Felt-Sense Movement Research
My perspective of dance musicality was immensely influenced by the media. Dancers on social media record themselves to watch and judge their own bodies on how they move. From my personal experience, dance studios build an ideal image: skinny and flexible. Psychologists K.M. Gray and Mark A. Kunkel investigated female ballet dancers, calling them “mere machines” (Gray and Kunkel 2001, 13). The comment comes from the need to disassociate from the body as an instrument for their work. As a dancer, this makes sense, but because of comparison and competition, dancers that disassociate from their bodies tear themselves down if they are not the ideal image or can do what ideal dancers can. After watching the Netflix series, Tiny Pretty Things, anyone can see there are some unhealthy behaviors dancers will use to get closer to the assumption of perfection. Characters in the show felt pressured to keep a perfect presence in class, a place that should be meant for dancers to feel safe enough to mess up. Just the main plot itself portrays a competition to the spotlight that someone else would kill for literally. In addition to all this, other characters have problems of their own that make different statements in the ballet world, including drugs to avoid injuries. I resonated with a lot of things from the show because I have experienced them myself. I have trained so hard for dance team that I got more injuries than I could count. I know people in dance with eating disorders after looking at themselves in front of a mirror for years all the while comparing their bodies to someone else that they believed danced better than they could. I will never have a dancer’s body that has the ability to do tricks or flips due to my scoliosis experience. This is something I have learned to accept over time.
My love of improvisation influenced my felt sense movement, which inspired an interest in lyrical dance. Lyrical stems from ballet and lyrical jazz and developed within the competition dance world. I have always been compelled by its acting factor. I fell in love with improvising and learned how to feel my own sense of movement. In Heather Harrington’s article, “Consumer Dance Identity: The Intersection Between Competition Dance, Televised Dance Shows and Social Media,” she notes that ballet dancers “rarely” improvise nor rely on their own creative power (Harrington, 173). However, for me, I improvise every day. I think the feeling of wanting to dance would be natural to someone who truly loves to dance. I tried going every day at school. I adopted the term lyricism, which, for me, described a musicality I felt dancing. I am in touch with my emotions and my heart when I dance. I learned that lyrical dance includes acting out the emotions and lyrics in a song. Lyrical dance makes me feel more confident and aware of my body.
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In the course of the last three weeks, I have been deep in the process of learning how to describe my movement in words. Depending on the music, and the emotion it gives me, that is the energy I want in a story. For example, in an upbeat song, my movements are fast and uplifting. I feel freer when I let my body loose in footwork, such as the Charleston, and isolations, both African and jazz dance influences. On the other hand, when a song is softer, and slower, I rely on bounded energy. I throw myself into turns and anything that flows and shows more flexibility. However, the most important factor to me is beat. Any change of beat is practically a change of movement. I love it.
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Now that my journey at Winona State University is coming to an end, I have multiple questions about where I will go and how I will continue to grow in dance. I know that I love to dance. It is my purpose. I don’t need to have the perfect dancer body nor become famous out of it, I just want to feel happy and comfortable in my body as I do so. This passion of mine makes me feel whole. I got the chance to dance every day in college and appreciate dance more than I ever thought I could. I dance what I feel, and I had been trying to search for what my specific moving style is, but there is not one; it is all mixed. I built a portfolio that I did not even realize was possible. I have many influences in dance, but my biggest influence is my heart.
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