Dance As Discourse: An Exploration of Gender, Expression, and Communication
Melanie Crist
Melanie (she/her) is a current undergraduate student at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver Canada. She is a fourth-year art history major, specializing in the intersections between art, identity, and social justice. After a career in the performing arts spanning twenty-plus years, Melanie decided to change gears and go back to school. She hopes to be able to continue to combine her passion for the arts with her commitment to social justice in a new career as an Arts and Culture Attorney.
Dance As Discourse
An Exploration of Gender, Expression, and Communication
FEATURING:
ALVIN ERASGA TOLENTINO
JASON SNOW
ANTHONY MEINDL
OVERTURE
Dance was never a choice for me. Rather, it was a pre-conscious mode of being, of communicating, and of experiencing the world. As a young child it was always easier for me to express myself through movement than through spoken language; it helped me make sense of my emotions and allowed them to move through me. However, my sense of self was never fully compatible with the normative constructs of the classical dance world. The discovery of contemporary and theatre dance helped me live more fully in my body, and use it to tell a story instead of perform one.
In conversation with renowned queer dancer, artist, and choreographer Alvin Erasga Tolentino, we explore what dance means in a discursive context. Specifically—if dance is a language, is it universal and is it gendered? I also include conversations with close personal friends Jason Snow and Anthony Meindl about their experience with dance as both an art form and a means of communication.
ACT I: ALVIN ERASGA TOLENTINO
MELANIE CRIST: When we first spoke, we talked a lot about the idea of dance as a language— one that is universal and transcendent of societal constructs. How do you think dance differs as a tool of communication from other forms?
ALVIN ERASGA TOLENTINO: Because dance is an art form but also a natural expressive language of the body to begin with, it can both be narrative or open to interpretation. Dance communicates via the body and movements, and it does not have to be intellectual …Our body can be read easily from all sorts of human emotions without speaking. Dance communicates differently because it involves our entire being.
MC: Many styles and modes of dance are defined by prescribed gender roles— for example a traditional ballet pas de deux or Argentinian tango. How do you explore the complexities of gender in your work?
AET: I explore the complexity of gender by focusing on body energy and what is entailed through gestures and movements; in turn, the movements express varied forms of information that could be detected as masculine or feminine. The yin & yang of E astern philosophy is integral in my practice as a way to honor the presence of both masculine and feminine energy in the body. This harmonious give and take of energy creates a complexity in the body, which lends itself to characterization in dance or theatre works. When we speak of “gender” then we begin to signal and identify a body energy, which is a very W estern specification of body structure…ahh so much can be said about this issue…
MC: Do you think there is a difference between dance as story telling and dance as performance? Or are they too hard to separate in the current social context.
AET: I think it’s inseparable—they go side by side. We need to be in performative mode in order to tell a story. Once you begin to have an audience, then [the story] becomes a performance. Dance should exist with an audience, as this is also an elemental phase in the evolution of dance creation… But I am just as happy dancing in the studio on my own as a way of freedom and liberation of human expression.
MC: We also talked about how in different cultures dance is either more traditionally male or traditionally female. I think you said in the Philippines it is mostly males that perform dance (is that right?) Can you speak on this a little bit?
AET: I’m speaking about certain roles and characters that exist in high court classical dance traditions as in Thai’s Khon, or Balinese, or Javanese dance. Early histories of male figures as players in dance expression were known across Asia in Peking Opera, and even in Japanese Kabuki and Noh art. In the Philippines, the notions of primitive dances performed by healers or “Babaylan” are sometimes depicted by male figures—the embodiment of spirits crosses over the masculine and feminine archetypes, and that is true within indigenous dances and ceremonies in other cultures and parts of the world.
MC: As a Filipino-Canadian, what has been your experience with dance in both cultures? Is there a difference? Maybe that’s what the idea of dance as a universal language is all about….?
