The New York City Center hosted its 12th annual Fall for Dance Festival on October 8th. It was the first time I’ve ever attended such an event, so naturally I didn’t know what to expect. Quite frankly, I didn’t even know what types of dances was going to be performed. All I knew was that I was going to experience certain emotions: amazement from the difficulty of certain moves, confusion due to my lack of knowledge on dance.
The first act, Shivashtakam, performed by Nrityagram, displayed many different art forms other than just dance. The beautiful amalgamation of different instruments, loud, yet soft vocals, and fluid dance motions got the performance off to a great start. The richly cultured act was something I had not anticipated. I now thought that every act was going to be similar. So you can imagine my surprise when the second act was a Ballet. The dancer wasted no time after jumping on stage, immediately beginning his flexible, eye-opening moves. After a few minutes I felt myself dozing off because of a common feature in both performances so far: repetition. The repetition was boring me. The moves looked almost identical. It wasn’t once or twice – it was four, five times of the same exact moves. Repetition was prevalent in the third act as well. But this kind of repetition was different. This time there were more than just one or two dancers on stage at a time, so the repetition of one individual’s move didn’ttranslate to a repetition of the entire dance. Other than boring me, this repetition enticed me. It showed discipline and consistency. The work put in to create such consistency was obvious to everyone. The long applause following the closing of every act testifies to that.
One thing that stood out to me during the third act was the power of the music. It almost felt as if the music was controlling the dance, not the other way around. When the music changed, the tone changed, the audience’s attitude changed. The dance moves sometimes remained constant even with evolving music, and it was fascinating. It was the same moves being performed, but because of the different tone expressed from the music, the dance appeared different.
For the final performance of the night, the Dorrance Dance, totally different thoughts came to my mind. Words like ‘fun’ and ‘cool’ were floating around my mind during the entire tap dance. For the first time all night, I felt like the audience was feeling alive. They weren’t passively watching; they were actively watching. The music was loud, the performers were noticeably full of energy, the musicians in the background were even into it. I can’t think of another way of describing this act other than just saying it was fun! The night ended off with a bang. I left the theater feeling very different. The array of feelings I anticipated for my first dance performance were all present. The culture, the energy, the music, the atmosphere, heck, even the dancers: all of these were maximized and provided for an engaging and entertaining performance.
I agree with what you said about the power of music; that was something that became very apparent to me by the end of the night. I also found that music enriched the dance by adding new elements to it through its tone, the same dance moves became more captivating when accompanied by music. It sort of woke us up after seeing the same move repeated several times, and it demanded our attention as if the steps became more powerful because of the music.
Your attention to that detail is really impressive. I, however, watched the screen because I like to understand what they were saying. But I agree that most people did not want to read the translation because they came to the opera for the singing and not the story. The powerful vocals are what really attracted the audience. The grandiose vibrato of the performers is truly uncommon and to hear it in person is an experience to remember.