ASTUCES POUR PROFESSEURS: TIPS FOR TEACHERS

La juste mesure
de Katharine Harris de l’École nationale de ballet du Canada
Susanna Hood with students of The School of Toronto Dance Theatre’s Professional Training Program / Photo by Andréa de Keijzer for the School of TDT

Après le répit de l’été, septembre annonce un retour à la normale avec la reprise de l’école, des classes de danse et d’autres activités parascolaires. Que vos élèves aient pris congé ou suivi plusieurs ateliers intensifs de danse, il est important de les aider à retrouver un rythme sain dans leur formation régulière.

More...
Voici des conseils pour les premières classes de l’automne afin de préparer vos élèves à une nouvelle année de danse en santé :

1. La première classe est une mission de reconnaissance. Déterminez qui a participé à un atelier intensif et qui a pris congé. Évaluez les signes de blessures ou toute autre question importante.
2. Intégrez des exercices de conditionnement physique à la première semaine de classes. Songez à fournir une liste d’exercices que les élèves peuvent travailler à la maison pour retrouver la forme.
3. Rappelez à vos élèves qu’ils n’auront pas le même niveau d’habileté qu’au printemps, lorsqu’ils s’entraînaient régulièrement depuis une saison. Ils auront perdu du terrain pour ce qui est de la souplesse et de l’endurance. S’il y a eu des phases de croissance accélérée, vos élèves auront peut-être à revoir certaines approches au mouvement.
4. Aidez vos élèves à mitiger leurs attentes afin qu’ils ne visent pas une extension parfaite ou une amplitude maximale dès le début. Le premier jour est le début d’un parcours.
5. Profitez du début de la session pour revenir à la base. Vous pouvez vous concentrer sur l’alignement et proposer des mouvements et des enchaînements relativement simples.
6. Soulignez l’importance du repos dans le processus de mise en forme. Les élèves seront peut-être plus endoloris que d’habitude pendant qu’ils apprivoisent de nouveau leurs muscles et la danse. Encouragez-les à s’hydrater afin de contrer la fatigue musculaire et les dommages qu’elle peut entraîner.
7. Réservez un temps adéquat pour la récupération à la fin d’une période d’exercice. L’étirement est facilement laissé pour contre. Il est important de rappeler l’importance de l’étirement à vos élèves. Les spasmes et certaines blessures sont les conséquences d’un étirement inadéquat.
8. Surveillez vos élèves ambitieux, ceux qui reprennent toujours les exercices et qui se poussent à chaque occasion. Encouragez-les d’être patient et à l’écoute de leur corps. La croissance personnelle et les résultats seront le fruit d’un travail assidu pendant toute l’année ; ils n’ont pas besoin d’accomplir tous leurs objectifs le premier jour ou dans les premières semaines.

The Importance of Pacing
By Katharine Harris of Canada’s National Ballet School

September brings a return to routine as academic school classes resume and dance and other extracurricular activities start up after a summer hiatus. Whether your students have had a summer off or a summer spent in dance intensives, it’s important to help them pace themselves as they return to regular training.

Here are some tips to keep in mind for those first few fall classes, to help all your students settle in to a healthy new year of dance.

