Dance in American Culture Today
During a recent focus group, participants were asked how they would rate the importance of dance in American culture today. The responses varied from the success of “So You Think You Can Dance” to people being afraid of the unfamiliar. There was discussion about how different genres have different success rates - Broadway, classical, and traditional dance have found niches in American homes while experimental and contemporary dance are still struggling to build audiences in a city known for its culture and culture goers. The conversation could have easily lasted the whole hour and a half so I open the topic for debate again here.
anonymous (October 17th, 2007 at 8:30 am)
Experimental dance, and possibly contemporary as well, tend to be more for younger audiences who are looking for something that doesn’t hold to rigid confides of older styles. My impression has always been that these people are the elusive college student and 20 something, who aren’t well-off enough to consistently see the art, or so mobile that it’s like trying to hold a fist of sand. That’s a gross generalization, though.
smaxfield (October 17th, 2007 at 3:32 pm)
There is a tension between “experiment” and “market” that makes things very tricky. The more truly experimental an artist is, the smaller his/her audience, yet in some ways the more necessary his/her work to the field in general. Bands like The Pixies and Joy Division influenced numerous musicians who became much more commercially successful then they ever were. There is art that exists to explore its own form, (and that kind of art is usually most interesting to other artists, who really speak the language), and there is art that is influenced by the truly experimental work that is more accessible/marketable/popular which succeeds better at enticing the “uninitiated.” I think the problem is not that people aren’t interested in art (or dance in particular), but that we live in a culture which only values work that makes money. That makes it pretty hard to feel like a valid artist if your work is in that other category, and it makes it easy to blame the general public for just not getting it. We need to find a way to nurture art outside the market, instead of finding a way to increase its value within the market. I say that knowing full well that it’s nearly impossible because we all have bills to pay, but I read on the subway that dripping water hollows out stone. Isn’t it up to us artists to dream up a new paradigm?
anonymous (November 1st, 2007 at 8:07 pm)
interesting that you quote Ovid after reading it on the subway… i’m often indifferent to the poetry in motion campaign, but it is a kind of new paradigm for nurturing art outside the market…
Eva Yaa Asantewaa (November 6th, 2007 at 11:10 am)
My wife and I have recently returned from vacation in Italy. One morning in our Milan hotel room, she turned on the tv and caught a video clip of the New Circus group Compagnie du Hanneton, a troupe I’d seen in New York. She was totally enchanted.
“Look!” she cried. “It’s dance on tv!”
I ran in from the bathroom, recognized the company right away, and was amazed to see that this little appealing feature was called something like “A Moment of Dance.” I have no idea if “A Moment of Dance” is a regular feature on the station she was watching, but isn’t that a wonderful possibility?
It might be a small matter but, just for starters, why can’t we have little moments of dance–all kinds of dance, not just the SYTYCD stuff–on American television? Some people might find themselves falling in love–like my wife did–or just getting curious enough to seek dance out like any other form of entertainment or art.