Fall for Dance is a show where international dancers come to perform. The night started off with a traditional Indian dance routine based off of a ballad. However, the diversity didn’t stop there.
I researched the dancers from that night. They were already a diverse set in terms of ethnicity, but I learned that just because a dancer performed for a certain group, that did not mean that they were from that group’s city of origin. The San Francisco Ballet’s official Youtube channel reveals that soloist Hansuke Yamamoto is originally from Japan (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jM8ASpjSqQ8). Barrington Hinds of the New York based Stephen Petronio Company is from Florida, as seen in his official site, (http://www.barringtonhinds.com/about/). The idea of all these performers uniting under one art form isn’t new: no two cast members from Otello were from the same country. However, the Otello actors were united by a spoken language, the Italian they sang. These dancer, though they may learn each other’s spoken language, are not united by words, but by movement.
The entire performance showed a spectrum of emotions. Bijayini Satpathy and Surupa Sen switch from smiling with mischievous twinkles in their eyes, to concentrating with fierce intensity. Each dancer in Solo would add a flourish to their movements, as if trying to one-up each other. The intimate twirls and bends of Locomotor displayed passion, emotional connection, and dependency . The quick taps and flashing smiles of Myelination conveyed fun and energy. All of these dancers, from different cultures, different nations, and different walks of life spoke to the audience, and each other. We felt what they wanted us to feel.
It reminded me of a simplified Otello. Otello conveyed emotion and the uniting of different people under one goal through singing, acting, and score. From Desdemona’s pleads, to Otello collapsing after nearly choking his wife in a fit of anger, to Iago’s James Bond villain-esque theme, there were many tiers into Otello’s emotional layers. But in Fall for Dance, every emotion relied 10% on the facial expressions of the dancers, and 90% of their dance: how close they were to each other, how fast they moved, how exaggerated their spins. And to think that not only was this achieved to perfection, but that different people came together without talking to do this, is beautiful. It showed me how dance is universal, and can reach out to everyone.
I really enjoyed your post and found your research about the dancers fascinating. The mentality that everybody in the dance was connected through movement in contrast to the singers in the opera was really interesting. Being connected through dance is a really engrossing theory. And now that I think of it, facial expressions were very important in the first performance. I remember them having faint smiles painted on their faces as if they were about to cause some trouble.