1. Use your first class as a reconnaissance session. Determine who participated in a summer intensive and who took the summer off. Assess whether anyone has an injury or other issue you should be aware of.
2. Integrate conditioning exercises in your first few weeks of classes. Consider providing a list of exercises students should work on at home to help get them back into shape
3. Remind your students that they will not be at the same level of ability as they were in spring, when dance classes were still in full swing. Flexibility and endurance will have lapsed and if any growth spurts have occurred, your students may need to re-examine how they approach a specific movement.
4. Help your students reduce their own expectations, so they know not to aim for perfect extension or a full range of flexibility on the first day. Day one is just the start of the journey.
5. The beginning of a term is a good time to return to basics. Consider spending a bit more time on posture and alignment, keeping the movements and sequences relatively simple and straightforward.
6. Remind your students that recovery time is essential for the body. They may experience more cramps than normal at the start of term, while they re-acclimatize their muscles to dance movements. Encourage them to stay hydrated, as this helps battle many muscle fatigue complications.
7. Incorporate lots of time for cooling down. Post-activity stretching can easily be overlooked. It’s important to remind your students how valuable it is. Without adequate stretching after activity, muscles can seize up and injuries can occur.
8. Keep an eye on your go-getter students, the ones who want to try every exercise one more time and who push themselves hard with every opportunity. Encourage them to listen to their bodies and to be gentle with themselves. They have a whole year of dance classes to achieve growth and results; they don’t have to accomplish everything in that first day or week.

Feature: Micro/Macro: Dimensions of Dance on Film and Video

Article by Kathleen Smith

Summary | Sommaire

Members of Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch in a still from the film Pina directed by Wim Wenders / Photo by Donata Wenders, courtesy of Neue Road Movies GmbH

Dance for the screen seems to be simultaneously shrinking and expanding in ways we don’t yet fully understand. But one thing is clear – micro or macro – it is more ubiquitous than ever.

La danse à l’écran semble simultanément se condenser et se dilater de façons encore difficiles à cerner avec précision. Chose certaine, à l’échelle micro ou macro, elle est plus omniprésente que jamais.

More...

Dance for the screen seems to be simultaneously shrinking and expanding in ways we don’t yet fully understand. But one thing is clear – micro or macro – it is more ubiquitous than ever. Dance has probably never had a higher profile on broadcast television. At the same time, there has been a proliferation of on-demand alternative outlets for dance media consumption such as the New York-based digital network TenduTV, streaming dance content for download. And solo dance goes truly micro with the cell phone app Dances for an iPhone. At the same time as screens are shrinking, dance as big screen cinema also seems to be undergoing a kind of renaissance, from films about dance (Darren Aronofsky’s The Black Swan, for example), to explorations in stereoscopic 3D, to live streaming of major dance productions in cinemas and on screens in public spaces. Add to this the vast galaxy of Vimeo and YouTube-style video sites and you get a popularization and democratization of dance on a scale previously unimagined. Technology can’t prevent humans from communally shared cultural experiences; and in fact the screen can work for and with rather than against the body-based art forms we love.

La danse à l’écran semble simultanément se condenser et se dilater de façons encore difficiles à cerner avec précision. Chose certaine, à l’échelle micro ou macro, elle est plus omniprésente que jamais. La danse n’a jamais joui d’une couverture si favorable à la télévision. En même temps, il y a prolifération de sources alternatives sur demande pour la consommation médiatique de danse. Par exemple, le réseau numérique basé à New York TenduTV propose un contenu téléchargeable pour la lecture en continu. Et la danse solo adopte véritablement le mode micro avec l’application Dances pour le iPhone. En parallèle à la réduction de la taille des écrans, la danse au grand écran connaît aussi une sorte de renaissance, de films sur la danse (comme The Black Swan de Darren Aronofsky) à des explorations en 3D stéréoscopique, à la diffusion en continu de productions de danse d’envergure dans les cinémas et sur des écrans dans des lieux publics. Ajoutez à cela la vaste galaxie de sites vidéo dans le genre Vimeo et YouTube, et vous avez la popularisation et la démocratisation de la danse à une échelle jusque-là insoupçonnée. La technologie ne peut pas empêcher les expériences culturelles partagées. En effet, plutôt que de leur nuire, l’écran peut favoriser les formes d’art liées au corps que nous aimons tant.

In Conversation: Noémie Lafrance

Interview by Ben Portis

Summary | Sommaire

Film still of Jeffrey Lyon and Cory Harrower in Noémie Lafrance's film Rapture / Photo courtesy of Lafrance

Brooklyn-based Canadian choreographer and director Noémie Lafrance has made her reputation for boldly conceived works set in unlikely locations.

