A Dance of Identity & Contexts and Comparisons- 360 Cat

Houston-Jones'"a dANce of IDentity" was very interesting. The Politics of Dance is a very direct way to connect the dancer's identity to the work in that very moment. It also keeps everything fresh; the material (if it's set), the reactions/interactions between dancers, and identification process itself. Houston-Jones said he used it as a quick way to get his dancers to work on a personally sensitive material together. Although, he did not elaborate a great deal on what happened during rehearsals, one can assume the activity served its purpose well. I wonder what if the Politics of Dance was used completely outside of the dance world and used in a high school classroom for instance. Would it be a good way to teach a history lesson and make it come to life? Would it be a good start to teaching perspective taking, or simply learning about people different from you? His workshops certainly made it seem that way. Personally, I would love to be in one of these workshops because I am curious to know how it would feel dancing with someone that I knew I was directly different from in at least one distinct way. What sorts of movements would come out of that? How would that translate to someone who didn't know where we were dancing from?

The chapter "Contests and Comparisons: The Anthropological Approach" had some very interesting points, that occasionally dragged on. Viewing art by putting it into context of the 4 W & H gives pieces a whole different meaning. However, I wonder if people would still have different opinions of an art piece if they knew when, why, and how a piece was made it and what its function was before actually viewing it? Throughout the chapter the author reminds us that we have our own cultural biases when we view an art work and we sometimes judge it through our cultural context, when that is not how it is meant to be viewed. It's good that he reminds us of this, but we no matter what we do, we will always have our cultural views with us. How easy is it to keep an open mind and take a piece for what it is? Another point the author brings up early on, is the idea that art is a concept. He says that since it's a concept, that sometimes doesn't even translate into some cultures, no one can tell anyone else exactly what it is or isn't. Therefore, art is what we frame it to be (this is a concept some of us have already learned in Creative Process). This is a concept that I'm quite willing to accept, however I know that
many people would beg to differ. Does that make them wrong? I feel like that simply opens a whole other can of worms.