YouTube? MySpace? Inspiration for Choreography?
Choreographers are always seeking new sources of inspiration for their dances. They look around their immediate environment, dream, go to museums, read books, watch movies and television, travel and go to other people's dance performances. And now, the world-wide web offers more and more rich resources for artistic creation.
For their work, in the 18th and 19th centuries, European ballet dance makers drew upon the popular peasant dances of the day. Later, ballet and modern dance choreographers also turned to the classical, court and popular dances of non-European cultures as well for creative inspiration.
"Paquita" and "Don Quixote" by Marius Petipa reflect Spanish dances. George Balanchine's "Vienna Waltzes" and Jerome Robbins's "An Evening's Waltzes" spotlight the social dance that at its beginning evoked cries of "immoral" and "obscene" because it was the first time a man and woman in public danced in tight embrace.
Eugene Loring's "Billy the Kid" and Agnes de Mille's "Rodeo" capture aspects of the square, barn and cowboy dances of the U.S. West. Ruthanna Boris's "Cakewalk" retold the dances of the minstrel era when whites appropriated the dances of blacks. Twyla Tharp's "As Time Goes By" draws upon popular dance styles as does her "Sinatra Suite." Critic George Jackson recalls: "Daniel Phoenix Singh, a Washington DC choreographer, did a brilliant simulation of a disco dive. Audience members were seated at little tables, served drinks, asked to dance by hostesses and hosts; then a couple on the dance floor began to call attention to itself and a mini dance drama developed."
Modern dance choreographer Paul Taylor's "Piazzolla Caldera" pays homage to the Argentine tango with his own interpretation of the dance and music. And Artistic Director of the Washington Ballet Septime Webre put on a "Noche Latina" that exudes the essence of Latin social dances.
Sometimes a social street dancer takes his dance to the concert theater. For example, Rennie Harris was a stepper, pop-locker, free-styler and then hip-hop dancer who crafted and reformatted these street-smart urban moves and styles for his theater dances "Endangered Species," "Rome and Jewels" and "Facing Mekka."
American popular social dances at first came into public view via young people traveling and sharing their moves at parties, pubs and clubs. New dances emerged out of the cultural mixing of blacks from different parts of the South and the North; and New York City's Harlem area became the fountainhead of the social dance craze of America's "roaring twenties."
Dances originated by blacks also permeated established dance forms and influenced the American repertoire of dance in theater, film and television, much as peasant folk dances had influenced European ballet. The black dance heritage comes from the African continent filled with some 1,000 different language groups and probably as many constellations of dance patterns. Blacks in America, uprooted from their homes in Africa, had been enslaved not only personally but culturally. Ethnic groups, clans and families were broken up, and as a result African dances specific to these units were constrained and transformed in the new world. Even so, the styles of many African dances persisted in the diaspora. Asadata Dafora, a dancer from Sierra Leone who came to the US in 1929, identified many black dance movements of the time as common in his homeland. Dancers in Harlem used different parts of the body, shimmied the shoulders, undulated the spine, rotated the hips, thrust the pelvis, bent the knees, fluidly extended and flexed the legs and moved on flat feet with the torso oriented earthward. These dancers appeared to take unabashed delight in the primacy of the body, to believe in the importance of the spiritual in dance and to express universal personal experience in their dances. Alvin Ailey, Talley Beatty, Donald McKayle, Judith Jamison and Bill T. Jones are among the choreographers who have searched their roots in black popular, soul, juke and jazz movements.
Many whites were attracted to what they saw as primal authenticity, the pulse of life, and a style alien to Western social dances. Whites in Harlem nightclubs were thrilled to partake of a sense of "illicit sexuality" in a socially protected environment. Blacks continually "set" new dances, and after they become widespread and "sanitized" by Arthur Murray ballroom studios, go on to create new moves.
Then films and television began to spread images of popular dances more rapidly than personal contact. "West Side Story," "Dirty Dancing," "School Daze," "Breakin'," "Breaking 2," "Beat Street," "Electric Boogaloo," "Rize" and "Mad Hot Ballroom" are some illustrative films. New dance moves appeared on television's "American Bandstand," "Soul Train," "Dance Party USA," "Dancin' on Air" (in Philadelphia), MTV and "Dancing with the Stars" with as many as 20 million viewers per show.
Today, as Abigail Tucker points out in her Baltimore Sun article, "Square Pants, Cool Dance, Propelled by the Internet, The High-Energy Baltimore Sponge Bob Is Fast Becoming a Hip-hop Phenomenon Far from Charm City," cyberspace is added to personal exchange, street, house parties, club, school, studio, film and video as a source for new dance moves. Tucker continues, "Once nearly unknown outside the city's nightclubs, the Baltimore Sponge Bob is now reaching young hip-hop enthusiasts across the country with the help of video-friendly Web sites such as YouTube and MySpace. There, in the past year or so, dozens of local teenagers have posted clips of themselves performing the Sponge Bob's frenetic footwork in their bedrooms and kitchens. These segments have been accessed by tens of thousands of people, some of whom are learning the moves themselves and...sharing footage of their attempts."
Internet dance clips are likely to increase as camera phones proliferate and capture new dances in places where they are born. Now new dance moves can spread anywhere in the world through the web, and millions of people could be doing them just days or hours later. Moreover, as dancers want to share and promote their work, both old and new dance videos from around the world become accessible on the internet. So surfing can lead to a treasure trove of movement and music inspirational resources for choreographers.
* I am grateful to Ling Tang who captured these images from You Tube.