MANIFESTO I

My response to a provocative inquiry in an interview with myself:

ML: You ask me about the "usefulness" of dancing? First, let us acknowledge that somewhere in this question is the presumption that modern dancing can be useless, merely recreational or fanciful. Second, let me use this opportunity then to prescribe dance education for politicians, social workers, dictators, and bureaucrats, as much as for children, athletes, actors and acrobats.

The politician will learn a social and cultural empathy unavailable in journals or cabinet meetings. The politician must learn the motivation behind revolution in the streets by the revolution within his own body.
The social worker needs a break to celebrate human life after working so hard to sustain its most complicated elements.
The dictator may learn how it is to create something vital rather than regimented; something beautiful rather than brutal.
The bureaucrat may find cause to lessen or make more efficient everyday people's administrative tasks -- for in the dance studio, there is learning, there is sweat, there is community, there is fun!

Healthy, articulate bodies make easier healthy, articulate minds and hearts.
Invoking Erick Hawkins: "the body is a clear place."
Dance traditions are designed for clarity, economy, precision.

There are moral lessons to be learned in dancing, there is coaching in self-assertiveness and compassionate interaction. Dancing has every sortt of pedagogic value as a well-taught sport --
that in discipline, there is freedom and discovery;
that in balance, there is always movement;
that with violence, there will come justice.

Yet this does not mean that any setting of class labelled "dance" will necessarily present its benefits, the same way not everything labelled with goodwill, or the church, or even progressive humanism will. I am not here attempting to set a quantifiable standard upon which to judge good/bad, right/wrong, worthwhile/waste of time -- these are for the technicians and the insiders to battle out, a process healthy and required for the advancement and maturity of the form.

Me, I am an outsider to most things and an insider the same. The more you see, the less you belong, but all the more you have to share. Consciousness comes at the price of discomfort, but what you gain is in the loss itself. And that's OK. In everything durable, there is opposition -- this is another lesson I have learned in dance.

So the lessons are specific.

Specifically, how to release (weight, muscular tightness, memories, regrets, pride) and of how to retain (alignment, strength, integrity, faith), of how to catch and ride the wave of contingency and wash up on shore, sputtering or smooth surfing, either way.

The application is specific -- finding a movement style or movement culture that quickens your blood and helps you locate your center is everyone's personal project. The role of dance practitioners, the bearers of its progression, dissemination, and public display, is to remember that the source and resource of meaningful art is life, and that the price of clarity is sometimes to have to be a stranger to yourself in order to keep it real.