Sidi Larbi Chekaoui & Antony Gormley - Sutra

with monks from the Shaolin Temple

A second chance to catch this stunning collaboration, a highlight of the Spring 2008 season.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• shaolin temple
• kung fu
• antony gormley
• sidi larbi chekaoui
• sadlers wells
• dance
• london
• china
• szymon bzroska

[TheTransporteer]

@JoshWiniberg Yeah, I agree with you that discuss art is quite subjective. Its like discussin the sex of the angels.But still, being a classical dancer, I can't see or feel martial arts as a form of dance. Although you can have a martial artist that is a dancer. But thats another history. Feeling is the problem. They can use their martial movements to describe what they are feeling. But it wont be dance. It will be more like a performance. You could call them performatic artists. Not dancers.

[JoshWiniberg]

@TheTransporteer Maybe you think I'm being dry by going down this literal route, but please remember that the conversation started by you saying that this martial art is not dance. Actually, returning to this and bearing in mind what you've said about dance being music, I feel even less inclined to agree with you're original statement. After all, if the body is the instrument then even the silence within these dancers is music... Although I disagree that they would even feel silence...

[JoshWiniberg]

@TheTransporteer Discussing art is always a problem since it's so subjective. Wittgenstein would laugh at even attempting it. But if we are going to discuss it, we must try to be as concrete in our language as we can. You say your body is your instrument but that doesn't mean anything really. It is metaphorical, granted, but metaphores aren't good for litteral descriptions. If you look at anything from a musical perspective it will become music (I'm also a musician...my girlfriend is a dancer).

[TheTransporteer]

@JoshWiniberg One more time, you misunderstood me. Dance is music. Your instrument is your body. Music exists without dance, but not the opposite. Be it silence, simple rhythm or a symphony, dance will always need music. Period. That's why the best dancers (I am talking about classical dance) in the history, are accomplished musicians. If you don't know what I am talking, then you are just a dance critic, and have never experienced real dancing in its essence.

[JoshWiniberg]

@TheTransporteer I think it comes down to intention. If you're making sound with the idea of making music then it is music. And if somebody is making movement with the idea of it being dance, then it is dance. That's why I think a blanket statement like "movement without music isn't dance " doesn't really work. I know dances that absolutely hate working with music, but they are still dancing. Actually I think it is a diservice to the whole art of dance to say that it relies on music to exist.

[TheTransporteer]

@JoshWiniberg So we fall again in that awful but subjective matter, what is really to dance?

[TheTransporteer]

@JoshWiniberg In ballet, we call this virtuose. It's the almost unexplainable way some dancers have to interpret the music. Some call it carisma. Some call it gift. I call this the touch of the Holy Spirit, that is given to some fortunate human beings. This touch will make all the difference between as to say, Fernando Bujones (to me a great athlete, not a real dancer) and Mikhail Baryshnikov (the greatest dancer of all time, maybe side to side to Vladimir Vasiliev).

[TheTransporteer]

@JoshWiniberg As it is, dance falls in a category where science can't be apllied. Whereas music can. Movement as itself is just movement. There has to be meaning behind the dance. A meaning that only can be suported by music, the most pure art. So, in order to be qualified as dance, the dancer has to be able to interpret the music. But how? Where is he going to search fundamentals to do so if he does not have a vocabulary to do so?

[TheTransporteer]

@JoshWiniberg I got your point. You know. Dance, different from music, doesn't has its notation yet. There are some attempts to pass choreography to paper, but there is not a universal pattern yet. Accepted by all. So, it's really subjective. Music is not. Music precise. To interpret music, a classical musicist has to follow the score exactly as it is. So the line between movement and dance is tenuous, cause we don't have a score to interpret.

[JoshWiniberg]

@TheTransporteer You say 'silence is music too' but you don't give the same lenience to moment and the physical arts. That's kind of strange to me. Your definion of music states that music is from within, so isn't dance also from within? If the martial-ARTist feels they are dancing, isn't it dance? In any case, where do you draw the line between dance and other movement? It may not feel like dance to you, but that doesn't mean that it isn't dance.