AET: Dance, body, and movement are universal, but what separates them is history and cultural development over time. Although Filipino dance has kept some of its historical heritage, a lot has also been erased as a result of a long period of colonialism and the arrival of Christianity, which has destroyed significant indigenous practices and culture. I think we can see that also in our Indigenous stories of Canada. My interest in the dance in the Philippines is the preservation of cultural dances, disappearing indigenous knowledges and practices, and how these can influence my own ideas and treatment of dance and choreography for the contemporary time. Canada on the other hand, with its Western mode of expression and influence, pushes dance forward from American and European contemporary experimentation, technique, and form.
MC: Your show, Passages of Rhythms, was so fun and entertaining but also incredibly vulnerable and moving. I felt that there was a bit of a Freudian Id, Ego, Superego element to it! How do you find your way into choreography when the narrative is so interdependent on the relationship between you and each of your dance partners?
AET: Vulnerability, trust, and risk are important in collaboration in order to allow the possibility of letting go of Ego in order to build relationship. I honor collaboration because it’s in this process that I learn so much, about myself and others, and vice versa. The mandate of CO.ERASGA is cross cultural work and so I have no choice but to dig deeper in this realm, allow for cross pollination and cross discipline to emerge, and continue to pursue finding relation with other artists in different genres. We come to the creative process with a desire to collaborate, and this is really the first relationship that has to exist in order for the work to evolve and continue. The rest becomes natural, and creativity begins to build in the relationship and in the practice, movements, dance and choreography…there’s an immense amount of information that exists and can be utilized in these creative investigations.
MC: How did you decide on the Bharatanatyam and Flamenco narratives for the first and second acts?
AET: The Bharatanatyam duet was more luminous and mysterious, the Flamenco was robust and physical… but it is, in fact, non-narrative for us—but the energy of the body depicts a relationship with the choreography, sounds, etc. Audiences can create their own narrative, but I keep it open so that the public can interpret their own stories. Then again, the yin-yang energy exists in both duets… How does the language of the bodies create stories without the depiction of gender? ...This to me is a continuous research work…Through the process of creating, certain energy emerges, I listen and follow that to development.
MC: The third act was about “voices for the body” which was so cool! Unlike anything I’ve seen on stage before. Movement is often connected to the voice— even when thinking about choreographing and marking things out, it is often articulated in staccato or elongated nondescript vocalizations. What was your approach to this piece?
AET: By using and expanding the voice, and then allowing for body to be affected, the movements emerged naturally... I think as dancers we use the voice naturally in the dancing body—we just don’t over emphasize it. Breathing is a form of vocalizing, it’s just not vocalized. There is a saying “if you ain’t singing you are not dancing” by Annabel Gamson who was a follower and interpreter of Isadora Duncan’s dances. Our approach is to stay true to the use of voice to create different moods and ideas to explore, thus affecting the energy of the body in order to create scenes or choreography that result in very visceral, tender, sometimes perplex, and very human sensations. [My partner in the scene] is a vocal artist but also a trained musician and composer. He has created work for the stage that has really dealt with body and movements. The choreography in the piece came naturally through our explorations of voice and movements.
Alvin Erasga Tolentino is the Vancouver based founder of Co.ERASGA. In 2010 he was awarded the Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Award for dance in recognition of his contributions to the field and to Vancouver’s cultural communities.
INTERLUDE
“It is beautiful masochism, what he just did… He fingers the black slippers, which he shoved in his back pocket. They seem to taunt him. He must become like the other male dancers: expert, majestic, invincibly strong.”
– Chloe Benjamin, The Immortalists.
