Martin - Dance As A Social Movement

Dance as a Social Movement
Author(s): Randy Martin

Source: Social Text, No. 12 (Autumn, 1985), pp. 54-70
Published by: Duke University Press
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DANCE AS A SOCIAL MOVEMENT
RANDY MARTIN
WARMING-UP TO PHYSICAL POLITICS
"And God said, 'Let there be light . . .,' "but absenting myself from relig
squinting in the face of abundant light, I had to find some other voice of auth
divine the spirit. Such could be described as the dancers' plight, poor
entwined in the corporeal that they abandon themselves to the choreog
command. But in this sense the dancer is only a mild inversion of the m
leotard. For what has become an outspoken demand and response for th
has a silent partner in the choreography of everyday life. The mutual na
dancer and choreographer that transforms an empty space into a kinetic
ture, can reveal much about the more anonymous social physique that we
A study of how a dance is made, through the explicit direction and expression
body, can therefore serve as a map for those felt but perhaps unknown r
social experience. The dance as a social situation illustrates how the reache
twists and shimmers of the body, too often seen as the shadows of God's
themselves acts of worldly production and transformation.
Many questions are provoked by a study of dance. Yet, the constraints of
are as profound for the writer as they are for the dancer. I would like to ackn
some of the problems before turning to those I shall focus upon. The aesthetic
alone are numerous. Dance is a well fortified position from which to at
distinction between art and popular culture. The proliferation of dance a
practice in various forms continues in the neighborhood disco, dance
school. The line between professional and amateur is most often difficult
given the paucity and poverty of performance opportunities. Break dancin
the most recent example of coronated street expressions partitioned only
stage (ballet is an earlier example of this same phenomenon).
In turn, many of the postmodern camp have based their stage experien
that of the pedestrian and quotidian. These diverse forms themselves con
problem. Ballet is the wealthiest but modern dance is in many ways more prev
Further, dance forms appear to be cumulative, with the majority of output at
of the century still finding expression today. On the other hand, sense can be
out of periodizing dance output. In the 1930s in the United States, ther
conjunction between the emergence of new forms and the broader concern wi
assertion of will over the human condition. In the sixties, the movement
media into the realm of silence focused attention on the nonverbal bod
Dance as a Social Movement 55
The focus upon the body i

