Dancing at a crossroads

Dance has never been more popular, with millions of people tuning in to TV shows like ‘Strictly Come Dancing’, but still modern dance can’t shake off its reputation for obscure elitism

ONE OF the most refreshing things about Wim Wenders's remarkable 3D film Pinais that it refuses to intellectualise contemporary dance. Wenders makes no attempt to explain, describe or interpret the work of the choreographer Pina Bausch, and neither do the dancers who are interviewed as part of the film. In fact, their verbal contributions are minimal and are played in voice-over, so that the audience sees a face in repose as the dance company remembers Bausch. The silent, moving face underscores the entire significance of the film. Dance – the body – has a language of its own.

And yet the stumbling block for potential audience members will be the subject of Wenders’s film. Interpretative dance has a reputation for elitism and inaccessibility that rivals those of conceptual art and opera; there is a common perception that it excludes the uninitiated.

Despite the fact that dance is one of the most popular participatory art forms, and is watched by millions on the television shows Strictly Come Dancing, Got to Danceand Pineapple Dance Studios,not to mention Britain's Got Talent, where dancers regularly raise the roof, contemporary dance is often regarded as art at its most impenetrable, a totally separate medium from the urban energy of street dance and hip hop, the graceful beauty of ballet or ballroom, the carnal, calorie-burning intimacy of salsa, or the general bump and grind of bodies responding to music at a concert, disco or party. They all use the same raw material, in the body, so why is contemporary dance such a marginal art form?

From the court dances of the 16th century, dance has been rooted in social exchange. At the dawn of the 20th-century, however, a split between dance as practice and dance as art form began to emerge. With loosening strictures on class and gender mobility, both socially and physically, people became freer to explore the boundaries of their world and of emerging art forms. Ballet, with its tradition of staging popular fairy tales, maintained a mainstream audience. Its emerging modern counterpart, evolving from the butterfly dances of Loie Fuller, became more and more specialised as the 20th century progressed.

Fuller's work, which was performed in popular burlesque venues such as the Folies Bergère, in Paris, was never less than accessible. Although her improvisational technique and natural movement presented a new approach to the rigid style of formal dance or ballet, Fuller combined her physical experimentation with dramatic technological innovation, illuminating her voluminous silk costumes with multicoloured gas lighting. The dramatic visual spectacle had mainstream appeal and attracted the attention of the Lumière brothers, who immortalised her dance in one of their first films, Danse Serpentine. (There is an excerpt on Youtube, though the dancer is not thought to be Fuller.)

In the first years of the 20th century Isadora Duncan took the seeds of Fuller’s free dance further, developing a new technique based on the idea of natural movement, in direct opposition to the rigid style of her ballet training. She believed ballet’s strict posture and control were “ugly and against nature”, and she dispensed with the elaborate costume and scenic design, too, performing in loose Greek-style draped tunics and bare feet against unadorned backdrops. If ballet was a formal presentation of story and externalised narrative, hers was a dance of the soul. With her brother, Raymond, Duncan became one the leading practitioners and educators of the modern dance movement, and her influence permeated other modern art forms, from sculpture to jewellery and, especially, fashion.

With Duncan, however, lay the beginnings of modern dance’s misperception: language. It was not enough for Duncan that she presented a new, organic way of moving, which could communicate with an audience on an emotional, even spiritual, level. She conflated her physical experimentation with talk about Friedrich Nietzsche, the Bolshevik revolution and Isis, the Egyptian goddess of magic and fertility.

Duncan’s long career came to a dramatic end in 1927 when her scarf got caught in the wheels of the car in which she was a passenger and she was strangled to death, but her influence permeates contemporary dance, both in terms of the pronounced emphasis on dance as the physical expression of emotional realities and in the way in which it is often intellectualised, when it is the body itself that is the tool of communication.

Laurie Uprichards, the outgoing artistic director of Dublin Dance Festival, is aware of the precarious position of modern dance in contemporary culture, particularly in Ireland, “which is primarily a verbal culture, with this enormous tradition of storytelling in theatre and music, even in poetry. But in most parts of the western world contemporary dance tends to be somewhere near the bottom [of the cultural ecosystem]. But just because it is not mass market doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have its own place, in the same way that just because something is popular doesn’t mean it’s not art.”

