The Fall For Dance Festival was the first professional dance performance I have ever seen. I am lucky to have experienced four different types of dance in one event to have a greater understanding of what dance can be. Each one of the performances showcased a different aspect and style of dance. The most interesting thing to me about each dance was how the dances interacted with the music.
The first performance was by the Miami City Ballet. The piece was called “Polyphonia”, which is greek for a variety of sounds. The name somewhat corresponds with the music during the dance. Polyphonia was used to describe a certain type of music known as counterpoint where there are multiple melodies that play counter to each other. In “Polyphonia,” the music did not follow a typical counterpoint idea at first which made me very confused. The music was Atonal, which means it has no discernible root note or starting note which makes the music sound like its not going anywhere. The music did not match the dancing in any way that I could see. It felt like the movement was almost completely detached from the music so the performance did not make sense to me. I did not enjoy the piece because I felt like it lacked any sort of focus point. The dancing was like a ballet but the music was so all over the place that it took the focus away from the melodic dancing. After being angry about the piece for about a week I thought about the name again and I realized what it meant. The name “Polyphonia”, many noises, wasn’t about the music but it was talking about the dancing. The movement followed a classical counterpoint style even thought the music did not. One dance would start a “melody” and then the next would do the same thing a moment after and so on leading to “many voices” all moving.
The next two dance performances were more easily understandable when it came to relating dance to music. “GULA” by Vincent Mantose was an exciting, nature related piece that focused on African fusion inspired music with simple syncopated rhythms. The dance mimicked birds in the way he moved his body and arms. The most amazing part of this dance was that he has been doing this piece for almost 25 years. He created the original dance as a final exam for his dance training in 1993. It was then commissioned into a larger dance by Moving Into Dance. The third performance was the Trisha Brown Dance Company’s performance of “You Can See Us”. The music was artificial sounding and contained long droning notes. The dance went along with the natural theme with the movements of the dancers. There was definitely a theme of reflection and humanity in the dance that was very deep rooted in the movement. Although it was very impressive artistically, it was not a very exciting piece to watch.
The final performance of the event was “Myelination” by Dorrance Dance. I did not expect anything besides professional tap dance so maybe thats why I was so blown away by the performance. The performance was the most amazing bridge between dance and music that I have ever seen. Each movement of the piece was choreographed and partially written by Michelle Dorrance. There was one movement in particular that was incredible. It started with the tap dancers tapping a beat with the bass playing. Then the drums came in on the and of 3 which created a syncopated dance as everyones ears shifted to follow the drums so the dance always seemed a half of a beat off which was incredible considering the amount of focus and counting the dancers must have went through. Every other movement of the dance was just as interesting including the guitar playing, story telling and use of color to convey a strong theme and showcase incredible dancing.