Modern dance has often been a haven from these issues. Jazz and other forms
anchored to particular musics have been an extension of them. Ballet has tended to
ossify gender roles. Among these divergences and diversities there remains
common subject; the body itself. The question of this subject's relation to politics
will concern and inform the pages that follow, while not excluding the problems
raised above. Before setting the reader loose on the text, I should like to privilege
certain issues, and ultimately a particular reading of the development of a danc
performance.
While it is certainly true that many forms of dance employ gestural vocabu-
laries that represent specific meanings (e.g., Balinese dance), and many choreog-
raphers use movement to symbolize states of being (Martha Graham is perhaps the
best known), much contemporary dance is decidedly non-symbolic and non-
signifying. For choreographers as diverse as the late George Balanchine, Merce
Cunningham, Trisha Brown, Alwin Nikolais, movement is abstract not symbolic.
A particular movement is not a sign because, while repeatable, it represents nothing
in and of itself. It is not a signifier to any signified. Rather, the movemen
communicates through its kinetic effects. Kinetic effects, the stimulation of the
senses or sentience, are feelings expressed directly from one body to another and
amongst a group of bodies. Hence, to study the experience of dance is to isolate
both the unique communicative aspect of the body and the moment of pure action of
an unrepresented (and unrepresentable) subject.
Isolating the workings of the body through a study of dance from "the inside "
may provide intriguing material for the next Broadway hit, but its pertinence t
political activity remains unclear. Let me spell out my case. It strikes me that on
reason the sign has enjoyed pre-eminence as an object of analysis is the con
vergence of the theoretical breakthrough of linguistic-based theory with the legac
of the role of consciousness in marxist thought. According to that legacy, con-
sciousness is the agent of political activity. When the appropriate class or social
group becomes aware of its position (objectively and subjectively) vis-a-vis the
social totality, it is on the road to reconstructing that totality. If, as in contemporary
society, the nature and contours of that totality are mystified or systematically
misrepresented linking (or deconstructing) signifier and signified may indeed
heighten a totalizing consciousness. The assumption however, is that som
threshold of consciousness constitutes an agent of activity. Yet it is action itsel
which appears impossible.
This is not simply a question of the appropriate organizational vehicle.
Demonstrations in the eighties have been as large as those of other times (e.g., one
million at the antinuclear rally in New York, June 12, 1982). Left parties continue to
appeal for unity under the higher symbolic authority of the correct line. Activist
from the labor to the feminist and environmentalist movements have not lost their
militance. Despite the persistance of all of these conscious expressions of opposi-
56
tion, sustained and widespread political action is illusive. Yet what seems to me
precluded from the consciousness scenario is how political activity can be entered
into and sustained. The suggested but absent term from such theory is, quite
literally, the desire to act politically.
Desire here will be defined as the physical agent of activity. The body as
subject in a social environment is both responsive to and a transformative element of
that environment. In this sense, the body is the seat of desire and desire a mode of
performance. Performance is always a production, a communication through
action. At its best, a study of dance as a phenomenology of the body can serve to
isolate desire as the absent cause in human social agency.
Desire has figured prominently in much postwar thought but in a shadow,
disembodied form. Whether as the difference between need and demand (Lacan),
the contradiction between signifier and signified (Kristeva), or a simpler loss and
thereby mnemonic longing for an infantile absolute (Kovel), desire has been
anchored to the sign and rooted within the conscious-unconscious axis of experi-
ence. To give desire positive force, to locate it in the body's performance, is to free
it from the sign and place it on another axis of experience, what could be termed
sentience. How these axes are coordinated is material for another discussion.
Suffice it to say for now that desire carries the sign through performance, but
itself unrepresentable. Movement of the body can be frozen into wordlike gesture
and decoded for meaning but this does not explain how that meaning is carried o
acted out. The value of the modem dance to be discussed here is that its movements
carry no meaning per se and so permit the analysis of the performance of movement
as the production of desire.
A methodological note is in order here. This study of dance is based upon my
experience in a New York pickup company (a group of dancers assembled for a
single run of performances). It traces the process of making a dance from first
rehearsal to performance. It is decidedly a text written from the standpoint of the
producer rather than the receiver of the dance. As was mentioned at the outset, this
is not a study of the aesthetics of dance or more pointedly how a dance is read,
perceived, or understood by a viewer. Instead, it is a report on the making of the
conditions for performance out of circumstances where the dancers initially are
themselves receptionists to the choreographer's command.
Hopefully, the writing of a productionist text turns the reader into a performer
caught in the midst of action without representation, as part of the totality that
makes the dance. Hence, instead of describing appearances of the dance which
could be analyzed as signs, only the actual mechanisms of production are detailed.
While no picture may emerge of what the dance actually looked like, some sense
may be imparted of the body's trajectory into performance. Those senses engaged
are the subject of the experience aimed at in this text. If a reader of these pages can
get a feeling of how desire is produced, this is the first step in understanding how
dance makes desire available to an audience. While an audience is only implied in
this account, a productionis

