Feeling the dancer inside means feeling a heightened sensitivity to fluid movement, grace, and rhythm. It means feeling and living within, and sometimes against, the pull of gravity, wind, and the ebb and flow of tides.
George Balanchine, the neoclassical ballet innovator, choreographer, dancer, musician, and co-founder of the New York City Ballet, told his dancers to watch and study the movement of cats to enhance their quality of jumping and landing from jumps. When a cat falls off a couch, for example, they right themselves and land on their feet noiselessly. They spring, and pounce, in a fluid motion where all parts of their bodies work together. When they are not moving, they are often in suspended animation, waiting and watching, or purring in place. They move within gravity, or defy it, but their motions look neither haphazard nor clunky. This is how I see dance in cats.
Have you ever watched a tree move? Trees don’t move their feet (roots). Unless they are buffeted by a violent storm, they stay where they are – their feet firmly implanted in the earth. They, like cats, are not often entirely still though. They, too, are often in the pause of suspended animation. They bend and sway.
One of my favorite trees to watch is the aspen. The one I am thinking of is called a “quaking aspen.” Find a video of one on the internet and you’ll see what I mean. They don’t quake exactly (not in the earthquake sense) but their leaves tremble. They are not as still as corps de ballet members often must be – unnaturally still when holding a pose. They do stand in place, in their fixed orientation to one another, but they shimmer with Bob Fosse “jazz hands”. They also sway, both in their trunks and arms. Their movement is fluid and bendy and this is part of their green health – it’s when they become old and rigid that they break in the wind. This is how I see dance in trees.
I once went to a dance conference where there was a presentation on dance film. Yes, dance film, not dance ON film. Here is the difference: dance film is when the medium of film is used in the dance – it’s not just a recording of a dance performance as a substitute for watching the dance live and in person. In the conference, the dance filmmaker showed a film of a dancer in various places in nature moving with the various elements. She also cut away to show just the natural elements as well.
My favorite part of the film was an extended section of a close-up on the lip of a large body of ocean water flowing and ebbing over slippery grey, round stones. The salty, cold water first spread out over the stones, darkening and chilling them. It paused for a moment at the end of its extended reach of white foam. Then it retreated back, exposing the stones once again to light and sun. A few little creatures scurried among the rocks – baby crabs? – and the retreat also revealed patches of green slimy seaweed, and stones with white, crusty barnacles on them. The heat and light of the sun shone down, and you could hear the crash of rolling surf in the distance, the husshhhh of the waves, and the cry of seagulls. It was a glorious, rhythmic mess of movement, life, and orchestral, harmonic sound. This is how I see dance at the edge of the ocean.
I see the dance in these things not just with my eyes. I respond to them from within. My muscles can tense, spring, and retract. I can root myself to one place and do my best to shimmer within it, bending and swaying with the winds of change. My breath and my blood flows within me and retreats to flow and retreat again.