November 9, 2006

How Should Art Work Its Magic?

Apollinaire Scherr responds with some more thoughtful answers to my questions in her Foot in Mouth blog.

In response to my first question:

1) What do you think of the idea of an "active audience," and how do you think it relates to dance performances? Do you think the dance world would benefit by embracing the emergence of a participatory culture?

Apollinaire responds:

Doug, the way you ask the question answers it. In your view, it's not possible to be both actively involved and sitting in one's seat. Receptivity, by your lights, is akin to passivity.

When you read a book, do you feel like a paper towel sopping up Kool-Aid?

I hope not. A person can both absorb something and be actively engaged. In fact, I doubt you could take something in if you weren't engaged.

Art--any kind, as long as it's good--offers an especially charged form of engagement. The artist has created a singular experience for you--to pull you out of yourself so that when you return there will be more to you. If you "participate" as you mean it-- shaping the very thing you might have simply experienced--you shift the balance between you and it. Less of it, more of you.

The good intentions behind advocating this kind of participation--to save us from feeling isolated--misunderstands loneliness, conflating it with solitude. Loneliness isn't about being alone, it's about never being able to escape yourself. Art is one of loneliness' best cures. An active cure. But you need to allow the art to set its own course for it to work its magic.

My follow-up:

When I used the word "active" I was not discounting the type of active engagement people experience when they watch a dance performance or read a book. I was using "active" in a different sense - one of being directly connected to or engaged with a work in some type of contributory or physical sense.

For example, when I performed in a community dance program last week, I enjoyed waiting in the wings and watching the dance company members perform on stage - the community members entered the stage to perform the last third of this piece, "Still Crossing," with company members. What I especially liked was to see how the dancers integrated bits and pieces of the movements that we were taught for our portion of the dance. I guess the question is if I were now in the audience watching the entire "Still Crossing" what would the experience be like for me and how would it possibly be different from somebody else who was not involved in the community portion of this dance?

So one example of what I mean by "active" is to be able to make a physical connection between what one sees on stage and what one has experienced with one's own body.

There are many other possible examples that can often be facilitated by the Internet such as making performances and rehearsals available online and offering Internet users the opportunity to offer feedback and criticisms as well as, possibly, contributing their own dance movements in video form. And there are many approaches to offline participatory engagement as well that have been explored over the years.

You write that following my approach one may shape "the very thing you might have simply experienced--you shift the balance between you and it. Less of it, more of you." And follow with "Art is one of loneliness' best cures. An active cure. But you need to allow the art to set its own course for it to work its magic."

Why is it necessary or preferable to pre-set the balance between "you and it"? And why is the best art by definition one that "sets its own course"? Isn't this really up to the artist and how he or she wishes to create art and engage audiences?

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