In response to John Foreman's Making Art Out Of Tension

A blog entry by the vocal of Switchfoot, John Foreman, note that life is a fight of making sense in the sadness, and aiming live good. (to read the post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-foreman/vice-verses-making-art-ou_b_974302.html) He uses music and lyrics to express this fight, hence the birth of Vice Verse, Switchfoot's latest album (that I'm addicted to). I love that it is not about being perfect all the time, but rather the effort to find good in others and yourself. We are bound to fail, that is why life is full of tension. Tension born from unanswered question we ask. This tension, looks like modern dance to me.

modern dance, heavily rooted in the ballet technique, yet is not ballet. It's a form of dance many people don't understand because it's more abstract than jazz or ballet. To a professional dancer like Emily Adam (Jubilee speaker last and this year), modern dance is a physical art form that celebrates humanity. It can be light hearted, but more often it is heavy, and dark, and mad. (see example video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt4AGMWJ30c) Why the mystery? It is because modern tries to make sense of human, exploring topics like movement, existence, relationships, friendship, war, imagination etc. (Yes, these are real topics portraits in real modern dance number, I've seen it) In modern dance, one tries to recognize we are made out of flash but we can do something beautiful with it. With we can't arrive to the beauty, at least explore it.

To a dance for fun dancer like myself, the physicality of modern dance is more like African dance and less similar to ballet. Modern dance uses the form of ballet, but connects one to the ground like in African (dance). Modern dancers don't wear pointe shoes like ballerinas because they don't try to defy human autonomy; they don't wear shoes at all. Dancing on barefoot allows the dancer to properly connect to the ground he or she is dancing on. The lack of shoes cause more friction of the sole, sometimes one needs to fight the ground to move, and sometimes one embrace the friction to stay in a posture. Using this friction to your benefit, learning to dance with it but not bound is an art.

Now back to the making art out of tension. That itself, is a character of modern dance. What do you see in that youtube video? dancers bouncing and bending and stretching in various ways to create movements. In less than 3 minutes you see a (dance) piece is created from more than one movement, there are people doing different things in any given moment. The difference between on an other is a contrast! And contrast is tension to the viewing eyes. Despite the tension, the dynamic is quick and swift, or it can be slow and quiet! It depends on the how far into the dance and the circumstances. In a life time there are too many things that press us to act a certain way, but that doesn't mean we should be press against.