Hallie Gammon - DANC 0163 - Being Seen, Being Moved

For the first few pages of this article, I was unsure what the connection between Authentic Movement and our class might be. The only thing that struck me at first was how different it seemed from what we do: we learn a certain routine of movements, and though we try and are expected to internalize them, they do not spring spontaneously from our own personal movement vocabulary. We certainly often do not succeed at "being true to who we are in the presence of others" -- I, at least, have an extremely hard time not focusing on what other people are doing around me and letting it inform my movements. And the point of the class is clearly not to be observed without judgment -- we are here to learn something, and so judgment of what we are or are not accomplishing is necessary.

I also had difficulty seeing how the concepts of Authentic Movement had anything to do with African dance. After all, many of the African dances we have studied are highly structured, the movements of the dancers already dictated (I think of the last article we read about the Bondo opera, where in one sequence it said a dancer would be chased from the procession if they made a misstep). It seems that most African dances are not about a personal movement vocabulary as much as a sociocultural movement vocabulary: we come back to the question "What do you dance?" as a way to determine someone's origins. However, viewed from a different angle -- i.e. not that all of a person's movements come freely from within themselves but that all dance contains this personal element -- this philosophy can be seen in African dance cultures we have studied. For the Yoruba, for example, dance is an important tradition and the steps must be learned as they are, but some sort of personal quirk or invention is practically mandated. Black dance in America has a long tradition of drawing on personal experience, which Authentic Movement seems to unlock, as inspiration for choreography.

The idea of Authentic Movement relates to African dance in that it attempts to reintroduce dance to a more important role in people's lives -- not simply as something done for entertainment, but as a way to connect with others and explore one's own subconscious. One of the most telling elements of the philosophy is the way it breaks down the distinction between the performer and the audience -- both must take part in the process for it to work, in the same way that many African dances are not "performed" in the distant Western sense of the word but are a community event, the boundary between the dancer and the watchers quite fluid. The paragraph about new performance motivations speaks to me particularly. It says: "What might these be? The practice of being seen being authentic, in an era where the superficial takes precedence. The practice of connecting to energies beyond the self, in an era where spirituality is shapeless. The practice of participating in a community of exhange between dancers and watchers, in an era where dance has been removed from most people's lives." These three practices seem to me to be intrinsic to African dance: "being seen being authentic" recalls again the ritual of the Bondo, where the dance is not merely for show but is an important, authentic process of being and becoming that must be performed before others. The idea of connecting to energies beyond the self is exactly what being "mounted" by a god or spirit entails. And a community that includes the active participation of both dancers and watchers seems as good a way as any to sum up many aspects of African culture. In sum, while the practice itself of Authentic Movement seems unlike anything we have so far studied, the philosophy behind it is completely in line with the philosophy of African dance; the practice itself may be a way for us to reclaim dance as an integral part of our lives, largely lost to the Western world.