Senior Dance Concert

This weekend was the Senior Dance Concert.  The title pretty much gives it away.  The concert is a series of solos and group pieces composed by members of the senior class of the dance department.  As I am doing a BA (Briefly, the BA program is more intensive than the minor and less performance intensive than the BFA) in dance, in addition to anthropology, I am very biased to the success of this concert.  However, I realize many people do not feel the same way.  So what genre of dance is this, you ask? Modern.

Modern is a relatively new genre of dance that only emerged around 100  years ago and has radically evolved.  It first emerged out of artists protesting against the strict structure of ballet.  Since then, modern dance has continued to rapidly evolve and constantly be influenced by cultural, social and political movements.  There was even a post-modern era, which I'll admit, was a little out there.  Most people don't consider eating a sandwich on stage or walking up a brick wall to be dance.  But hey, movement is movement.

So nowadays students see this not-so-familiar form of dance and they don't know how to react.  In between pieces they whisper about "what...the...hell...was...that?"  It seems the only pieces they understand are the ones that heavily poor emotion to the point of almost being theater, So You Think You Can Dance style or hip-hop.  It is so unfortunate for artists in the dance world to be solely represented by competition dance shows on TV.  It is like saying that what is on top 10 radio is the epitome of all music.  Or that a Thomas Kinkade painting is the only true and accurate form of painting.  While I'm not so far out there that I will be painting my toenails on stage and calling it a dance, I am totally for the exploration and investigation of movement in an artistic environment.  It can just be frustrating that when many students go to a music concert in the school of music they don't expect American Idol; yet, when they come to the school of dance, they think they were supposed to be at ABC studios.  Let dance be an art form, too, not just entertainment.