receive, for the dance is
To be useful in the polit
ness with desire), the dan
practice. While dance may
this is precisely an exam
political practice. It is des
company, while poised for
any community or totalizin
At the onset of the rehea
people, capital and labor
representation and as such
authority. In this sense,
means to realize it. Initially
people look to the state fo
exactly who wields pract
Dancers, like the citizenr
of misrepresentation. In
authority is transformed
practice. Performance ma
rapher's person to authorit
Hence the movement from
symbolic authority, exter
contained within and exp
The fit between dancer
absence is replaced by the
their demand. That demand however has made dancers both aware and sentient of
themselves as totality. In the case of state and people, we could say that authority
and audience are combined. State rule is executed by maintaining a watch on the
people. To move from that authority therefore would be to cast the eyes of the state
into opposition and the body of the people into action. The making of a dance then,
is a fable of liberation; the story of one group's response to conditions of authority.
In the process of their day to day response to the choreographer's command,
dancers form a communitiy which transcends those conditions of restraint. This is
achieved, paradoxically in the name of choreographic control. In the process of
embodying the choreographer's wishes, her authority is eclipsed. Domination
creates the conditions of its own transcendence. Demand is realized as desire.
Such scheming is appropriate for the stage. Indeed, the stage for political
theater permits a lived utopia. Particularly, when dreams are anchored to what is
(mis)represented as immediately possible, the path of ritualized performance like
dance can provide some inspiration for more quotidian histrionics.
I have asserted that the dance rehearsal process begins with the relations of
58
authority and totality found in the polity at large. From the point of view of the body
itself however, daily physical practice is much closer to performance than the initial
machinations of choreography. Rather than simply contradicting myself, I hope to
trace a dual movement in the description of choreographic process. On the one
hand, dancers begin to work under the rule of the sign as does everyone else. As the
rehearsals proceed, the power of the sign recedes and the dancers become a
collective social body intent upon moving an audience. The desire to act is
produced in performance. This is what I claim is absent from the quotidian body
politic. On the other hand, dancers begin the rehearsal process with a consciousness
of the body that would appear quite bizarre in daily life. In most moments, barring
pain, disability, danger, the body is felt and little thought about. Yet at every
moment the quotidian body is directed, commanded, socialized, choreographed
such that the body is viewed as a sign (gender, age, class) and desire is obscured.
When the choreographer of the body becomes explicit and concrete, as in the initial
stages of dancemaking, the otherwise invisible process through which the body is
signified comes to the fore. When the choreographer no longer actively organizes
the body in performance, her mark is left on the structure of movement that the
dancers bring to life.
On both levels of the dual movement described here, dancers transform
relative control to relative freedom. The movement from symbolic (external) to
abstract (internal) authority is a utopian model for the performance of politics. The
movement from conscious to sentient organization of the body, moves from a model
of constraint over physical behavior to something approaching daily physical
experience.
The transition from symbolic to abstract or choreographer's to dancer's author-
ity proceeds through a series of mediations. Some of the key transitions or media-
tions are outlined here, though each day of rehearsal layered new means as well as
new movement material on the dance to be. In the first rehearsals, the choreog-
rapher took movement that individual dancers had made, altered them, assgned
them to groups of dancers, and set them to the counts of the music she had selected.
The musical counts then were the first step that shifted authority from the choreog-
rapher's voice to that of an other. That other was the initial bridge between dancer
and choreographer.
Soon the choreographer began to introduce improvisation as a means of
procuring movement. The improvs consisted of rules which the dancers must
transcend both in order to turn ideas into actions, and to turn constraint into the
experiential freedom of movement, which in turn obscures the very existence of the
rules. Improvs regulate and totalize at the same time while authority is shifted into
the dancers' domain. Dancers have the means to produce movement collectively.
As the performance date approaches, they begin to arbitrate differences and
regulate rehearsal themselves.
In performance, the movement material, regardless of its source, takes on the
quality of improvisation. T
directed at the audienc
unnamed. In sum, choreo
group cannot realize the i