The roots of classical ballet are deeply rooted in patriarchal ideology. From an art historical standpoint, the patriarchal nature of ballet has been prolifically depicted by Degas; and from a contemporary stance, one’s gender not only defines their role in performance, but also their role within the social structure of the art form. Ivy Chow rightly articulates this by pointing out that while ballet is often considered to be a “female” art form, not only are the performance narratives representative of a male point of view, but the leadership roles within ballet companies are also occupied by men.[1] Moreover, the extent to which one is capable of performing their assigned gender (as dictated by the ballet world) defines the type of career a dancer will have within a company. Only the most delicate and fragile of women, and the most athletic and heroic of men, will ascend to the rank of “principal,” deemed capable of performing solos and driving the narrative. This discourse of gender difference has placed an “aesthetic value” on normative male and female roles.[2] Ann Daly explains how during the Romantic period, when the art form of ballet was really taking wing, societal expectations dictated that men should not appear subordinate (or even equal to) women. It was seen as grotesque and emasculating for a man to appear too effeminate, thus, male dancers were relegated to action roles that showcased strength via jumps and lifts.[3] However, by categorizing the movements of women as too feminine to be performed by males, the art form of ballet itself has been coded as an effeminate genre—perpetuating the gender stereotype of men who dance ballet as being “unmanly” regardless of the hypermasculine role they are required to perform.[4]
Given that an iconic classical ballet—Swan Lake, for example—is often replicated more or less verbatim by companies all over the world, it bears questioning what the cosmic implications of such structured gender performativity might be. Judith Butler surmises that “gender is the repeated stylization of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being.”[5] Swan Lake was originally choreographed in 1877 and the iconic solos of the Prince and the White/Black Swan remain essentially unchanged. That’s one hundred and forty years of intensely normative movement congealing into the cultural consciousness of humanity! It is little wonder that any deviant staging of this production is met with significant scrutiny. When Misty Copeland, a principal dancer already breaking boundaries in the ballet world for her musculature and race (a topic worthy of its own paper, but lies outside the bounds of my writing here), struggled with an iconic bit of choreography as the Black Swan she occasionally altered the choreography and was ruthlessly shamed by critics and fans alike. Another example: when Matthew Bourne staged all male version of the ballet in 1995 audiences walked out during the male pas de deux.[6] Twenty years later, attitudes have changed, and when the work was restaged in 2018 at Sadler’s Wells in London it was considered a sweeping success… yet, still, the men are described as “dangerous beasts […] nothing dainty about them.”[7] The language of this critical discourse still perpetuates the century old definition of how a male ballet dancer should perform. Why is a dainty man so problematic? Ballet, as a cultural institution, is still far from breaking free of its normative gender discourse.
ACT II: JASON SNOW
MELANIE CRIST: Jason! Thank you for chatting with me! I miss you! Let’s talk about dance.
JASON SNOW: Of course! Though I feel like my dancin’ days are getting further and further in the rearview mirror…
MC: I feel you—I tried to take a class the other day and ended up like Aunt Viv in that Fresh Prince episode. Ok, so, tell me about your dance background.
JS: Dance, for me, began as recreation at a very young age, when I was three. Dance, as a creative outlet, grew over time once I began choreographing and teaching. I was also immersed in the dance competition world. Coming from a very small town in Western Kentucky, these competitions allowed me a chance to travel and see other studios and students perform. It also provided more opportunities for me to grow as a performer. I was able to see and be inspired by other male dancers at these competitions, as it was usually just me in Paducah, dancing with a legion of young ladies.
MC: Was that difficult? What has been your experience with dance in the Queer community?
JS: Theatre dance, which is what I specialized in for the majority of my professional dancing career, was and remains an extremely safe space for queer individuals. Growing up, I was deeply closeted but also fortunate to reside and dance within a bubble of friends and family in Kentucky who supported my dancing and mostly saw it as something interesting, as opposed to off-putting, strange, or unusual. But joining my first national tour at age 20 and subsequently never working too far outside the singular world of musical theatre has allowed me to feel safely queer, accepted, and almost always surrounded by other queer people and/or fiercely loyal queer allies. I’ve continuously worked in an industry where queer artists are celebrated and hold positions of power and where one's sexual preference is rarely a barrier to success. With age, I've come to learn this is a unique situation for a young queer individual, to constantly be surrounded by such unwavering support.
MC: Do you think that your experiences with dance have helped define or code your gender?
