I come into the studio every day with the same goal: To achieve what I perceive to beautiful within myself and within the movement that I give to the dancers that I have selected. Within this goal I have to be consistently honest with myself about who I am in this time. What am I feeling today and how is it different and simultaneously relative to how I was yesterday. As I change day by day so does my perception of beauty.
Chapter 3: Dance and the Self is all about the convergence of the objective and the subjective as the experience. I objectively see myself and I objectively see my dancers before me. Subjectively I feel and sense my space and the qualities (or aesthetic values) of my movement just as I subjectively sense the relationships of my dancers. More simply put, I see and feel simultaneously, and this way of perceiving creates my experience that day in the studio. Herein lies a substantial conflict between my subjectivity and that of the four dancers I have cast. I may demonstrate a movement in a way that I FEEL is very clear because it is intrinsic to me and the dancer will SEE me move and try to imitate, however the way they feel the movement is often observed as that which I do not want. This problem is specifically occurring with Lorone as he often tries to perform the movement I give him in a very bound quality when I would like it to be performed in an direct-yet-free quality. A solution to this problem could be that I have to verbally explain the aesthetic intent of the movement that I give him. For example: There is a part of the dance where I have asked Lorone to sequentially drop his upper body down laterally until he reaches his maximum stretch upon which time he would contract frontally and turn in the direction he leaned. He has consistently made the movement into a bound snaking motion in which his head leads him in a swiveling pattern that is not at all what I wanted. What I intend to do in the next rehearsal is to talk to him about the way it should be seen by the audience and the way it should feel in his body. In doing this I hope he will begin to understand in his body how the movement should feel.
I was very intrigued by Fraleigh’s explanation of Aesthetic Intent as the purpose of the movement. “I have held that the aesthetic is the affective.” (Page 43). The affective is everything because it is what moves the audience. The affective is the Iliopsoas of the work and as such I, as the choreographer, have to be articulate enough to show and explain my intent clearly and effectively to my dancers so that they may also be clear. If I succeed in this, then my piece may be objectively observed very much in keeping with the way I intended. Having said that, I must also know that my piece will be experienced subjectively differently by each of my dancers, and I must accept that as an inevitable existential truth.
My hope for my piece is that my aesthetic affective (intent) is effective enough to move the audience. This is, in essence, the purpose of the purpose as stated by Fraleigh. “I am proposing that the aesthetic, defined as the affective, is a quality of being moved, in the sense that when I say ‘I am moved’ I mean, “I feel something,’ and in fact my sense of feeling has been increased.” The intent of my piece should make the audience move inside in that kind of unexplainable way. Just as the eddies of the creek our insides spiral when we watch a dancer spiral turn in such a complete and appropriate way. This is what I want for my piece.
The latter wish brings up the subject of audience perception. Just as the way I see and feel myself and my movement, so does the audience see and feel my movement and the movement of my dancers. In Chapter 4: Dance and the Other, Fraleigh claims, “The aesthetically effective arises...when the full body consciousness is vitalized...but I am not engaged in dance as art until my dance is expressed for others and its values are realized between us.” (Page 57). This is such a simple and beautiful idea. It is to say that the expression is art when there is a communion between the dancer and the audience. This word communion brings up religious images primarily of the people of the church coming to the spiritual leaders to receive some sort of symbolic representation of that which they worship. Looking at this image in a more basic way, there are people who come to a place for the purpose of bearing witness to an event or lesson, and during this happening, there is a dialogue between the actor who is to be witnessed and the people who are to witness. Fraleigh puts this in terms of dance by stating, “A good dance moves the dancer and the audience toward each other.” (Page 61). There are no separate parties. Despite the fact that the dancers are noticed and the audience unnoticed (most of the time), the interaction and participation of both groups makes the expression art. The Dance does not exist on the same level if the audience does not exist.
The audience receives the dance objectively and subjectively. They see the aesthetic values and receive them effectively when they are related to another objective source. This could be anything that exists in the past experiences of the individual audience member which is why each individual will receive the dance subjectively differently. What is seen is then related and is finally felt.
As I come to better understand Fraleigh’s theory of Existentialism in dance, I find that the way I view my own choreography is shifted. We all come from different experiences and thus we receive in different quantities and in vastly different ways. Because of this, my creation must be both a representation of the sum of all of my experiences and a universal work from which any audience member may feel moved even if only slightly.
These eddies are the concept image for my piece. They are fast and erratic and yet they have a calmness about them.