very mechanisms introdu
external authority that h
The choreographer's pred
state. They too, must struc
they surplus value or leg
body to assert its own ne
negative to be (mis)rep
should the left as an inte
consciousness but sentien
sustaining its own activi
formance distinctive fro
activity sentient of its pow
gait of politics?
FIRST MOVEMENT: CONTOURS OF A COMPANY
The company is the raw material out of which the dance will be hewn. It
body that must speak the choreographer's mind. Against the singulari
graphic authority, is the collectivity of the company that constitutes
dance will develop in the dialogue between these two. The relationship
one of command and response. At first the company only knows itself th
member's relation to the choreographer. As the rehearsals proceed,
will take on more of its own identity as totality itself becomes more
Totality then, is not the group of dancers themselves, but what they
producing as a group and this is certainly facilitated through their e
authority.
Authority and totality are relations particular to the creation of each dance.
Choreographers and dancers have lives and movement resources that precede and
inform each dance. In the interests of uniqueness, the choreographer must draw
from those histories as well as break from them. She must create an inside to the
rehearsal to which the rest of the world is an outside, while drawing from the riches
of that world. Setting up a rehearsal schedule is the first step towards that break. The
schedule carves up the dancers' space and time to reallocate it within the rehearsal.
The schedule correlates the diverse points of departure to their common arrival.
Hence, the authority-totality nexus commences on its own coordinates of space and
time.
The rehearsal space is flanked by a kitchen on one side and a bedroom on the
other. Its smooth polished wooden floorboards are tight together, facilitating falls
60
and slides. The red brick walls and sashes of fall afternoon window light give the
space a warmth and its rectangular proportions gives it the feeling of intimacy of
being tucked inside an envelope.
Our initial instructions are to break into two groups and begin teaching each
other phrases we composed on our own. After repeating the phrases three times, the
dancers have a rough idea of what they look like and can approximately dance them.
The choreographer does some editing, eliminating the arms from a turn and
rearranging the sequence of movements, or simplifying a movement so that others
can learn it more readily. We begin on the inside of the dance with our own
movement becoming the movement of others. We pick up immediately where we
left off before coming to the rehearsal, with movement we discovered before
coming into contact with the group. By making adjustments, assigning counts and
tempo according to the taped score, the choreographer places our individual
movement into the context of the group and implicitly, of the dance that is to
become.
Each dancer now has a range of several phrases, which also aligns them with a
group of dancers who know and do the same phrase. The choreographer's interven
tion begins by calibrating all of the phrases to the same time, thus removing them
from their creator's beat and applying them to the standard of the musical score. The
music applied to movement that knew nothing of it, already changes the rhythmic
and kinetic sense of the phrases. The counting turns the individual phrases into
boxcars on a train capable of being hitched and unhitched at any point. The
structural manipulation of boxcars is primarily a mechanical task and is executed by
the choreographer with the supervision of a trainyard controller.
We begin in two groups doing two phrases and in the middle of a phrase the
choreographer will stop us and have an individual change group allegiance. This
presupposes learning more movement and alludes back to the prevous process. The
choreographer must also select the spatial path of the groups, paths that utilize
contrast without inviting collision. The space is largely undifferentiated by the
existing movement and the choreographer's control consists of her arbitration of
difference at this point. There is no mirror in the studio and the choreographer is the
only outer eye. While each dancer has authority over their own body, only she ha
authority over the group. While each dancer must command their own body, their
internal space, the choreographer directs the overall disturbance in the space. We
dance now through the direction of the choreographer rather than with each other.
Our very isolation prohibits us from knowing difference, that is from knowing what
the other dancers are doing in the space at the same time. We cannot see the other
paths and our focus on the purely mechanical execution and memory of the steps
limits our feeling of the other dancers' presence. At this point, technique is what we
all bring to the rehearsal but it is also what separates us within it.
The process of learning phrases in groups, cutting and splicing them and
adding them to the existing sequence continues much in the same way for the firs
four rehearsals. The dance

