Do I always have to understand dance?
Isn't dance just body, emotion and music?
I still remember my first choreographies well, especially full-length productions. After the third work at the beginning of my career, my mum came up to me and said: ‘I understood the first two evenings much better, was able to relate the scenes, the dancing and the images, and somehow compare them with what I had experienced myself. This time it was really difficult."
I then sat down with her and asked her to tell me everything she had felt, seen and perceived.
For over an hour, she told me about her impressions and recounted her experiences. So many images and interpretations came across, things that I didn't even want to see or animate myself. I was so impressed and found it extremely exciting to hear everything she had experienced and could only confirm that I thought it was great what she had interpreted and realized for herself or taken away emotionally. That has been a lot.
And how often does this happen in other art forms, that one's own senses are so engaged, especially when the physical experience docks onto one's own experiences, onto one's inner self, and one can still feel the vibrations hours later.
I believe and can say from experience that with dance or a choreographic work, you have to get much more involved in the situation. Sit in, watch, take it in, sense, enjoy, feel, empathize, extend your senses like antennae and then trust your sources from there, listen to your intensions, create your own images and pursue them.
Then you can also make statements and enter into a dialogue. You don't always have to understand everything straight away – and who knows, maybe the choreographer hasn't fully understood themselves.
Accordingly: go and watch dance, look at a lot of things, get involved, let it have an effect on you - without having to understand it straight away.
The more you see, the more different the works are, the more you train your way of looking at things and the more you immerse yourself in this wonderful art form.
Keep on moving and watching.
See you then and goodbye!
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