Tag: connection

Getting Grounded to Take Flight

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When I first had an inkling that I was going to need physical therapy for my knees, before I even got the official word from my orthopedist, I started to research PTs because I wanted to make sure I saw one who worked with dancers. There was no way I was going to see a PT who didn’t understand why I had to keep dancing at least a little bit while I recovered from my injuries. Lucky for me, Doctors for Dancers had just launched and a PT local to my area had added herself to the database of dance specialists.

Two+ years later, we’ve gotten my knees back into dancing shape (mostly), but we’re still working together on other issues. Besides just directly working on healing my body, my PT has been helping me better understand my body and increase my body awareness, which has just been a boon to my dance training!

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Is Dance a Relatable Art Form? Part 2

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Welcome back, dancers!

Last time, I told you about a podcast I had listened to that really got the gears turning in the brain. I pondered the question, “why isn’t dance as relatable as other performance art forms like acting or singing?” I concluded that connection and shared experience were key. It’s easier for an audience to connect with actors and singers through a shared experience. Dance has a dualistic experience that happens externally and internally at the same time, and dancers don’t need an audience in order to feel fulfilled in their dancing. If a dancer isn’t able to bring the internal part of the experience out so the audience can connect to it, the audience won’t be able to connect and relate to the dance performance. As the panelists in the podcast episode discussed, this lack of relatability could be a major factor in how publicly successful dancers can be, compared to actors or singers.

So how can we make dance more relatable?

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Is Dance a Relatable Art Form? Part 1

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DanceSpeakI was listening to the podcast DanceSpeak earlier this week, specifically episode 97 (also available on iTunes, Google Play, etc.).  Normally, the episodes consist of interviews between the host, Galit Friedlander, and someone who’s found success in the dance industry. Episode 97 was different in that it was a recording of a live panel that happened at an event called Im-Power-Meant. Toward the end of the episode, someone asked the panel why they thought dancers haven’t reached the same level of public success as other performance artists like actors or singers. As I listened to the panel’s thoughts, my brain started to explode with ideas. I actually spoke the first draft of this blog post into the voice recorder on my phone while I was running errands after work on the day I listened to the podcast. There was too much I wanted to share and I didn’t want to lose any of it by the time I was ready to sit down and write.

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