or in pairs or trios, we bre
memorization is both of phr
these changes possible are t
administer continuity. They
The counts are an external
arbitrary delineations. After
beats (4/4 time), the chore
bar (5/4 time). The musica
found for either pattern.
While counting is itself a
are not. The individual p
(suggesting four-four or t
them from their original
syncopated, changed their
motional values for the for
"But it just doesn't work in
where it comes now. " At th
the movement was still driv
the counts demanded new
These new acts of production
In subordinating all indi
authority rendered all dance
could thereby provide a bas
When other sections of the
"the fives. " It was the on
At this point, the choreo
thorities in rehearsal. Not
synchrony, respectively, b
personal rivalries while th
SECOND MOVEMENT: DANCE FROM THE INSIDE
The first four rehearsals proceed as a series of hows. The focus is on

execution of movement within the space. Caught up in the how, the
know little of the why, or sense of the movement. From the first,
moments where the movement was exciting or engaging. There ar
each of us where we feel we are really "dancing." But it is not clea
dancing for. The dancers have feelings of motional satisfaction
kinetic. But the sequence of movement has not formed a particula
would favor one kinetic interpretation over another. Whereas kin
stolen moments for individual dancers, by the third week with thr
62
week, this begins to change. The dancers' kinetic moments enter the real time of the
rehearsal. The rehearsal process begins to concern itself with what will become the
aesthetic content of the piece, the movement's intent.
As the discussion and nature of the choreographic problem is no longer purely
technical, so do the relations between authority and totality change. Where there
was visible only scaffolding, now is visible something of the building to be, for the
structure is given some basis of identifying itself that is not contingent on its
support. Where totality was subordinate to authority through the demands of
technique, now the two meet on more equal footing. The new terms of encounter
are a consequence of the demand for kinetic intention which is itself a product of
that encounter. Kinetics are the dancers' response to a motional situation, though
the choreographer must find the means to create those situations.
Between the third and the seventh week of rehearsal, authority and totality will
make their contribution to the possibility of a specific kinetic intention. Authority
establishes a means of exchange between dancers and choreographer that permits
the creation of movement within and by the rehearsal process, improvisation.
Authority generates a set of rules that bound the conditions for making movement.
Through rehearsals, dancers erect a form of community that is both a bastion and
expression of totality. The community is a response to the rules which permit the
passage of the rehearsal from the production of movement to kinetic expression.
This passage is marked by the shift of emphasis from technical solutions to
mechanical problems (codeterminous movement), to kinetic solutions to technical
problems (performance).
In this next phase of the choreographic process, the choreographer begins to
speak of quality, the "what" of the movement. Quality defines the nature of the
movement's execution. It gives dancing a point of view which can then crystallize
into an intention. As such, quality is a window between technicity and kinetic
motivation. It is a surface that borders both worlds. Quality is not itself intention,
for just as in speech, the tonal manipulations of a word can change but not explain
its meaning, so quality is only part of what displays a kinetic intention. It is the part
that is accessible through the exchange between choreographer and dancers.
The dance now only exists in groups. Just as the individual changes that
dancers make are now always group changes, now individual kinetics depends
increasingly upon collective moments. The experiential change in one's own body
is a function of the changing environment of bodies. The break with synchronicity,
continuity, and allegiance are the same moment in which kinetic effects occur. That
is, kinetics occur within relational differences rather than personal changes. By
creating a form which can be filled, spacing like quality builds kinetic moments.
The phrasemaker's authority which begins with teaching movement and regulating
counts, is extended to maintain the spatial integrity within the group. Dancers
return to the person who originally made the phrase for clarification of movement to
achieve spatial uniformity within the group. The phrasemakers are called upon to
refine the movement bey

ously the tuning of the g
departures of individuals
created. This creative pro
At the same time that q
another method is added
brought to rehearsal fro
emerges as the new struc
meeting ground of wha
technique, and what they
visation as a means to ex
choreographer at the same
choreographer cannot imag
they could improvise and
choreographer contributed
Now that improvs are a co
among dancers are disco
relationships among danc
covery do not recede in t
lowed the technique-bas
improvisation.
The first improvisations were simple problems in search of a technical solu-
tion. In pairs we assumed a mutually encoiled position, one on the floor, the other
standing. While the former uncoiled and slid away, the latter fell in an arch over
them. The choreographer watched while we worked simultaneously, letting her eye
get attracted from one couple to the next. Struck by an event, she would call on the
rest of us to replicate the actions of the one. "Let's all do what (Ginger)'s doing.
Hold there, now bend your torso. There! Anne's got it. With the head on the floor.
Yes." The movement is constructed as a composite across individual dancers'
bodies. It is also the product of a collective body which is beyond each of theirs. For
a moment the choreographer follows the dancers, the dancers forget what they have
learned about movement and respond with the developed resiliency of their bodies
to the demands of the problem.
The improvisation terminates when a working solution is found. Yet, at the
moment of selection, the logic of what works is not clear. A working solution is not
merely one that fulfills the problem's function. There were many solutions that
achieved a balanced fall and recovery. The problem only suggested a response; it
did not prescribe a means of selection. The composite movement is actually a series
of selections, each sharing in the discovery. Like the premium awarded to unique-
ness in an inspector's adjudication, the selection of movement is determined at the
moment the bounds of the problem are transcended. The surprise of discovery
eclipses the problem's demand and seals the decision. The choreographer finds
64
what could not be imagined in setting up the problem, the body's response.
Improvisation as choreographic process disappears with selection. Dancing our
way out of the problem led to a solution that would no longer be improvised. With
the setting of the movement, however, the improvisational kinetics remain. The one
dancer still triggers the other's movement. The surprise in the discovery then are the
kinetics themselves, unimaginable responses that speak directly to the body.
Improvisation bounds time and space to free the dancer within them. Improvi-
sation is the limit that permits limitlessness, the scarcity that creates abundance, the
rules that invite breaking. The freedom is relative. The dancer soars, shifts, stops,
unaware of the structure that has become a silent authority; transcending the rules
obscures their constraint.
The investment of the body over the mind's intelligence, in the very materials
of the work, transfers the source of creation into its mode of expression. This is not
to imply that the medium is the message, but simply that it has one. The body speaks
through its own kinetic means. But kinetics are possible in the dance because
imrovisational situations were imagined and assigned. The autonomy of the body's
means of articulation is embedded within other systems of communication. In
finding means to transcend those other systems (improvisation), a space is cleared
for the experience of physical intent. The filling of a stage or a canvas with a system
of surprises-as-solutions makes a piece work. Work, not in the sense of fulfilling a
function or imparting a message, but work in the sense of a formation of actions
performed on a relation of objects. This is the work in a work of art. Dance is an
intrusion in space and what it displaces is felt as a new spatial environment between
dancer and audience. A painting similarly moves visual orientation. Hence, in a
literal sense, art works, and by working it has effects.
By the end of the sixth week there is a kind of send-off that marks the recession
of authority as directing the choreographic process and the ascension of totality,
albeit molded by the choreographer as constituting dance making. The functions of
spacing and what is called picking (corroborating movement at certain points), shift
from an inner to an outer focus. Spacing had been something to insure the survival
of the dancers in the space. Spatial intervals were set to prevent collisions, create
openings for groups to pass one another, and to maintain the identity of the groups
to those within them. Now spacing is set so that the section can be danced
"full-out " (i.e., performed). The activity is the same but its different ends give it a
more precise focus. Conversely, dancing with full energy and commitment (to
intention) requires more precise spacing. Positions and shapes of the body are
approached with the same precision. All the dancers in a group would stand side by
side and extend their legs to see whose was lowest, setting the position of the leg to
that level. Suddenly dancers are dancing not to execute steps in concert, but to be
seen. As the focus of the rehearsal shifts from apprehension to performance, the
dancers shift from input to output and their relation to the choreographer changes
from leader to audience.
The choreographer sta

