What can I dance to?
Part 1 - Annie-B Parson & dancing to words
This post is part 1 of a two part essay on the choreography of everyday life, as Annie-B Parson calls it in her book of the same name1 The second part will be out soon. If you like this post, let me know, or even better let someone else know! And if you’re intrigued about what’s coming down the line, hit subscribe and you’ll get each episode by email as it’s published (unless you’ve already subscribed, in which case, I thank you!)
What can I dance to?
This is a music publication, but I’ve always been intrigued about how dance, something so intrinsically rhythmic and essentially human, can emerge in every part of our lives. We dance, don’t we, all the time? At the very least, we use ‘dance’ as an analogy for life, and we could also consider that every time we move, we are dancing too. Maybe this is essential? Maybe there are intrinsic needs in the human ‘body in time and space’, as Annie-B Parson suggests? A ‘something’ that the aesthetics of ‘dance’ emerges from, but more fundamental than that?
Next time you’re in a place where living things are around (which is most places), just cast your eye to the patterns they are forming, the movements they are making, and you’ll see that there is choreography there.
And who gets to dance? We could say that the dance creates the music. How do ‘tough guys’ move? How do crows fly? How do queer folk mark out their difference, their divergence in movement? Notice these, and there’ll be a bird call, drum beat, a shuffle or an arpeggio that can make a noise. That’s the music that comes from the dance.
1 Word dancing
A few years ago, around 2014, I thought I’d carry out a small poetry experiment. What would it be like to write a dance to words – a spoken dance? At the time, I did not see myself as a dancer, so this seemed primarily an inquiry in and of words. I thought I might write a series, but it never really caught.
The poem I did write – A Spoken Dance – didn't find a ‘home’ anywhere, but it stuck around. Once day, I thought, maybe someone will dance it.
Now, I am wondering: What might be the music that could emerge from it? What might the dance look like if there was someone watching? What might it sound like if there were people listening?
A Spoken Dance
From spark to life, from born to fledgling, an arm emerges, a foot.
The dancer rises, sniffs the wind, slides across the floor into the world, grows fur, evolves. Slither to crawl, pad to scamper, exploring foothills, going nowhere.
Touches beauty, wanders fast in implicit rhythm, grows as a child, as a lamb, as a foal, a cub and a calf, sneaking play from the serious; overlaying development on the traces of fate,
then whirling into life, and dancing on staccato heels, hope draining as the clock winds down, cogs whirring, the troubling faint sounds of motion.
Time passes, journeys are mingled. There is a first broken experience of loss, as doom slowly rises, a nuanced set of movements involving the eyes, lips, feet, fingers, as the body stays stock still.
It feels meditative, like a deep pool to be lost in, a forest wandered through; no borders, just the occasional clearing. From dapple to shine, from chill to enveloping warmth.
Just a place to rest in. Then to dance on.
Above is a spoken version of Spoken Dance. You could choose to dance to the voice rather than the words on the screen if you like…
2 Can we dance a book?
Having rediscovered this poem, I also re-read Annie-B Parson’s astonishing book, ‘The Choreography of Everyday Life’. She writes on the first page:
“I am a choreographer by trade. and it’s an unusual profession: to make and sell dances. The material, the stuff of dances, is the body, and turning that into something transactional has always struck me as contradictory, because when people first danced, it was essentially in physical agreement executing poeticised, ritual actions
in a circle”
For me, this could have been the start of a philosophical reflection, but I realised, reading it again, that this paragraph itself is also a spoken dance. It’s something you could dance to. Something music could be made from. Something we could all move to. Read it like that – with rhythm, movement and form – and you will see what I mean.
Here (above) is a spoken version.. You might choose to dance to the voice rather than the words on the screen…
I hadn't really thought of this until now, but reading and relating is everyday life, as much as walking, wheeling and working is for some, and so when I read this small book with a choreographic title, I could choose to dance the whole thing!
However, I find that Annie-B has got there first. On page 45 she transcribes a piece she wrote entitled:
“A Text Where the Reader Choreographs the Dances in Their Mind as They Read, Because the Dances are Gone.”