JS: I think dance has given me an extremely safe outlet to experiment with gender norms. I’ve always identified as a cisgender gay man - though one very much in tune with his feminine side. Even as a teenager I enjoyed learning and dancing female-centric choreography. As a teacher and choreographer, I was able to explore all of these sides of myself - whether choreographing for females or creating gender neutral movement that worked for any configuration of dancers. So much of dance is gender neutral. But even when movement is tailored for a more traditional gender, watching performers of the opposite gender tackle this movement can be powerful and inspiring. I attribute the survival of my childhood/teenage years as a closeted homosexual to the cathartic release that dancing provided, as well as knowing no boundaries when it came to the exploration of movement, be it traditionally masculine or feminine. Most of my shame and fear was easily channeled into dance classes, choreography, and performing.
MC: Do you think that there are styles of dance that are specifically “queer”? And should they remain in the queer community only?
JS: Sure - I mean voguing and essentially all movement born from ballroom culture are famously queer. With dance being such a social art form, I'm not sure I believe dance styles labeled as "queer" can't or shouldn't be experienced and performed by those outside the queer community. I guess my hope is that we always do our best to recognize and celebrate queer artists (especially queer artists of color) and their contributions to dance. But honestly, I LOVE when ‘queer’ concepts and dance styles break through - be it Madonna taking (or appropriating) voguing to the stratosphere, or the male and female back-up dancers of a recent K-pop artist switching roles for a performance on a Korean television show…the male dancers performed the women’s choreography and vice-versa. I’m a big fan of bringing and normalizing queer culture to the masses and also shaking up gender norms whenever possible.
MC: So do you think that the fact that drag culture is now kind of mainstream because of RuPaul’s Drag Race is a good thing or a problematic thing?
JS: I mostly see it as a very good thing. I guess it can become problematic when appropriation erases or minimizes the origin or creator of a specific dance style or aspect of queer culture. It would be awful if everyone thought Madonna single-handedly invented voguing. Luckily we have Paris is Burning and POSE to make sure the real (or close to real) story of this time in queer culture is being told. And even more recently, a new dance competition series on HBO Max, Legendary, burst on the scene as a truly joyful celebration of ballroom culture, showcasing some of the best ballroom artists on the scene today, while even providing viewers a legit tutorial on all things ballroom. It's super fun and I can't wait for the next season!
Jason Snow is an accomplished Broadway performer, choreographer, and resident director. His credits include “Spider-Man Turn Off The Dark”, “The Little Mermaid”, “Hairspray”, “Mamma Mia!”, and “The Music Man”. Melanie and Jason were room-mates for two years during the 1st National Tour of “Mamma Mia!” where they watched “Buffy The Vampire Slayer” all night and ABBA’d all day- well, eight shows a week anyways.
INTERLUDE
“Notice what it's all about. Being able to fit into the straight, white world and embody the American dream. We don't have access to that dream, and it's not because of ability, trust me.”
