

First, my post, "Capturing the Essence of Movement," is a description of a dance workshop I took. How it reaches the level of an "esoteric tangent" is beyond me. And what's wrong with "esoteric tangents" in the first place - more about this question below.

Second, my post "Dance Is No Longer an Ephemeral Art Form," is about the future of dance and how traditional perceptions of dance can prohibit us from taking advantage of new approaches to preserving and distributing dance performances.

So once again, I don't see how this second post is going off on an "esoteric tangent"? Isn't it beneficial for the dance community to explore new ways to capture and share dance using the latest digital tools? Isn't it worth exploring how our unexamined assumptions about the world may close us off from exploring new avenues? Is my crime quoting Doris Humphrey?

I'm biased, but I especially enjoyed writing this post.

But to the larger question: Wasn't the initial notion behind blogging to have a platform where you got to choose how you wrote and what you wrote about? So even if I do enter the realm of the esoteric, I fail to see the problem there. Some people will find my posts interesting and others will not.

Maria from the new dance blog, A Time to Dance has a post, "What do you read about," in which she addresses the the passage I quoted above from the Article19 review:

The whole point of blogging is that each person has a unique point of view and they can share it with no editorial filtering. The above comment comes across as stiff and condescending to me, as if every dance blog were supposed to fit some sort of mold. Honestly, the stuff that Doug writes about theory, history, and personal introspection about the process are often the most interesting to me because I am at a similar place in my own dance journey, where I’m still learning a lot and having revelations about things that I’m sure have already occurred to a million dancers before me. The difference is that I don’t have the luxury of being guided through that by a structured dance curriculum or constant study with one company. I came to dance having already completed my academic studies and having already grown into an adult body and it is more of an uphill struggle for me to fit all those things into my life and still have time to learn about theory and history and technique.

Thanks, Maria!

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