Canadienne établit à Brooklyn, l’artiste et réalisatrice Noémie Lafrance s’est fait connaître par des créations de conception hardie dans des lieux inédits.

More...

Brooklyn-based Canadian choreographer and director Noémie Lafrance has made her reputation for boldly conceived works set in unlikely locations. Melt perched dancers on a barren wall. Rapture moved harnessed dancers across the torque roof of a Frank Gehry building. Each of these works generated a short film that disseminated the experiences of Lafrance’s site-specific art to broader audiences. Lafrance has produced over a dozen large-scale, live works and four dance films that have been presented in the USA, Canada and abroad. Her site-specific work uses public space as a stage, transforming ordinary places into adventurous theatrical experiences that trigger the audience’s imagination. Lafrance is currently working on The Rapture Series, a five-year series of dance installations that include video mapping projections, performed on nine Frank Gehry buildings around the world, including an installation tailored to the Art Gallery of Ontario, in conjunction with 2012 Luminato, Toronto Festival of Arts and Creativity. On September 10th, 2011, The White Box Project debuts at Black & White Gallery in Brooklyn, NY.

Canadienne établit à Brooklyn, l’artiste et réalisatrice Noémie Lafrance s’est fait connaître par des créations de conception hardie dans des lieux inédits. Melt juche des danseuses sur un mur nu. Rapture transporte des danseurs en harnais sur le toit ondulé d’un immeuble de Frank Gehry. De courts métrages sont issus de chaque pièce, permettant la diffusion des expériences de l’art de Lafrance à un public élargi. Elle produit plus d’une douzaine d’œuvres en direct à grand déploiement et quatre films de danse qui ont été présentés aux États-Unis, au Canada et à l’étranger. Son travail in situ se sert de l’espace public et transforme des lieux ordinaires en expériences théâtrales aventureuses qui nourrissent l’imaginaire du spectateur. Actuellement, elle prépare The Rapture Series, une série d’installations échelonnées sur cinq ans, dansées avec surimpressions vidéo, présentées sur neuf édifices de Frank Gehry autour du monde. La série compte une installation adaptée à la Art Gallery of Ontario, en conjonction avec 2012 Luminato, Toronto Festival of Arts and Creativity. Le 10 septembre 2011, The White Box Project est présenté en première à la Black & White Gallery à Brooklyn, NY.

Profile: Michael Greyeyes: Hitting His Mark

Article by Chris Dupuis

Summary | Sommaire

Santee Smith and Michael Greyeyes in their own work The Threshing Floor, produced by Ka:hawi Dance Theatre (2006) / Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann

If it wasn’t for the Russian national hockey team, Michael Greyeyes might never have gotten serious about dance.

Sans l’équipe nationale de hockey de la Russie, Michael Greyeyes ne se serait peut-être jamais consacré à la danse.

More...

If it wasn’t for the Russian national hockey team, Michael Greyeyes might never have gotten serious about dance. The Saskatoon-born Cree First Nations artist grew up playing the sport at the same time he was taking drop-in ballet classes at the local university. “At a certain point the teacher said it was time to get serious and I had to start wearing [tights],” he says. “I remember crying on my bed but then my parents told me the Russian national hockey team took ballet to strengthen their ankles. I figured if they wore tights to class it was fine for me too.” At ten, Greyeyes began training at Canada’s National Ballet School and then performed with the National Ballet of Canada before moving to New York and dancing for Eliot Feld. A career turn led him to work in film and television, and eventually to a teaching position in the theatre department at York University. Greyeyes continues to perform and create. His latest dance work From Thine Eyes premieres in September at the Enwave Theatre in Toronto.

