Dissonant [Dirty?] Dancing

I have a love-hate relationship with improvisation. Actually, it is more of a love-fear relationship.

I love the exciting and unexpected nature of improvisation, yet I am scared by the prospect of actually improvising. When put in the situation, I freeze up and my face goes blank as I realize I do not know what to do.

Understandably, I had my reservations about attending the Music and Dance Impro Lab at the Bimhuis. I expected a workshop that encourages participants to jump out of their comfort zone (somehow, jumping out of my comfort zone in improvisation is excruciatingly uncomfortable). One can imagine my relief when I discovered that the Music and Dance Impro Lab was a performance I could witness without needing to participate. The experience should have been a pleasant, merry, and unthreatening affair. 

It was rather terrifying. 

The performance was not terrifying in the horror movie or ghost story sense but in the twinge-worthy feeling of being weirded out by something. Even though I was a mere observer, I felt as awkward as if I had stuttered my way through participating in the improvisation. 

The performance began with no introduction. Music started playing before the lights had even dimmed and before everyone had entered the auditorium, much less taken a seat. There were two violinists playing very dissonant melodies. The high squeaking from the strings was jarring to my ears. Then the pianist joined. I could not tell if he was listening to the flow in his mind or if he was just hitting notes randomly. 

Then the dancers walked onto stage one at a time. The style was most similar to that of interpretive dance. Arms were jiggling around and torsos were winding about. There did not seem to be any kind of direction to the dance, and it did not seem to move toward any greater idea. As a result, the dance would progress from one movement to the next with very little discernible phrasing such that I did not know when a section of the performance would reach a climax, or when it would end. 

The lack of phrasing made it difficult to follow the emotional direction of the dance. The dancers’ faces were unexpressive, and the mask-like quality created an emotional disconnect. The movement sometimes did not seem purposeful; at other times, the movement would crescendo and there was so much sustained energy that a particular section would feel like a marathon. It was like reading out loud a run-on sentence and not knowing when one could take a pause for breath. Much of this difficulty in pacing may be attributed to the improvisational nature of the dance. In fact, at the very end, the performers let slip that they had never performed together, and some of them actually had not even met before walking on stage. 

While the erratic flow of the dance created dissonance, it did not necessarily detract from the performance. I did not connect emotionally with the performance, but I was engaged more cognitively with the dancing. The dancers were very good technically. With each movement, their feet landed softly on the ground. They had very good body control: the dancers could hold their limbs in the air with grace (and without trembling), and they made no thumping noise when dropping to the ground. The dancers seemed to have great flexibility, though they rarely took the opportunity to use it. 

While the technique was sound, the improvised choreography unsettled me. Perhaps it was because I resonate well with a more traditional style: dance where the focus is on a story, emotion, or relationship. I found this dance terrifying because it seemed to be a violation of personal space. I enjoy individual dancers interacting to add dimension to a piece—lifts, tricks, personal connection. The dancers at the Music and Dance Impro Lab, however, had more grotesque interactions. They would end up in positions where one dancer’s feet would be by another’s mouth, or where a dancer would be nearly sitting on another’s face. At one point in the performance, a dancer took her hand and wiped the sweat down another dancer’s face and neck. In another part, a dancer, who was using a belt as a prop, used the belt to strangled the neck of another. Whether the display was meant to evoke lust, ceremony, dominance, or even randomness, I felt uneasy.

But not all of the performance was cringe inducing. There were some humorous parts where the dancers would tie scarves around an audience member’s shoes, and dancers even grabbed my feet as they crawled across the stage (I was in the front row). Some dancers grunted—something I found rather cool since in many forms of dance, there is no emphasis on the dancers actually making a sound.

The Music and Dance Impro Lab was a performance I am glad I attended. It was one of those experiences I would not understand if someone described it to me in words. This particular genre of improvisation dance is not my favorite, but it was very intriguing. I was uncomfortable but also slightly curious. The performance was disturbing but strangely addicting. All in all, it was really a bit terrifying.