Races of people are DEFINED and otherwise anthropologically analyzed and
studied by the culture of their society(ies). That being said, our culture
will be defined by the 'dance' exhibited in music videos and titty bars.
For decades, Americans have only supported ballet and classical music-- both
white, European and considered 'upper crusty'. While classical music has
been all but eliminated from some folks diets, like in Detroit where we now
support NO classical music radio station.
Most underclass art forms-- like the black dance-- have had to market
fiercely and find support from private foundations and institutions to have
a presence and continue enriching the lives of the TRULY unimaginative
capitalist.
Dancers are like any other artist. They simply know they must dance, or
their lives are over, lackluster and pain-filled. We've survived and will
continue to survive whether we are popular by your definitions or not.
Much like the music and artists that this list is built around, some years
may bring popularity and more revenue, most will not.
It detracts NOT from the art and certainly not from this artist.
I imagine you've never, BY YOUR OWN DESIRE, ever gone to see ANY dance
company. Why should you when there are professional atheletes ? Americans
have become a people very much like lemmings--ignorant of not only the
present, but with eyes wide shut running after the head 'lem' straight off a
cliff.
Like any act from one's higher self, dance is a joy experienced only in The
Expression or The Giving. While it is meant to take something obscure,
illuminate it and clarify it, it matters not a whit whether you get it or
not. It will continue in spite of you.
To see movement of the caliber that I experienced watching the Ailey dancers
was the highest form of appreciation that Roy Davis Jr., et. al could
possibly envision. Beat for beat, musically technical elocution matched
impeccably with physically technical elocution...those dancers EMBODIED
Roy's music. It looked surreal, but was actually happening, on a stage in
downtown Detroit.
He and I had a long conversation about just that in Miami at the WMC. He
was so excited to see the piece performed after he licensed the track to the
company for their use, he is already working on something else with the same
choreographer.
The Alvin Ailey company is a dance company by which ALL other dance
companies are graded, whether one is aware of them or not, or whether one
supports them or not. Just as they will take it as far as they can, most
dancers or artists of any genre will do the same--because it is who they
are--not because it is popular or supported.
Buy your season tickets to whatever you feel compelled to follow or whatever
YOU feel enriches your one dimensional existence.
Oddly, the darkest moments of human existence are always rapidly followed by
'the renaissances' of the arts/existence. The American government is one of
the only that does not even support a national ballet company, much less a
company like Ailey's.
It matters not. The human imagination exists not to garner a profit...it
simply exists. Dreaming of Utopia is FREE and cannot be governed. That was
one thing Hitler failed to realize when he marched into each major city and
immediately seized museums, art, libraries and eliminated any expression of
human existence that were subversive to his goal.
Deluded?? Who??
Art, of any type, will always stimulate change....but perhaps you LIKE the
way things are now. Just a guess........
From: "Joshua Hill" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "laura gavoor" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, <313@hyperreal.org>
Subject: Re: [313] Detroit + Dance (off topic)
Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2001 18:57:50 -0400
----- Original Message -----
From: "laura gavoor" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <313@hyperreal.org>
Sent: Sunday, August 19, 2001 7:26 PM
Subject: Re: [313] Detroit + Dance
> Still amazes me how dense most Americans are when it comes to the arts.
> Sorry to soap box, but few dancers live very OKAY lives for lack of
support
> in this country. Most still live the life of the starving artist with a
> couple of other jobs to survive, even while maintianing a position in
one
of
> the world's most prestigious dance companies.
>
> After all...what is dance music without the dancer.
Speaking of dance music, isn't the dancer (in America) usually the dense
American?
If a professional dancer is with "one of the world's most prestigious dance
companies" and still needs to hold multiple jobs, then isn't this a global
issue and not some problem of priorities with "most Americans"?
Or perhaps the problem is specifically American: "How many poor people, who
envy and hate the rich, nevertheless tolerate monstrous inequalities of
wealth merely because they hope eventually to be among the few who rise to
the top? Some even consider this vicious delusion admirable: 'the American
Dream.'" (Allen Wood).
Or maybe we average Americans don't support professional dancers because we
are expected, by the dancers, to support them as if they are the string by
which our distorted values cling to the isolated pockets of "critically
aclaimed" cultural enlightenment.
/j
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