electronic impulses from brain to fingers; directed? sometimes. random? always.
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Chinkie for life.
NorCal for life.
Bruin for life.
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Sunday, September 28, 2003
09282003
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Conceptual Communication
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popping can often be considered a trial of illusion. the dancer him/herself is the one responsible for imparting a type of mindset, a certain mode of thinking for the audience. when one hits (tenses the muscles), it is for emphasis, like an exclamatory function of the grammar of body language. the dance style can be thought of as a show of mastery over another person's mind. if a dancer's body can make an audience feel or think a certain way, that is power; moreover, if a dancer can both control what his/her body is expressing, and what/how the audience is interpreting, that is absolute power.
the written word has two powerful forms, as a visual form and as a sonic. it is obvious then that to transfer this medium to another would be in one of two ways: speaking is the oral/verybal/sonic equivalent (with music being the ultimate essence of such communication), while body language is the visual parallel (with dance being this relative ultimate essence). On a sidenote, food and flavor would be another parallel (use all the words you want to describe the sweet rich flavor of a chocolate cake moist with freshness that it melts before the flavor hits you, the only thing that will truly communicate the taste is the cake itself [because what the chef intended to be known transcends words]).
in communication, in the act of communicating from one person to another,
it would seem to me that the 'burden' or responsibility of conveyance of thought must rely on the speaker, the originator of the thought. this is so because the originator would or should want to achieve a full understanding of his words from his listener. True, half of the interpretation/communication is the listener, but the power of a listener is always dictated by the power of a speaker; a listener can only hear what is being said, and if what is said serves no purpose or isn't complete, the listener can't correctly perform his/her task of interpretation.
the goal of the originator of the communication is to have the listener/receptor hear exactly what is being communicated, in the way that it was communicated, and interpreting the communicae exactly how it was meant to be interpreted -- the achievement of understanding between the two.
using language and possibly even a strategy involving language, a speaker/writer/dancer (communicator) may attempt to convey something specific, to illicit a certain specific response to a certain specific concept, thought or idea. Imagery, descriptive speech are tools often used to accomplish this. Vivid language has a way of making the listener/viewer (receptor) respond in a way that the originator intended for them to respond. for a writer this is in the use of imagery and expressive descriptions of people, places, things, ideas, concepts, stories; for a speaker this can be in the use of the voice, changing with the words to emphasize and to add dynamic, tone, emotion; for a dancer, this is in the use of the muscles, the appendages, and the aesthetics of the body and its forms.
if a person can place a viewer in a certain frame of mind and way of thinking by using his/her words, body, or voice, to me that is mastery.
the conceptual aspects of conscious dance, like botting, tutting, waving, where the body takes on a specific context/vernacular of movement and where the mind uses all its energy in one concept are what intrigue me most about popping because they force the viewer to see what the body does. if a dancer successfully achieves an outward expression of a certain mindset that he/herself is having to his/her audience, he/she has mastered the language and controlled the expression.
At the deepest level, the communicator has controlled him/herself enough to control others (reference Lao Tzu, Taoism).
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doobin @ 2:00 AM
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