The Bond Between the Dancer and the Art

“A dancer is expected to embody the vision of dance,” says Jeff Kaplan. “They’re expected to take movement so they are the personification of that art on stage. Particularly in modern dance, choreographers tend to see themselves as facilitators, so they might take a group of dancers and say, ‘OK, I’d like you to journal a little. And then from what you write, we’re going to take out moments, next we’re going to take up verbs, we’re going to take out nouns, and lastly, we’re going to turn them into shapes. Now, you go over there and create eight accounts and we’re going to look at it and glue it together.”

He goes on to explain that in the ballet world it’s still more traditional for the choreographer to tell the dancers what to do. The choreographer is in charge of creating the original work. This is even taught in online performing arts education.

So unlike other performing arts, like a play, you are creating what you perform. Unlike a symphony orchestra, where you get sheet music, the content doesn’t exist yet. So in dance, the day-to-day work happens in the studio. It happens collaboratively. And you’re working as a team to create and perform something new from the knowledge with performing arts education.

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