[-empyre-] DANCING ON A TANGENT:

[Scott Taylor]

RE: DANCING ON A
TANGENT:

So, you are wondering what it was I wanted to say in my
last posting which was germane to dancing? 
Well my point is really rather simple: over the last centuries western
culture has moved from a “make-belief” culture to a “make-believe”
culture.  Most earlier artistic and
creative productions of art and aesthetics were directly and indirectly concerned
with coming to terms with spiritual belief and the political-economic support
behind such belief.  Today most artistic
and creative productions of art and aesthetics are directly and indirectly concerned
with coming to terms with political-economic “make believe” structures.  That is, most artistic and creative
productions are knowingly or unknowingly propaganda and persuasion often under
the guise of so-called “experimental” art forms which work with new media.  I am not proffering this as any sort of
insult or attack, but merely as a suggestion regarding the dynamics of
techno-culture.  And, fortunately or
unfortunately, this comment does not fall far from Adorno and the Frankfurt School, of which we have already heard too
much.

Since I have lectured in literature, particularly in
terms of the history of polemical or political literature, that is, in terms of
rhetoric, propaganda and persuasion, not to mention general dialectics, whether
western or eastern, I am prone to look at art and aesthetics accordingly.  It seems to me that what techno-culture has
done to mainstream language (including language rhythms) is the same or similar
to what it has done to mainstream dance. 
Language and dance have become rap lyrics and music determined to
resolve into Janet Jackson’s dance routines. 


Music perhaps has always had a verbal signature, and, so
has dance.  And vice versa. This realization has led to many Canadian dance
companies amalgamation with popular singers and song-writers.  The Alberta Ballet Company, for example, is
interested in doing works involving k.d. laing and Leonard Cohen.

Anyway, Michael Taussig in Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of The Senses (1993)
opens with a quotation from Walter Benjamin’s rightly famous essay “The Work of
Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1936).  In the body of Taussig’s text Taussig
describes how traditional African warrior-dancers would meet with their
opponents from a rival tribe and have a “dance out” often instead of all out
atrocity war.  One tribe of
warrior-dancers would demonstrate a virtuoso performance of co-ordinated left/right
dance movements and the rival tribe would be expected to immediately imitate
and perform the same dynamic geometry.  This
might go on through a number of exchanges. 
The tribe which was unable to follow the coordination presented by the
other tribe would win the contest.

Similarly, although my research has only garnered reports
from the Dark and Middle Ages, when two European armies or hostile groups would
meet, each would have a so-called Fool or Joker.  The Fool or Joker would run out in front of
his army and roast the opponent with comments and imitative gestures in order
to demoralize and humiliate.  Then the opponent
group would do the same.  Apparently,
sometimes, with smaller groups, this was very effective and the two groups
would all begin to laugh together and give up their rancor.

Levi-Strauss has written that there were two rival tribes
living side-by-side along the Amazon or Oronoco.  On alternate “weekends” one tribe or the
other would all pile into canoes and either paddle down or paddle up to the
banks where the other tribe was habitated. 
Once there the tribe in the canoes would simply begin to laugh and laugh
and laugh at the preposterous culture and people of the other tribe.  For the most part this exchange managed to
hold the two in check and would prevent violent physical hostilities.

The role of dance has often been to assuage and
ameliorate, honor or become entranced the spiritual.  I tend to think of the spiritual component,
the psychic component, of humanity and the universe in general as “synergistic.”  And I tend to think that the artist attempts
to move into the synergistic in order to become educated, to synthesize and to
transcend.  Today, many choreographers
and dancers employ digital means as if this will allow them to further
comprehension and conquest of the digital spirit and electronic mechanics.  And I think it does allow a certain amount of
conciliation and compromise with techno-culture in general.    But
this is not the same as the spiritual encounter which was attempted by our
ancestors despite what Ray Kurzweil might say about machine or digital
spirituality (see: The Age of Spiritual
Machines [1999]).

Okay, okay, okay, I know in my post yesterday I was a
little hokey and abstruse, to say the least, but I feel that what we call “love”
is our appreciation of synergistic domains of human and universal being.  Love is our leap of faith, it is psychic, and
our leap of faith is a dance, that is it is a coordination and orchestration of
all mind-brain-body toward higher accord. 
By higher, I do not mean something so acutely august and all-mighty that
we are not party to it, or something which is supernatural, but a natural realization
of what indeed we do accompany in this universe of ours, whether cultural or
techno-cultural, whether a bacteria phage or not.

 Now you can start
to laugh.

Thought experiment: on this Halloween or All Saints Night
take Michael Jackson’s choreography for Thriller and slow the dance of the
zombies down to Butoh.  It’s not so scary
or silly anymore, is it?

Thank you for persevering with me.  It has been an honor and a pleasure to take
part in your discussion.

Scott (or Scotus Dawgus Telemanicus to my friends)   		 	   		  
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