Sans l’équipe nationale de hockey de la Russie, Michael Greyeyes ne se serait peut-être jamais consacré à la danse. Né à Saskatoon, autochtone des Premières nations Cris, l’artiste grandit en jouant au hockey et en prenant des classes de ballet occasionnelles à l’université de la région. « À un moment donné, l’enseignant m’a dit qu’il était temps de prendre la chose au sérieux et de porter un collant, » dit-il. « Je me souviens que je pleurais dans mon lit, mais mes parents m’ont dit que l’équipe nationale de hockey de la Russie faisait du ballet pour développer la force des chevilles. Je me suis dit que s’ils portaient le collant en classe, je pouvais bien le faire aussi. » À dix ans, Greyeyes entre à l’École nationale de ballet du Canada. Par la suite, il danse avec le National Ballet of Canada avant de déménager à New York et de danser avec Eliot Feld. Un changement de parcours l’amène vers le cinéma et la télévision, et ensuite, il est engagé comme professeur dans le département de théâtre à l’Université York. Greyeyes continue l’interprétation et la création. Sa dernière chorégraphie, From Thine Eyes, est présentée en première en septembre au théâtre Enwave à Toronto.

Report: Fighting a ‘Culture War’?

Louis Laberge-Côté takes on SunTV

Summary | Sommaire

Louis Laberge-Côté / Photo by Bruce Zinger

In his open letter, distributed on Facebook on June 8th, 2011, Toronto-based dance artist Louis Laberge-Côté responded eloquently to the June 1st SunTV interview with Canadian dance icon Margie Gillis ...

Louis Laberge-Côté, artiste de danse basé à Toronto, publie une lettre ouverte sur Facebook le 8 juin 2011. Il répond avec éloquence à l’interview qui provoque la colère de la communauté artistique, diffusé le 1er juin à SunTV avec Margie Gillis ...

More...

In his open letter, distributed on Facebook on June 8th, 2011, Toronto-based dance artist Louis Laberge-Côté responded eloquently to the June 1st SunTV interview with Canadian dance icon Margie Gillis that so enraged the arts community. Shortly after the incident, The Dance Current published a video blog entry and a news item in which Gillis comments on the interview. For this issue, we invited Laberge-Côté to reflect on his experience speaking out as he did. He subsequently wrote a longer essay, “The ‘Culture War’: Tools for artists and arts lovers” (which you can find on our website), in which he tackles some of the key challenges from anti-arts-funding proponents and provides well-researched rebukes. Artists and cultural workers would do well to arm themselves with lucid and compelling responses to the challenging views that Erickson and other right wing conservatives espouse. In taking action and speaking out, Laberge-Côté joins the ranks of a different avant garde in what may indeed become a Canadian “culture war”.

Louis Laberge-Côté, artiste de danse basé à Toronto, publie une lettre ouverte sur Facebook le 8 juin 2011. Il répond avec éloquence à l’interview qui provoque la colère de la communauté artistique, diffusé le 1er juin à SunTV avec Margie Gillis, icône de la danse canadienne. Peu après, The Dance Current publie une entrée sur son blogue vidéo ainsi qu’une rubrique dans les nouvelles qui comptent les commentaires de Gillis sur l’interview. Dans cette édition du magazine, nous avons invité Laberge-Côté à revenir sur son expérience de prise de parole. Ainsi, il a rédigé un texte plus long intitulé « La “guerre culturelle” : outils pour les artistes et les amoureux des art ». (Vous trouverez la version intégrale du texte sur notre site Web.) Là, il s’attaque à quelques-uns des grands défis posés par les partisans d’un retrait du subventionnement public des arts, et fournit une argumentation rigoureuse. Artistes et travailleurs culturels feraient bien de s’armer d’arguments lucides et irréfutables pour répondre aux perspectives difficiles proposées par Erickson et autres conservateurs de droite. En prenant position et parole, Laberge-Côté s’inscrit au rang d’une avant garde particulière dans ce qui pourrait s’avérer une « guerre culturelle » canadienne.



