Speaking of Speaking of Dance

So, those of you who missed speaking of dance missed a treat. Wen Wei Wang, who was home for 24 hours between Under the Skin shows, showed up and answered questions from the audience. He was very articulate, gracious and sweet, and if I can figure out how to suck the audio from a video file, I’ll post his remarks here and on Facebook. (Seriously, if you know how to do that, leave a comment. I’d love you forever.)

However! The main event was Anita Seiz, who is a Certified Laban Movement Analyst–this is very interesting in and of itself. She is trained to recognize and interpret patterns in movement. The way she uses that superpower is mostly with private clients who are having physical issues: She helps them “repattern” their movements to eliminate or reduce the discomfort they are suffering. But, her training enables her to pick out and analyze movement themes in larger and more complex movement structures, to wit, Wen Wei’s choreography. (Anita was clear that she chose the pieces she did because she had the opportunity to see the piece twice, and to speak with Wen Wei.)

Laban Movement Analysis is big on “shape”–the way individual bodies combine in patterns, and also the relationship of the body to the environment. Anita was particularly interested in dualities that she spotted in the choreography: inner vs. outer; the individual vs. the group; inclusion vs. isolation; unification vs. differentiation. As Wen Wei grew up in China during the Cultural Revolution, there are obvious political analogies to be drawn, but Anita picked out these themes just from analyzing the movement.

Dancers of the Beijing Modern Dance Company perform In Transition by Wen Wei Wang, photo by Donald Lee.

The above image is from a section of the piece that is absolutely  breathtaking to watch: The group encircles the individual dancer, then breaks apart and re-forms, faster and faster. It’s a stunning bit of dance, but LMA reveals that it’s also a commentary on inclusion and isolation.

It was super brave of Anita to apply movement analytics to a piece with the choreographer in the room (THAT was a surprise), and everyone who attended got a new appreciation for a different way to look at choreography: one that is less concerned with imposing a narrative structure on dance or appreciating it as purely aesthetic pleasure, than with reading patterns and drawing conclusions from the movement itself.

Thanks, Anita!

~ by DanceHouse on March 2, 2011.