On the Fourth Day...

It's the 21st March 2013 and I have had an interesting week.  Not a week of revelations.  More a week of spontaneous happenings.  A work colleague's son was performing at the Queen Elizabeth Hall yesterday afternoon and I was able to get the last available ticket.  It was a dance event performed by a variety of groups from different schools.  They had been helped by the Rambert Dance Company.  The majority of the schools were primary schools.  The performances ranged from amazingly accomplished to pretty good but all were worth seeing.

I can't dance.  It's one of life's great tragedies but I live with the sure knowledge that Nureyev would not have perceived me as competition.  Having said that, as I have got older I have learnt to appreciate the various types of dance.  Something about the energy, colours and above all, the ideas.  It's odd but essentially dance is a variation on visual art as it touches the same emotional buttons that a painting in a canvas or sculpture presses.  Dance performances begin with ideas, sometimes themes and on occasions, narratives.  Ballets seem to be more narrative based, whereas contemporary dance is much more thematic.  I remember seeing something called 'The Rodin Project' at Saddler's Wells created by the Russell Maliphant Company with a friend.  It was based on the works of the sculptor, Rodin.  It wasn't the most impressive performance I have ever seen, but it was worth seeing.

Contemporary dance regularly has a physicality about it, a visceral, violent jolt.  A depiction of emotional extremes.  Broken love affairs, shattered dreams connoted through limbs tautly stretched and bodies flung across dirty floors.  A brilliant dance piece I had the pleasure to see awhile ago at The Print Room with a friend was 'Flow'.  'Flow' is Hubert Essakow's exploration of water and its many forms.  You know that you are in for a treat when you are invited to wear an 'overcoat' (okay, bin bag with a hole cut out for your head) because you 'might get a bit wet'.  There's something truly magical about sitting around a pool shaped pit in the dark, looking at about fifty other people all wearing bin bags.  The performance had a magical quality about it until the last ten minutes when the audience had water kicked at them by attractive performers. 

I think as I have aged, I have grown to appreciate the nuances of movement.  Importantly, I have learnt to understand that the moments of statis intermersed within physical performances, allows for respite and indeed, imbues the frenetic quality of movement with greater meaning.  Dance is as much about the subtle as the vigorous.  The gentle and stationary serves an important role in conveying emotion.  In the same way that silence can be inserted into a piece of music to allow for a moment of reflection or simply to calm down the listener and the performers.

This week, I have done other things too but this isn't a conventional journal and quite frankly, who wants to know about my peculiar desires and aspirations?

                                                                                            Barry Watt - 21st March 2013