Uprichards says the problem contemporary dance faces is circular: “People can’t learn what their taste is until they’re exposed to something.” But how do you expose potential audiences to the joys of contemporary dance when you cannot get them through the door?

THIS IS A QUESTIONthat Fearghus Ó Conchúir and David Bolger, who are both choreographers and dancers, frequently consider as they create work and expand their practice. For Ó Conchúir it has taken him from the "Muskerry Gaeltacht to people's dining rooms and garages. (I recall damaging someone's chandelier with a handstand.) I was looking for a format to present dance that would be familiar enough to an audience to allow them to realise that they had the tools and experience to be able to read and connect with what I'm doing. It has meant having a certain amount of courage to stake a place for dance on the pitch of Croke Park or in front of the altar of a Catholic church. But unless we have the courage to claim that public, visible territory how can we expect a wider audience to know we exist?"

For Bolger taking dance outside the traditional dance-theatre venue has also been important in breaking down the “hesitation, the fear, people seem to have; when you say contemporary dance, they just sort of close down”. Speaking after a workshop with a community of older people in Roscommon, Bolger says, “There is an extraordinary intimacy about meeting with and dancing with a group of people, enabling them to see that contemporary dance is not something dogmatic. It is about creativity and self-expression; it is not something high up there that you need a special vocabulary for. The real joy of contemporary dance is that the parameters are so open. It can embrace all themes and all different types of bodies.”

Bolger is touring his latest show, Swimming with My Mother,which he performs with his mother, Madge, who is not a professional dancer. Bolger's choreography borrows gestures from outside the dance world, from Madge's former life as a swimming teacher; it is a unique and thoroughly accessible collaboration. Bolger says the success of the show, and the film Deep End Dance, which is being screened in conjunction with the performances, surprised him, particularly outside of conventional dance circles. " Deep End Dancehas been touring mainstream film festivals, and people have been really positive. That's why dance on film projects like RTÉ's Dance on the Box are so important: they allow you to engage with an audience that might not come into the theatre to seek you out."

Uprichards says it is a delicate balance between finding new audiences and retaining artistic integrity. This year’s Dublin Dance Festival, for example, opened last Saturday with the annual “headphone disco”, which featured a modern soundtrack provided by Phantom FM, the guerrilla dancers Ponydance, who have frequently take their work on to the streets, and dance work for children in association with the Ark cultural centre – “although I actually think that a lot of the contemporary dance we programme is suitable for children, which really questions the idea of dance as something elitist,” Uprichards says. “But it can be very simplistic to just call something accessible. Is accessibility just measured by audience numbers? It is extremely important to diversify the audience for contemporary dance, yes, but it is never going to be a mass medium, and I don’t think there is anything wrong with that. But my philosophy for the festival has always been that if you are curious, you should give it a chance. You might hate it, but you might be surprised.”

A dancer's life: Liv O'Donoghue, choreographer and performer

When I first started training hard I was injured nearly every week. You learn to recognise the signs in your body and have an acute awareness of every sinew and muscle. In contemporary dance we apply a much more holistic approach to the body than ballet. Our bodies are generally very healthy, as we don't enforce the same sort of extremes on ourselves. Coming up to a show, it's all about making sure you're fit and ready, as well as being careful to avoid any injuries.

These days dancers are much more body aware, and therefore we can keep going for longer. Travelling and touring are amazing aspects of the career, but it becomes more difficult with time. It's not an easy life, and it's certainly not financially rewarding, so it's not something you can do forever. Sometimes we have to work as many jobs as possible to make ends meet, which is exhausting. Everyone who is involved in dance does it because they love it. It's far too tough otherwise.

I trained at a conservatoire which is known for its gruelling and competitive technical training. At times it felt like bootcamp; the drop-out rate is pretty high. I do remember struggling to get myself out of bed in the mornings, but the body has a great capacity to train hard, and discipline is learned very early on. At least 75 per cent of our day was taken up by physical practice. We would arrive to warm up around 8am, with ballet and contemporary dance classes to follow. The afternoons would be taken up by Pilates, yoga, choreography and movement studies. Our evening would often involve further rehearsals, until 8pm, so most days it was just straight home to eat dinner and rest.

David Bolger’s Swimming with My Mother is at the Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire, tonight. Fearghus Ó Conchúir’s Tabernacle is at Project Arts Centre on May 27th and 28th as part of Dublin Dance Festival; dublindancefestival.ie