The “Culture War” | La « guerre culturelle »
Tools for artists and arts lovers | Outils pour les artistes et les amoureux des arts
By/de Louis Laberge-Côté

An Ambitious Course: Master Plan for Dance in Québec

By Philip Szporer

In a policy document spanning 134 pages, Le Regroupement québécois de la danse (RQD) has launched its Master Plan for Professional Dance in Québec 2011–2021. The document is the result of two years of preparation following the second États généraux de la danse in April 2009. The ten-year implementation plans are key to the development and professionalization of dance in Québec, and to bolstering an increased level of public recognition of the Québec dance community.

More...

RQD President Marc Boivin introduced the document to a packed house, held June 2nd during the Festival TransAmériques at the festival’s central meeting place, the Quartier Général, saying, “The Master Plan also reflects a new-found awareness and desire for change. It takes a broad, generous and critical look at what we are: a community with a profound love of dance in all its forms, expressions and possibilities for the future.”

Founded in 1984, the RQD’s mandate is to represent and defend the interests of dance professionals in Québec. The first footprints of this report date back to an event held in 1994, at which the provincial dance service and advocacy organization began planning a vast research and consultation process called the “Grands Chantiers de la danse”.

Lorraine Hébert, executive director of the RQD, spearheaded the creation of the Master Plan, alongside artistic consultant Pascale Daigle, of Daigle Saire. “We went about examining the issue of how to organize the discipline, taking into account every aspect of the chain, from training through to artistic mediation, creation, production, conservation, and local, national and international dissemination,” stated Hébert.

To prepare the document, meetings and consultations were held with over seventy people from all areas of the practice. Over 250 community stakeholders from across Québec were consulted (via workshops, round tables, worksite committees, research initiatives, studies). From 2006 to 2010, eighty to ninety people participated each year in the workshops of the annual meeting of RQD members. Over 4000 hours of volunteer work went into the Grands Chantiers project.

As written in the Master Plan, there are five major ambitions broken down into a series of objectives aimed at ensuring the sustainable growth of professional dance in Québec.
Professional dance in Québec must: 1) have the means to excel; 2) become a strong, healthy, occupational sector; 3) develop a national and international reputation for innovation; 4) reach out to audiences; and 5) become an integral part of Québec’s social and cultural fabric.

The blueprint document is an inspiring reflection of the vital nature of the community, and reflective of the priorities within the dance sector. The Master Plan definitively illustrates that dance is an art of research and creation that requires substantial investment. At the launch, dancers, choreographers, managers and administrators in the field rose en masse in a rousing display of solidarity to applaud the initiative and salute the hard work done by the RQD and its associates. The question remains: who will respond to the publication of this plan and how?

Go to www.quebecdanse.org to download a copy of the 134-page document, in English or French.


Philip Szporer is a Montréal-based freelance writer, filmmaker and lecturer. Recipient of the 2010 Jacqueline Lemieux Prize, scholar-in-residence at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, and a former Pew Fellow at UCLA, Philip contributes to Tanz. Media productions include Byron Chief-Moon: Grey Horse Rider, Quarantaine, and the upcoming stereoscopic film Lost Action: Trace. | Philip Szporer [rédacteur invité] est rédacteur, cinéaste et conférencier pigiste établi à Montréal. Lauréat du prix Jacqueline-Lemieux de 2010, chercheur invité du Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival et anciennement boursier PEW de l’UCLA, Philip contribue à Tanz. Ses créations média comptent Byron Chief-Moon: Grey Horse Rider, Quarantaine et le film stéréoscopique prochain Lost Action: Trace.

Diving into Dance: A Critic’s Manifesto

By Kaija Pepper

As a critic, I tend not to reflect on my work: I guess I’m too busy pondering the dance I write about. But after two decades engaged in the usual bread-and-butter assignments for newspapers and magazines, more substantial reviews at thedancecurrent.com, several essays in anthologies and journals, as well as a few books, I feel the need to step back and take a close look at this pursuit to which I give so much time and effort. Not to make a cool assessment, but to forge a renewed path.