we're ready to perform t
steps. " Later she clarifie
and there are some beautifu
can see the confusion. You
order to make it legible. I
stands out right away. "
technique. Legibility is ac
assumption is that when
form it will be read by th
they address only what i
appears that meaning in m
remains, what is fulfilled
is an expressive intent to d
The process of that revel
chipping away at incoher
THIRD MOVEMENT: TO SEE AND BE SEEN
Seven weeks of rehearsals have yielded a dance company. The compan

totality, a community, that places demands for choreographic meanin
articulate kinetic desire. That is to say it is a social totality that embod
raphic authority and dancerly totality. Up to now the choreographer has he
conception the soul or essence of the entire work, or at least a yearnin
essence that has driven the rehearsal process. The choreographer has som
wants to say, and forges the rehearsal process to say it. But just when she w
that voice, when the dance is complete, the body that her yearning i
materialized in those of the dancers. Her desire to speak becomes their
The last weeks of rehearsal appear to accelerate. The audience to be
dancers towards the performance date. The primacy of totality is both refl
essential. For the dancers who refine the movement through technique
produce something beyond it, this time marks the receding role of th
embodied in the person of the choreographer. For all the excitement of the
process, perhaps one of the cruelties of choreography is that it leaves t
rapher not so far from where she began. Shortly before a performance she
"I feel depressed, sort of let down and empty because now my part in the c
over. " As the essence of the piece is realized and passes into danced e
itself, the choreographer's loss makes performance possible. The dancer
been continuous. The choreographer's loss is almost as sudden as the a
surprise. The choreographer's effect on the dancers is concentrated in their
the audience. Performance, the moment when dancers are at their fu
subject of dance, when their experience of dancing is truly totalizing,
66
instance when the dancers' bodies are the pure object of the audience's eye. It is the
dancers' vision that reveals themselves.
Improvisation has reached a new level of refinement and complexity in th
rehearsal. Dancers improvise entire sections, and all the dancing takes on some
thing of the freshness of kinetic problem solving. Needless to say, it is improvis
tion that characterizes the quotidian experience of the body. In our daily lives w
have one shot to deal with the problems posed by motional situations. It is difficu
to imagine repeatedly walking up a crowded staircase to find another path down
and yet this is what the dancer does in the choreographic process. Perhaps this
why quotidian movements are so constrained and authority never yields to totalit
in a moment of performance. By successively breaking the bounds of the motion
problem, dancers create an autonomy for totality, albeit a totality that has inte
nalized authority. Even this independence is checked when the new found subjec
meets its object in performance (dancers dance to be seen).
For the streetwalker and the walker of the street, what the making of a dance
reveals is something of the conditions of freedom for the body. The community the
dancers erect which has the body's expression at heart, brings to the sentient fo
what is peripheral in most people's lives. Hopefully, in the moment of performance,
what the dancers produce can move the audience from periphery to centerstage. The
public body departs the theater with the motion towards the forefront intact. B
stimulating the kinetic life of the audience, by privileging their bodies' possibili
for action, the dance lives on beyond the stage. If social movements could re-
embody this desire, then the political potential of dance could be realized. Havin
anticipated the final bows, let me return to the process of contemplating the dance.
The Saturday before the show we worked in the theater space for the first time.
It is considerably larger than any space we have worked in before. After running the
piece through, the immediate problems were spacing and projecting the movemen
outside the dance space. The group seemed to naturally turn to the fives as the place
to work out the problems. But immediately there was a polarization between tho
who wanted to discuss the points of difference and the ones who wanted to resol
the problems by dancing. The choreographer was busied with other aspects of th
concert and did not mediate these decisions. Whereas four weeks ago, the dancer
would almost shyly confront spacing problems, that air of politeness was absent
from the current proceedings. The conflict, however, only served to strengthen the
relations of polity as assent was given to argument. This time it was decided in favor
of the whole, at another time a part was picked at. Tensions flared quickly as
accusations were made on "mistaken" movements but just as quickly a decision
would be negotiated and the episode would be dropped. There was an understand
ing, hastened by time constraints, that adjudication of difference was not onl
possible but permissible.
The second problem posed by the new space was how to project movement
that was qualitatively introspective across a large space. This question was posed
the choreographer in a way

