The Politics of Art & Authenticity

I really like dance. I’m definitely a fan. I love dancing and having fun with my friends. I took a ballet class when I was five years old. I’ve seen many kinds of dance, like classical, ballet, jazz, hip-hop, and modern. I thought I really knew dance; I thought I had a foundation of dance down. I thought there wasn’t really much more.

I was wrong.

What I saw opened up my mind to a whole new world of dance – skirt dancing – a dazzling, colorful, mind-blowing form of dance. I thought the costumes were fantastic, and the multimedia effects even better. Watching the skirt dancing was truly mesmerizing – the skirt dancers pulled off complicated dance moves with lavish costumes and blinding, flashing lights. I really loved watching the dancing, but I enjoyed going through the history of skirt dancing even more. It was so cool to actually go through the history of it – to see how it first started out, and how over time the costumes and style and graphics changed, to the video clips of what today’s skirt dancing looks like. So often we look at different forms of artwork and take them for face value, how people present them today, without considering the history behind it, how this art got to the form and style we see it as today.

I also gained a tremendous amount of respect for Jody Sperling. Not only do I greatly admire her and her work, but I think it was incredibly nice of her to come and present it to us. I think it’s so nice that she was willing to open up and share about her story and explain the history of this artwork. It was a great lecture and an eye-opening experience to a whole new world of dance.