If you are interested in choreography,
there are four ways to see it. First, in the theatre. Here, dance is sometimes shown in its own right, sometimes along with opera, operetta or musicals. It has its own royalty, like Pina Bausch, who invented dance-theatre out of the mere situation of dancing in the theatre. Then there is dance that wants to be seen as art; this sometimes means that there is no dancing in contemporary dance, as it is termed performance. In this way, dance approaches art and work – as an accomplishment or performance of a task. It is in this sense that dance can be regarded as sporting competition, something which forms the basis of careers in ballet just as it fires the battles in Break Dance and appears as the ‘final selection’ of candidates in TV shows where, like in ice dancing, there are only winners and losers. Finally, everyone has at least heard of the fact that dance can also simply be danced, like at a party. If no one dances at a party, it’s a miserable party. But what’s really miserable is that our culture very much supports competition, performance and the theatre… but parties belong to a completely different culture. Being the opposite of work (competition, performance, representation), they no longer have any status.
The party has no status
It costs money, demands responsibility on the part of those invited and – it can’t be consumed, for the very reason that it is a response to consumption. The party is the counterpart to the gift. I bestow you with a gift, you give me a party. I make some kind of sacrifice, you help me to a game, a dance, a meal, a drink, a new acquaintance. That is a great deal more than my small sacrifice; a bunch of flowers or whatever other gesture I may come up with. You have to outdo my present because it’s your birthday. The party may cost more than the bicycle you were given. Absurd. Why should such a party be considered culture? Especially since the party has long since been replaced by another culture of theatre or film – a reasonable culture making reasonable money. Culture in today’s sense of the word amounts to a fair exchange in culture’s favour: spend your money on education and entertainment in order to be educated and entertained (as necessary). That is exactly what a party cannot do. And that’s why knowing how to celebrate a party – how to be attentive towards fellow party-goers and enjoy their company – is not part of our concept of culture.
A culture of knowledge
is today’s motto. This idea indirectly assumes that there must be a culture that knows nothing or little. The carnival, for example: What does it know? Who does it educate? Or dance, which is often made out to be dumb because it is wordless. But it is dance, not the carnival, which has been chosen by arts politics to be the bearer of knowledge; the knowledge of how to dance. Because dance, whether as ballet lessons, in elementary schools or the infamous coming-of-age ballroom dance class, contains something which has dutifully survived the centuries: the mastery of steps. Dance is not hopping around at a child’s birthday party, not warming up the kids for a celebration, not the choreography of a series of new games until the brood collapses in happy exhaustion. It is the rational control of one’s body which, when a certain level of expertise is reached, may even be shown in the theatre – in the institution, then, that rationally preserves knowledge in living bodies, while the carnival and dance parties were released from our cultural heritage and handed over to their sponsors. And so the party has become increasingly private, and dance is more and more publicly funded. A wedge has thus been driven between two things that once belonged together: between dance and the party, between art and the party, even between the public and their party.
Performanceis the key.
As the party has been completely privatized and theatre placed entirely in the hands of the public, truly private theatres are as rare as parties that are independent of their sponsors’ will. There is a practical reason for this. Take a child’s birthday: the parents have to perform well themselves, or, instead of a party, they treat themselves and the children to a little bit of the culture that performs. This is misleadingly termed ˝middle class culture˝, even though the middle classes only see the performance on stage that they themselves refuse to perform. In fact, theatre culture allows the middle classes to remain outside their own culture, which they promptly mistake for art. They want a show that they have paid to see to be foreign, exotic, something ˝different˝… but certainly not interfere with their world. The romantic ballet of a distant past, the alien culture of Hip Hop, a show by Irish tap dancers all speak to them of worlds that they cannot inhabit, because they lack the body needed to dance like those up on stage. They admire that. This type of entertainment was given a name in the 1990s by Austrian philosopher Robert Pfaller, ˝interpassivity˝: ˝I don’t dance; I let people dance.˝ At a real middle class party that would be simply impossible.
The middle class consumer
says: ˝So what?˝ His party is now his theatre. Even better than that: he can finally leave his previously active role in the party up to a representative, a dancer or actor on his stage. He has the theatre supported and, in return, demands to see what he wants. Or not, since he is no longer bound to the tradition of dealing with this considerable expenditure himself; having to invest in a wooden castle, getting new costumes for his progeny and serving up food and drink. Now, by contrast, he is the book-keeper who sees this theatre with the same detachedness that he sees his own business: as a profit-making operation with hired representatives of his labors lost, now no longer forced to sing, play and dance himself. He no longer has to be able to do it. It even appeals to him to spare himself this culture completely, which he has long since left to the city council and its accounting department because he no longer celebrates it. He prefers to celebrate his defeats on the sports field, mourning the misfortunes of his team and making a party out of every point scored. In the game, he rediscovers what he lost to theatre: his own participation in the spectacle.
Blanked out
is what the audience member is - banished to an almost extraterrestrial position. His deep belief in the stage’s edge causes him to retreat. An invisible border is drawn, even in front of the smallest stages. Even in the front row, where the audience huddles right by the dancers’ feet, the rule applies: not a step further. The stage area is holy. This imaginary border, the stage’s frame, separates everything that goes together at a party. A place not unlike an altar or pulpit is created, which neatly divides up the space and, instead of enabling true participation, i.e. physical participation, wants to create a thinkable reality only, with controlled emotions. What else is the audience supposed to do here, other than think to itself? Theatre immobilizes the body while the bodies that are still moving, on stage, embody something else – very much in the sense of ˝under–standing˝. In other words, not standing. Dancing. After all.
The extraits are published with the kind permission of the author.
Arnd Wesemann: IMMER FESTE TANZEN. ein feierabend! Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2008.