the piece as a whole. Once
to her, an overall stateme
meaning. The choreograph
ment be projected into th
was to be incandescent. T
uncertainty about the dra
To the dancers' internal
could only offer differen
"layering of images" and
dancers' experience belied
rather a sentient one. For
demanded articulation, th
The dancers now could of
been mute on questions o
flowed. Statements were
victimizer to victimized
theme of scarcity, on the
movement, and so on.
Suddenly the dancers had
of the totality of the piece
her voice rose above the res
volition. When a dancer s
rapher replied, "You shoul
the other way around. It
The dancers' question com
understanding as a need to
demand that experience b
these needs are expressed
intent is as yet without
demand for esthetic clarity
upon the parts.
Up until the very aftern
remain the barometer of th
is actually run. No matter
ity remains the dancers' w
reflection is blurred and pa
as such helps to allay nerv
the work on the dance oc
metronymic function of th
instance, frustrated with
music to set cues. It was th
68
listened to the music together. The music cues became physicalized signposts
outside of any individual dancer yet experienced by all as an interalized objectivity.
The musicalization of the collective body as opposed to the individual's movement
helped to etch the kinetic divisions of the space.
The eve of the performance was a combination dress and lighting rehearsal.
All of the elements (except the public) were introduced which would transform this
space into a specialized performance sphere. The new bounds of the space (lights,
equipment, and a black plastic cover called a marley floor), introduce their own set
of technical constraints to the dancing. Although we have adjusted our spacing to
fill the space, we must now readjust it to stay in the lights which have been set for
fixed points. In the darkness outside the light, we cannot see beyond the floor (and
sometimes not even the floor itself) to the darkened cavity where the audience sits.
Nor can we see the stage from the wings and so we lose many visual cues for
entrances to new sections. In each of the wings there is now a lighting stand with
tiers of lights, and other equipment which must be avoided, without diminishing the
velocity of a backwards running exit. In short, the dancers' visual sense is eroded in
the performance space both by bright lights and by darkness.
The effect of the loss of sight is to heighten the tactile senses in performance,
and in turn contribute to the kinetic experience of the dancer. The additional
boundedness of the performance space helps to crystalize the intent in performance.
The space has been rendered special and also specialized in a way that gives closure
to the rehearsal process and creates a distinctive realm of performance. Lights also
contribute to the difference of performance with their own sentient effects. High
and low density, reds or blues, excite the body in different ways, as has been noted
in any stage manual. But lights also increase the partisanship of the space as a real
landscape upon which the dancers intrude. The more strongly the space is carved by
lights, the more intense the dancers' disturbance of the space. The outer disturbance
reverberates within the dancer's body and draws the dancer ever more deeply inside
the kinetic life of the performance.
It is simple enough to state that what is produced in performance is kinetic
intent, which has been expressed previously as the dancers' desire. The passage
from authority to totality secures performance as the world of desire, whose
expression is displayed on the stage but not named. The difference between the
experience that the choreographer conceives and the audience consumes, and the
one that the dancers peform can best be communicated by tracing the dancers'
journey through the work. It is here, in and through the work that the dancer is
moved to act not as individual but as social body. It is this social body that the
audience will receive and return to their daily movements with.
In the dance before the last piece, I played the comic role of a mime replete
with clownface. The removal of that face aided my transition into another body.
The new body already felt softer, more ragged and exposed than the other. When I
took my place in the third wing, in the moment of silent darkness before the piece
began, I felt strangely alo