And in between each paragraph of an imagined monologue by a dancer named Elizabeth, there is a
“(dance)”
3 Can we dance the words?
We could dance the whole of her book, I think, alone or in circles. Perhaps we could dance any book? Take them all off the shelves and boogie on down…
So, reader, can we check this out? Here’s a couple of paragraphs taken randomly from Annie-B Parson’s book. Am I right? Can we dance them? What would it be like to dance this text – or my poem – alone, with a partner, in community… in a circle? There are spoken versions too. You might choose to try your dance to the voice rather than the words on the screen if you like…
Here goes (from page 63):
“Once in that same bookstore, now closed, I heard a young author, who was also a comedian, use a phrase that stuck with me; I heard it, I remembered it, but never wrote it down. Here I type out the phrase once and for all, and take a look at it:
the flower strewn median strip on the highway of my mind”
…and here goes again – a fragment of a COVID dance, perhaps (from page 82):
“In April in the late afternoon we sit in our shelter and sew by hand, at the kitchen table we sew and listen to the governor on the radio as the infection numbers rise. Now it is May and this cloth face covering can be bought on the street, and in our city, everyone is wearing one; our faces have gained an adaptation of an erased mouth and nose, so it’s hard to know what anyone thinks, but we as a city are proud of
[Here in this space, evenly clap or tap, 1,2,3,4]
adhering to our directive. It is June and our costume is now weaponized and politicised, but it’s just a small bit of fabric with two ties, and costs almost nothing.”
4 The body, moving…
I think dance is on my mind these days because I am beginning to write about music. I have held off from writing this, so it stands to reason that I may have been holding off from dancing too. This is a conditioned thing – partly a male thing, I realise, and I am a little ashamed of myself for this.
I know it is true that I held off dancing, as I held off singing and playing, because when I do get to dance, I bloody dance. I move like I imagine I would move if I had choreographed my words, my everyday life, for all my life. As if I had known that this was possible for me.
People dance in so many ways. And they might be offered the material for a dance differently too. If you can hear music, you move in whatever way your body takes you. If you can read words, you can move your body that way too. If you see music in colours, or hear or taste textures, your body will dance differently. And if your body moves to self stimulate or express itself anyway, it may not need the music or the words at all…
The moving body has so many connotations, so many assumption hidden within it and beyond. On the surface, the skin is only part of it, though the colour of it might dictate how the body is moved – how it is allowed and enabled to be moved. The ‘gendered’ body too, and the ‘sex’. I don’t just mean ‘sexuality’ here, but the visceral ways our bodies feel like moving – or not – in the conditioned everyday, and in the extraordinary freeing days of what might become our transformation.
I thought of this last bit – about transformation, and possibly healing too – when I came across this video. I typed in ‘Spoken Dance’ and this came up:2
Tell me this isn’t about music? Tell me this isn’t about life?
There’s music – awesome music – just waiting to to be conjured from it. But the thing is, it doesn’t need to be. It doesn’t need anything more than is already there. Like the poem, the dancing paragraphs and pounding bass-lines, it is enough.
And this piece is also a dance in waiting. So, just move it….
Out soon: Part two of this meditation on the choreography of everyday life entitled: What, can I dance, too? Who gets to dance and move? And who needs to?
Notes
Annie-B Parson’s book, The Choreography of Everyday Life is published by Verso Books (2022): “A renowned choreographer explores the dance of everyday life and reveals that art-making is as natural as walking down the street.” It’s a very special thing, like an improvisation right there on the page: https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/2863-the-choreography-of-everyday-life
This 2018 video, S.O.U.P was written and choreographed by Sam Ahmed, and filmed by Asaph Gaspi. The dancers: Dana Douthwaite, Alexandra Evans, Eric Llamas Flores and Travis Vo: “How do we measure the validity of mental health? Which illnesses do we consider ‘sick enough’ to treat and manage? How do doctors and the medical industry use power when it comes to providing good affordable care, and setting the standard for social stigma?”.