Dirty Dancing
Sardines Shawl - Charcoal on paper, Movement studies in our disciplines nature, Drawing I made in April 2020.
‘It is possible to conjecture that the cave dweller may have pretended to be an animal, when he danced at the dawn of the world, the dances of the primitive man are generally mimetic. He has not learnt to express himself in any other way’.
Crick, Malcolm. Explorations in language and meaning: towards a semantic anthropology. London: Malaby Press.
...I chose to draw sardines and not, starlings as I had first foreseen.
Starlings live on the edge and move by sight, in formations which are still a mystery. The mathematical models are beautiful as well as intriguing; yet scientists do not know why starlings move in cloudy Murmurations.
Sardines! We love playing sardines- but schools of fish move in relationship to their neighbours, in order to maximize foraging, safety for predators and speed of movement. This image is how they move when predators attack them –minus the predators I didn’t draw them in- It required time, discipline, and observation to create the piece. We ll never be able to move like these orderly bastards. Ballet dancers we are not, we haven’t been taught. Then I realized researching further, that schools of fish do not learn to move this way, they evolved. Is there any chance for us? How long does evolution take?
‘Dirty Dancing’, 1987- I am showing my age, I know...
Are you familiar with Dirty Dancing? Showy Peacock spiders dance as part of their mating rituals, romantic scorpions waltz, with the overly excited occasional spiking of the female by the venom of his male counterpart. Praying Mantis, also dance to mate, but often end up devouring the males as a result of it…fun fact- 60 per cent of the male praying Mantis is dinner.
Stick and leaf insect also dance, but it is still a mystery as to what purpose.
Cuttlefish, birds of paradise, bung beetles, also dance for courting it appears. But some can adjust their rhythm and dance without reproduction being the objective.
Our honey-loving bees communicate with dance, with complex moves in lines and figures of ‘8’, where they give each other directions with the ‘Waggle dance’- an advanced form of touch communication.
Some argue that plants and algae dance too, albeit this is still debatable and depending on what it is that we define as dance-
‘We read that non-human animals ‘dance’; however, their ritualized movements are programmed action sequences. They do not voluntarily express or withhold emotions and ideas distances in time and space from immediate stimuli as do humans in dance.’
Megan N. Ramos, Body, Movement and Dance in Psychotherapy, Volume 13, 2018 - Issue 1.
Dance does have a well-established sexual connection to the elemental impulses of the perpetuation of a species. And the theory that humankind danced to transcend language barriers and heighten rituals to connect to nature, fellow human beings, and an idea of ‘a creator’ do primarily sound reasonable, especially on the basis of mimicking the natural world.
But what is harder to agree on is whether dance, as a language, can be scientifically dissected and stripped of human emotion, expression, or thought.
From ballet as a child, to jazz dance to tango to Berlin’s Berghain and Ibiza’s Heart- I for one, certainly dance like I am possessed...
Photograph by Jake Davies, Steel Yard Fox and Badge party, London, 2019.
But WHY did people dance, and do today?
1 They want to have fun and relax?- dance as a vehicle solely for leisure and entertainment?
2 They dance because of biological, organismic or instinctive needs of some kind –the dance as
precursor to spoken language perhaps?
3 They dance because they want to express themselves- that dance as a symbolic activity divorced from real life
4 they dance because they feel sexy or sad, or something- the dance as a prime repository of emotion?
5 They dance because a good, or evil, spirit has possessed them, the dance as a neurotic, hysterical or quasi religious manifestation,
6 They dance to show off or to relieve their over-burdened feelings- dancing as catharsis or the governor on a steam- value theory of human emotion
Crick, Malcolm. Explorations in language and meaning: towards a semantic anthropology. London: Malaby Press, 1976 – P5-6
In reality, it can be either of these or a combination, in no particular order, or to other meand- as we see when looking into Contemporary Choreographers such as Merce Cunnighmam, who used as means to experiment.
From popular dances in bars and streets among strangers or families and festivals, dance appeared in a more refined shape in courts, who then shaped and cut a much more structured and some would argue refined form of dance, with ballet.
Rudolf Nureyev dances with Rosella Hightower during a dress rehearsal at the B.B.C. television studios in London in 1962. (Photo credit should AFP/AFP/Getty Images)
The Kings of Europe funded classical music, fine art, and ballet into their present form, but one that remains even today exclusively for those who can afford them, both in practice and as an attending audience.
Ballet’ s rigor did not allow for individual input. It is the A-Z of dance and even in its the education, preaches implacable linear precision to perfection.
Dance stayed in isolated forms divided by social casts or groups or practices but defined into specific often-local folk dances, or heighten into ideals of lightness and romanticism in ballet form. Until the early nineteen hundreds- my radical rebel and feminist hero emerged from whom there is sadly, only one