In movement we speak
The more I observe and explore the phenomena that is dance the more I truly see and believe that what dance provides is an visual language for an internal world…the world of human emotion that cannot be seen, but always be felt. And with in this language I have yet to find dance form in which this is more evident than the globally practiced genre of contemporary dance. These dancers spend their life in vigorous training, challenging and expanding their physical, mental and emotional limitations purely to find ways to better express and communicate the stories, messages and experiences that reflect what it is to be human…using nothing more than their very own human body. It never ceases to strike awe in my spirit when I watch these humans at work..finding myself completely immersed and en-captured by these moving bodies…feeling every movement as if it were my own. With a simple flick of a hand or hip bone I can feel my heart jolt, in a graceful leap or twirl I feel it lift and sore and with just a precisely timed flexion of muscle I can feel it rise up my very throat and pour out of my eyes and down my cheeks transformed now into water. Using their body like a magic wand these dancers can trigger emotion inside you through physically becoming and embodying that emotion themselves…creating a connection between strangers at the most personal level. This particular day of creation came from a beautiful collaboration and the intent to create a moving visual to give form to a moving sound (a film clip for the beautiful song ‘hands up to the light’ by the australian music makers known as ‘Boat friends’ filmed by the phenomenally talented Bhenjamyn Phraser http://www.benjaminfraser.com.au ). And even in a small simple room, when the two talented dancers Tara Jade Soh and Leif Helland (who recently worked together in Melbourne dance company Chunky Move’s recent work 247 days http://chunkymove.com.au/Our-Works/Current-Productions/Two-Forty-Seven-Days.aspx) stripped down to their basics and came together to move in a completely improvised expression- guided only by the feelings and tones of the music- the whole room became one as we traveled into another dimension of pure feeling connected simply by the physical movements of these two bodies…I felt again the power of this art form.
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