ChoreoNotes
Movement, Metaphor and the Power and Dance

By Letty Bassart

Where does image meet movement and words meet metaphor?

Like so many art forms, choreographers dip into words, images, texts, music and voice with varying frequency. When does this offer magic and depth and when does it disappoint us, the audience and the creator?

The still image, immediate and unequivocal in its power to connect to something unrecognizable within can be surprising and enchanting.  Imagery that stems from genuine exploration, albeit pushing physical limitations, emotions, textures, or movement can be breathtaking.   While those images that in their stillness become stagnant, movers become more like mannequins in a window than artists.  It is those images that stack themselves, seamlessly moving one into to the other, stacking themselves like rectangular pieces of sod where an inch of dirt teeming with life connects to a zillion blades of grass and the grass extends into the dirt, and so on---that bring us into something seamless. 

Words before the reader enter slowly, each letter percolates through our consciousness.  For me the trouble with extreme literalness is that it can lack vision and in some cases voice.   Where does the literal meet the metaphor?  When does metaphor become too inaccessible? 

For me the beauty of dance is the opportunity to create and witness the experience of the mover as him or herself.  For me dance at its best, whether they it is choreographed or improvised, whether it incorporates film or text, whether it is accompanied by exquisite musical compositions or not, whether it is filled with texture or stark, must be of the movers.  It is vital the movement be absorbed in their bodies in the same way that sunlight and darkness are absorbed by our skin and eyelids.