How does what is described in the documentary reiterate ideas of dance and the body that are commonly held? How does it counter common configurations of dance and the body?
Preservation of cultural traditions through dance is reiterated in the documentary, Dancing: Dance at the Court. The various countries and ethnic groups featured in the documentary shared the values of reverence, decorum, and beauty in their dances.
Ballet in France, the first example explored in the documentary, is used to engender the notion of consistency in dance as furthering symbolic importance in a culture. Performing the choreography in the exact way it is taught was the dancers’ way of demonstrating their veneration for King Louis XIV, or the country of France. King Louis XIV weaponized ballet in the political realm to unite and maintain control over France. To know the dance, to be consistent in your movements, was to hold a place within the hierarchy. Failure to do so was shameful and required the dancer to start again from the bottom.
Bugaku, the traditional Japanese dance, used consistency as proof of etiquette and control. The dance was not allowed to be seen outside of court as it was not intended to be performed for entertainment purposes until after World War II. Consistency was also used as repetition to affect time. Doing bugaku continuously is a way to make time go on forever, to make the culture everlasting.
In the Palace of Ashanti, dance is crucial to preserving the royal courts. Their dances are a way to reaffirm their identity as Ashanti people. Remaining consistent to keeping the tradition of royal courts sustains their identity in an extreme sense. Bodies are indispensable channels for tradition, new bodies give way for the transference of customs.
Bodies being vessels in a dance for a story is another postulation that coincides with the assumption that a dancer is directly related to the message of the dance. This makes us perceive dance as something that’s always personal to the dancer. Even further within these presumptions is that bodies are inhabited by souls or personas making dance inherently intimate. The documentary challenges this idea through the Javanese court dance.
A quote from Benedictus Suharto states how dancers “are no longer seen as individuals but as something other.” This struck me as something entirely different than what I have believed is the relationship between the body and configurations of dance. Several of the instructors from the different nations featured emphasized the significance of precision that is required to perform these traditional dances.
There is a much larger power at hand that succeeds human beings, their bodies, and sentiments. Legacy and the control of a nation’s narrative are at stake. Transmission of information between deities, humans, and nature underlie these narratives. The continuation of these dance court traditions makes them immortal and cosmic. Dance has been understood to surpass the existence of monarchies and to carry on or into the next forms of government. Despite how new this revelation was to me; I found that the documentary helped reinforce the notion that art controls history.
Works Cited
“Dancing: Dance at the Court.” , directed by Anonymous , produced by Geoff Dunlop, Jane Alexander, and Rhoda Grauer. , ArtHaus Musik, 1993. Alexander Street, https://video.alexanderstreet.com/watch/dancing-dance-at-the-court.