initiated the piece, the lig
I do not see her, she is w
are marked singly by the d
dropped before the one
symbolized by the stick. Bu
my vision. The space is war
position. The map is com
through my ears down t
movement. My head swings
embrace the space we disp
the stage. The constant cr
The first moments of the d
path of a passing figure.
form a wedge that cuts th
only to bounce back at a
quality I had before ente
through which I register th
moments when I think of n
my next change. I am ins
drawing. The other dan
possibilities appear infini
instant of their execution
nothing to measure wher
that is me is going. That
made. There is a flash of re
up the phrase and I feel the
right and feel the group
before myself changing
the periphery of the stage
suspend this movement just
The fives have ended an
deposited downstage. I tak
another dancer. Stealthin
adversaries while my body
taken, I bolt from the line
have put in the space that
where another is standing
heart beating in my ears an
bed of sticks. The last runn
Her weight courses from m
torso to my feet. She cro
70
Regroup. Again. The final catch downstage keeps her from the audience's lap.
Against my back, the thanks. I exit for the stick dance though part of me is still on
stage. Entering again with a long cloth five feet high, four of us partition the stage.
My body tenses holding and moving the cloth while others are displayed in the
gaps. I am replaced as holder and spill through the gap downstage of the partition
followed by the others of the gang of five. I fall back to lift another dancer onto the
stage. We are one shape until we jump away and the group moves in unison. We fall
to the floor and I am anchor to four bodies arched above me. One rolls over me,
another around and I am squeezed through the legs of a third to spin up and swath
my own arc on the stage. I am alone now between the cloth and the public. The
thunderous crossings have been reduced to one figure and my body bears that recent
history. My body lurches to the air, and for that instant I am suspended seemingly in
the middle of the entire space. The sharp inhale that has brought me here feels as if it
has been drawn from just beyond the seats and tousled a few hairs on its way to my
lungs. I turn on my shoulder and feel the viscera through the darkness. The music
warns me. Another distorted jump and I shoot myself into the wings, the cloth
follows and the space is emptied of all but the energy that has been left there. The
choreographer tickles through her second solo. I am still soft, and warm. The
plumbobs are released. There are three that arc their way across the stage. We roll
on underneath, pulled unevenly by the pendular magnetism overhead. I curl up to
my knees as the bob is revolved around me. There are three of us on stage now,
inside the circumference of the bobs. I feel my movement through the changes of
the others. Weight drops to my right and I spring up. The bob swings closer, the
sparks collide inside me. I catch the bob as the company enters. The center bob is
run round again creating a cone that we enter singly until all are inside. The bob
swings. The diameter narrows. We move closer. We are pressed on top of one
another. There is nothing outside the cone, we have drawn in all the dancers, all the
space, all the audience. I am alone in here. We help each other inadvertently. We are
pressed into a pyramid. There is no more singular action, there is no room. We are
the available space. We draw our breath in. The audience deposits theirs with us. I
am on top of the pyramid, my hand reaches up the center of the cone. The bob
almost brushing our skins, still revolves. The lights and music fade.

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Dance as a Social Movement

Author(s): Randy Martin

WARMING-UP TO PHYSICAL POLITICS

The focus upon the body i

this account, a productionis

FIRST MOVEMENT: CONTOURS OF A COMPANY

four rehearsals. The dance

SECOND MOVEMENT: DANCE FROM THE INSIDE

The first four rehearsals proceed as a series of hows. The focus is on

refine the movement bey

The choreographer sta

THIRD MOVEMENT: TO SEE AND BE SEEN

Seven weeks of rehearsals have yielded a dance company. The compan

the choreographer in a way

began, I felt strangely alo

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