More...

Early on in my career as a dance critic, I often wished for a psychiatrist sitting next to me on one side and an anthropologist on the other in order to ensure a clear, fair grasp of the art, free of my own prejudices and predilections. Twenty years later, I’m still juggling personal and cultural relativity, and a third ball has been added to the toss: the shifting ground of any experience of a choreographic work. However closely I watch, I can grasp only a part of the tapestry of muscle and tendon, heart and lungs, unfolding before me, and if I return the next night to check my impressions, as many questions will be raised as answered: with dance, you never get the same thing twice. Nor will my attention be the same: chances are I’ll notice a different pair of arms and legs, or blink and miss the moment I wanted to get closer to.

There is a reason, then, why dance is often described by the cliché “ephemeral”. As the American critic Arlene Croce said in the preface to her 1977 collection of reviews, Afterimages, dance criticism is “a fool’s job”, based on the impressions left behind when a performance is over, not on recorded fact.

It’s as if dance were created from some ghostly or metaphysical substance – yet the reality is quite the opposite. This romantically elusive art form is composed of the very tangible elements of flesh and blood, created through hard physical labour. Every time we watch a choreographic work, we are confronted at a deep, unconscious level by this paradox of the ephemeral and the concrete, which seems to speak to the very nature of life itself.

The existential significance of dance aside, how can I fulfill my job with expertise while focussed on juggling those three balls of personal, cultural and aesthetic relativity? Or should I forget the circus act, and soberly profess an absolute and unassailable grasp of the Canadian dance scene I cover?

Generally today, we believe in many small truths, not one big Truth. Physics has accommodated relativity, and as philosopher William James wrote in The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902): “The wisest of critics is an altering being, subject to the better insight of the morrow, and right at any moment, only ‘up to date’ and ‘on the whole.’”

My critical viewpoint is limited to a single perspective of, typically, one particular experience of a performance. This makes me uneasy about publishing definitive, thumbs up or down, judgements, or at least of overplaying them, and staying with description is tempting. I’m not the only contemporary critic drawn to a descriptive approach: art historian James Elkins in What Happened to Art Criticism? (2003) is aghast at the sea change from judgement to description in the field of visual art, calling it “an amazing reversal, as astonishing as if physicists had declared they would no longer try to understand the universe, but just appreciate it.”

In dance, which can’t be quoted directly, there is no way to put a choreographic work on the page except by describing it. The chances of a reader having seen the performance or viewing a remount in future are slim: most dance works have a short life, and tours are typically a few nights in a handful of larger cities. The descriptive critical record has greater importance than in other arts because it is often a reader’s only experience of a work.

Susan Sontag, in the title piece in Against Interpretation and Other Essays, made an impassioned plea for “really accurate, sharp, loving description of the appearance of a work of art,” calling for writing that reveals “the sensuous surface of art without mucking about in it.” This was her way of displacing heavy-handed interpretation where X really equals Y and art is reduced to a puzzle best solved by the (intelligent, sensitive, knowledgeable) critic.

This kind of overbearing critical voice was brilliantly parodied in Vladimir Nabokov’s novel, Pale Fire, published two years before Sontag’s 1964 manifesto. Here, the dead and hence helpless author, the fictional John Shade, becomes practically invisible next to Charles Kinbote, his determined, long-winded and quite possibly mad interpreter.

So, yes, conscientious description evoking the work of art is preferable to self-aggrandizing appropriation. Yet a critic is neither a publicist nor the artist’s champion and, like any audience member, must enter into and discover the work on independent terms. Donald Kuspit in “Art Criticism: Where’s the Depth?” (in The Critic is Artist: The Intentionality of Art (1984)), writes that art can only be significant if it is shown to connect beyond its appearance, and beyond what the artist might say about it, to the deeper world view and consciousness that it represents. The work of art should not be regarded “as simply another phenomenon and product in a world already crowded with them”, and it is the critic’s job to pursue the depth beneath the surface.