– Blanca, Pose
The discursive element of dance is altered when traditionally underrepresented forms are adopted by dominant ideologies. The practice of Vogue originated in the Harlem drag scene of the 1960s, and by the early ‘80s was a mainstay of ballroom culture. Ballroom itself has been categorized as “the paradigmatic anti-heteronormative indictment against ills and flaws sustained by the dominant American lifestyle” [8]; yet, when Madonna released her music video for “Vogue” in 1990, the style became as synonymous with heteronormative “Top 40” as it was with ballroom. The cultural appropriation of marginalized communities is undoubtedly problematic—one reason being that it perpetuates the ignorance of dominant culture to the oppressive origins of marginalized cultural practices. Madonna’s video was met with skepticism due to the fact that the queer/black/Latino roots of Vogue culture were not overtly credited; and though she brought awareness to the gender fluidity of the style, she failed to address the original narrative in which it was conceived. Constantine Chatzipapatheodoridis argues that Vogue, as an art form, has endured because artists like Madonna, Kylie Minogue, and Lady Gaga have “preserv[ed] its legacy,” but as a result the critical potential of Vogue has been diluted within the pop market economy.[9] The marketability of the style within this context means that Vogue is “reduced to a spectacle of gender” as opposed to a counter-normative political discourse that challenges the “feminine/masculine binary.”[10]
In my conversations with Alvin Erasga Tolentino, Jason Snow, and Anthony Meindl, we discussed gender as it relates to performance, and what kept coming up (for me) was that creative movement—in any form—is, by default, a spectacle of the body. From an art perspective, the body is the palette, the tool, and the canvas all in one. However, the performative aspect of dance can be reductive if care is not taken to understand the origins of the movements performed. In his essay “Intertextuality and Dance,” Bryant Hendserson articulates this:
Dance performance—very much like gender performativity—is learned, produced, and disseminated through similar social and cultural interactions that involve the repetition of communicative gestures, speech, and other bodily techniques.[11]
I argue that the origins of the movements themselves matter. There is, in fact, a difference between merely performing movement and using it to communicate. Though much of dance is learned via didactic repetition, the understanding of the communicative origins of the movement is essential in creating a meaningful and resonant performance.
ACT III: ANTHONY MEINDL
MELANIE CRIST: Hi Tony, I feel like it’s been forever!
ANTHONY MEINDL: It has been forever.
MC: I really appreciate your willingness to talk with me about this.
AM: I’m not a dance teacher but…
MC: But you are a teacher of spirit! And you use movement, and sometimes dance, in your work with actors.
AM: The body, mind, and spirit are all connected. I’ve found that the body in motion sets emotions in motion. When we give ourselves permission to free our bodies, we are giving ourselves permission to release stored feeling that we maybe didn’t even know was there.
MC: You’re talking about a different type of motion than just regular everyday stuff, right?
AM: Right. It’s about exploring movement beyond the utilitarian aspect of moving our bodies—the way we normally walk, sit, and lay down—movement that doesn’t necessarily make sense. It can be really confronting for some people. Because it represents the unknown.
MC: Yeah it can be really vulnerable. Even as a trained dancer- it can be scary to move in an ‘undefined’ way. What I’ve witnessed in class though is that when you challenge an actor to engage in that type of movement, it does eventually get to the point where it actually changes their ‘utilitarian’ movements in the work too.
AM: The physical connects to the emotional. So when we release into different aspects of movement then we have access to the primal. It can give an actor an “in” to a character that they may have been having trouble accessing.
MC: You often have men and women switch gender roles [when they are working on scenes] in class—how do you think that movement contributes to defining or reinforcing gender?
AM: Our bodies, aside from our genitalia, are neutral and universal. Society places gender restrictions on the body. It shows us how to ‘be’ and then we adopt it and attribute it to the masculine and feminine, when really we have the ability to access it all. So I really don’t think about movement as being gendered.
MC: Your film Where We Go From Here deals with gun violence. One of the vignettes incorporates the Pulse nightclub shootings—a club where the queer community came together to dance and express themselves. I wanted to ask if you could speak to that a little bit.
AM: The morning of pulse shootings I was so angry and sad. I started writing as a means of catharsis, really. But I also wrote about the shootings in Paris… I mean, this just shouldn’t keep happening. But the three vignettes are love stories at their core. Love in a modern age. These are the types of things we have to deal with now. Anyways, as a gay man, yes- gay dance clubs are, and have been for a long time, a sanctuary for gay men and women and their friends to go and express themselves, and be free, and not be judged. It’s like church in a way. So the attack at Pulse felt like a confrontation against gay people themselves. The media tried to portray it as a hate crime….and maybe that guy was struggling with his sexuality…but, you know, he also staked out Disneyland. For me, the purpose of dance and film are to comment on the world we are living in. It’s a way to talk about it. I’m trying to do what I can to contribute to that awareness.
