Simply defined, dance tackles the impossible and makes it look easy.
Dancers create beauty born of invisible costs. You’re not supposed to see them work. Their Olympic pain is delivered with poise, a smile and no hint of struggle.
But, as a serious art, it bedevils many who are unexposed to its treasures and uncomfortable about assessing it.
How can you tell the bad dancer from the great one? What do you look for at a dance concert? How do you know if a performance is good?
Some answers:
1. What’s the difference between ballet and modern dance?
Ballet involves an elaborate system of poses, movements, steps and positions that emerged during the Renaissance and developed over 500 years. Central is the ability to walk, pose, turn, hop and jump on one’s toes, referred to as “en pointe.”
About 100 years ago, modern dancers rejected ballet and its upright, vertical stance, emphasizing the torso and a more grounded, natural, sometimes barefoot movement.
“Ballet comes from a long tradition of very structured technique and certain guidelines rigidly followed,” says Joffrey Ballet artistic director Ashley Wheater. “Today, we’ve diversified somewhat, but you still find women en pointe. Contemporary dance breaks all those barriers. It can be on flat feet. There’s more floor work, there’s rolling across the stage.”
“With modern and contemporary dance, compared with ballet, you’re dealing with more original, idiosyncratic movement vocabularies,” says Bonnie Brooks, chair of the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago. “But I think art is always about ideas, and for me, dance today is about working with contemporary ideas and giving them interpretation through an embodied artistic practice.”
2. What should you look for?
“You should sit there and leave yourself open and let whatever happens affect you,” Wheater says. “I don’t think you should work too hard. People worry about what to look for, but if it’s wonderful, they’ll absorb that.”
“I think you should watch dance literally,” Brooks says. “There are two groups I like to watch or hear from. One is children, and the other is physicists. In both cases, they look at the work purely for what they’re seeing. They let it wash over them and see what it stirs up.”
3. How do you know if it’s good?
“That’s a hard one,” says Brooks, “partly because I don’t like to frame things in terms of good and bad. But more in terms of how they engage me. What are the ideas? What is the artist saying or inquiring about? Is it about social relationships, social commentary or beauty? I subscribe to the theory of reflexive viewing. I give it my own interpretation, I finish the work. Even when it’s abstract, you may discern a narrative, even just the interplay between stasis and change, or images in repetition. Is it complex? Hard? Simple? Cliche?”
“I think when ballet’s good, it’s so in sync with the music, so coordinated in the body, you get something that transports you elsewhere,” Wheater says. “As opposed to people just moving around, not doing much for you, or only the odd trick. Anyone can tell good dance from the mediocre. A good work is structured, with a beginning, middle and end, and the audience realizes the thread. As opposed to it finishing and people saying, ‘What was that about?'”
4. How can you spot a good dancer?
“If someone falls over or tries to go en pointe and can’t, you know they’re out of their depth,” Brooks says. “If you’re so engaged you’re not distracted by flaws, that’s something. If it seems effortless. But it’s not just technical skill or virtuosity. Dancers who don’t have so much of that can be phenomenal and raise the energy in the room. It can be about acting, about the ability to go in and out of the floor.”
“You want people to turn well, to jump well, and you don’t want to worry that they may not make it,” Wheater says. “You don’t want the white knuckle syndrome, when audiences grip their seats worried someone is about to fall.”
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Pick a dance
BALLET
The Joffrey Ballet
312-739-0120
www.joffrey.com
MODERN/CONTEMPORARY
Hubbard Street Dance Chicago
312-850-9744
www.hubbardstreetdance.org
Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago
312-344-8300
www.dancecenter.org
Museum of Contemporary Art
MCA Theatre
312-280-2660
www.mcachicago.org
BOTH
Auditorium Theatre
312-922-2110
www.auditoriumtheatre.org
Harris Theater
312-334-2400
www.harristheaterchicago.org
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sismith@tribune.com