For both Kuspit and Elkins, describing art as if it is merely another chair or tree or car is not enough on its own to qualify as criticism, and Sontag’s own writing actually goes deeper. The essays on film and literature published in Against Interpretation do not just place readers in front of the artwork, though Sontag’s descriptive powers are acute: there is also context and comparison, all of which is woven together against a generous background of cultural and other ideas.

Nor does Sontag deny the instinctive act of judgement, the natural going toward or drawing away from an artwork, and this gives her writing focus and energy. The critic is not immune to art’s ability to touch or provoke, and a personal relationship with the work is a form of fuel that feeds “creative encounter”.

The term comes from psychologist Rollo May’s The Courage to Create (1975). “Artists,” he wrote, “encounter the landscape they propose to paint – they look at it, observe it from this angle and that.” What makes the encounter creative is “the degree of absorption, the degree of intensity … there must be a specific quality of engagement.” May believes creative encounter can also be found in the work of some scientists and in a mother’s relationship with her child. I see it as an ideal for critics, too.

May’s definition entails close observation of the object: for myself, the dance. Obviously, the intention is not to wallow in subjectivity by ignoring the steps and structure, costumes, lighting and music: the starting point for critical encounter is a genuine attempt to see the work exactly as it is, to pay attention to everything happening on stage. This is the bedrock on which the critic’s professionalism rests.

Because the sensuous surface of a dance passes by so quickly, the parameters for creative encounter are different than in other arts: it is not possible to investigate or savour at leisure. The dance critic, scribbling notes in the dark that are typically a tangle of barely legible words and phrases, must be alert and present to each moment as it races by on stage, to “be here now”, while constantly giving up that present moment – however seductive – in order to be there for the next.

“Do you ever just relax and enjoy yourself when you watch dance?” people sometimes ask. I usually do: when I’m in good shape, and the dance and dancers are, too, this peculiar form of meditation is an invigorating challenge. I take my job seriously, but this doesn’t mean it’s onerous. In fact, the focus and commitment of critical consciousness is most productive when the open-ended, free-spirited absorption of a child at play is present. The word “play” has become my catchword, and philosopher Immanuel Kant’s call for the “free play” of imagination and understanding in regard to aesthetic judgements sounds exactly right.

Where better to play than in the theatre? Psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott considered play and cultural experience as vital interfaces between fantasy and reality. Both, he wrote in Playing and Reality (1971), take place in a “potential space” situated between inner subjective experience and the outer world. In Winnicott’s enticingly named potential space, a work of art is more than an intellectually perceived object: it’s an event in which we are deeply engaged. Here is where creative encounter takes place; here is where we dive into the art and into ourselves, watching and responding in depth so we can, in turn, write with depth.

The submersion into self is what makes the experience worthwhile. “[T]he play of art is not some substitute dream-world in which we can forget ourselves,” wrote philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer (“The Play of Art” (1973)), but “a mirror … in which we catch sight of ourselves in a way that is often unexpected or unfamiliar: what we are, what we might be, and what we are about.”

In front of that fast-flowing stream of energetic movement, my ideal is to be fully feeling and immersed without sacrificing a more considered, objective point of view. Later, at the computer, I aim for a critically aware yet responsive approach, bolstering it with description – crucial to bringing dance alive on the page – and not shying away from judgement – that instinctive moving toward or away that fuels honest, engaged writing.

This call for a broadly based critical response that is also intensely personal grows out of my conviction that dance matters – that at its best it is Gadamer’s mirror reflecting both reality and possibility, worthy of a lifetime’s close attention, sustaining many dives deep into its depths.

Kaija Pepper writes for several publications, including The Globe and Mail. The Man Next Door Dances: The Art of Peter Bingham is her third dance history book. She enjoys teaching writing at SFU’s School for the Contemporary Arts.