Anthony Meindl is an LA-based Writer/Director/Teacher/Founder of AMAW studios worldwide, and Melanie’s long time mentor and acting coach. He is the best-selling author of four books: At Left Brain Turn Right, Book The Fucking Job, Alphabet Soup for Grown-ups, and You Knew When You Were 2.
CURTAIN CALL
I would be remiss to close this piece without referencing the multiple forms, rituals, and practices of dance that have not been given space within these pages. Indigenous dance practices—the Haka, cross-dance pow-wows; r eligious and spiritual dance practices—the Natya Shastra, the Bharatanatyam, and various other ancient medicine and fertility dances. Challenging patriarchal norms of gender and social structure generally exist within them all. Bryant Henderson writes, “beliefs and ideas about gender are not necessarily ‘hidden’ in dance, but rather are gradually discovered by individuals as their engagement with dance deepens.”12 Thirty-nine years into my journey as a movement-inclined human—I am still figuring it all out.
SPECIAL THANKS
I have an infinite amount of gratitude for Alvin Erasga Tolentino for donating his time to this project, and inspiring the subject matter.
Jason Snow and Anthony Meindl are angels who always let me ask sometimes block-headed questions.
Notes
1. Ivy Chow, “Grace and Scarcity,” Journal of Dance Education 18, no. 4 (2018): 176, doi: 10.1080/15290824.2018.1442100.
2. Ann Daly, “Classical Ballet: A Discourse of Difference,” in Meaning In Motion: New Cultural Studies of Dance, ed. Jane C. Desmond (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), 112.
3. Daly, 113-114.
4. Daly, 115.
5. Margaret Ames, “Memory, Identity and a Desire to Dance,” Performance Research 17, no. 2 (2012): 123, doi: 10.1080/13528165.2012.671081.
6. Roslyn Sulcas, “All the Swans At This Lake Are Male,” The New York Times, October 8, 2010, https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/arts/dance/10bourne.html.
7. Lyndsey Winship, “Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake review – electrified return to the wild,” The Guardian, December 13, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2018/dec/13/matthew-bournes-swan-lake-review-sadlers-wells-london.
8. Constantine Chatzipapatheodoridis, “Strike a Pose, Forever: The Legacy of Vogue and its Re-contextualization in Contemporary Camp Performances,” European journal of American studies 11, no. 3 (2017): 1, doi: 10.4000/ejas.11771.
9. Chatzipapatheodoridis, 10.
10. Chatzipapatheodoridis, 5-10.
11. Bryant Henderson, “Intertextuality and Dance,” Journal of Dance Education 19, no. 1 (2019): 5, doi: 10.1080/15290824.2018.1407031.
12. Henderson, 6.
Bibliography
Ames, Margaret. “Memory, Identity and a Desire to Dance.” Performance Research 17, no. 2 (2012): 121-127. doi: 10.1080/13528165.2012.671081.
Chatzipapatheodoridis, Constantine. “Strike a Pose, Forever: The Legacy of Vogue and its Re-contextualization in Contemporary Camp Performances.” European journal of American studies 11, no. 3 (2017): 1-15. doi: 10.4000/ejas.11771.
Chow, Ivy. “Grace and Scarcity.” Journal of Dance Education 18, no. 4 (2018): 176-179. doi: 10.1080/15290824.2018.1442100.
Daly, Ann. “Classical Ballet: A Discourse of Difference.” In Meaning In Motion: New Cultural Studies of Dance. Edited by Jane C. Desmond, 111-119. Durham: Duke University Press, 1997.
Henderson, Bryant. “Intertextuality and Dance.” Journal of Dance Education 19, no. 1 (2019): 1-9. doi: 10.1080/15290824.2018.1407031.
Sulcas, Roslyn. “All the Swans At This Lake Are Male.” The New York Times. October 8, 2010. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/arts/dance/10bourne.html
Winship, Lyndsey. “Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake review – electrified return to the wild.” The Guardian. December 13, 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2018/dec/13/matthew-bournes-swan-lake-review-sadlers-wells-london