Trevor Georgi Mar 24, 2014 Ed Austin My Philosophy about Dance What is dance?

This seems like a simple question on the surface, and yet is it really that simple? Ive been in the dance department long enough here at BYU to hear lost of different definitions of what dance is and what it is not. Depending on the dance group you talk to they will have differing opinions about what the others might believe dance to be. To a folk dancer it might be tied to ancestry and peoples routes and traditions. You could then turn around and ask a ballroom dancer what dance is, and they might tell you that dance is about the feeling and emotion invoked by a dance/song. As a dance major here at BYU I sit and contemplate what dance means to me. Depending on the class I can become a ballet dancer, then an hour later I step in and I am now a contemporary dancer. Dance majors at BYU are expected to be a jack-of-all-trades in the dance world. Thus, I take you down the road of what dance means personally to myself. I started my dancing career at the age of fourteen with break and hip-hop dancing. I personally love this dance style, it allows for so much freedom of expression. I would practice and try and invent new moves in all the spare time that I had. I was so enthralled in dancing, that I would get caught doing it in the school hallways, my kitchen at home, and almost any other place imaginable. However, due to a severe back injury when I was fourteen years old, I was forced to stop that style. The year passed on, I healed quickly, and then I then had my closest brother Jeff (an avid ballroom dancer at Timpanogos High School) talk me into doing ballroom my sophomore year of high school. Shortly

thereafter my brother Jeff died in my arms that following summer. I quickly became an angry and troubled youth who had a death wish. I became reckless, and some would probably have called me dangerous for I didnt care about anything during this time. I turned my back on all my values of my upbringing, and I quickly became as lost as a person can be. I had so many feelings that needed to be expressed, however I couldnt find the means of doing so. Dance crept back into my life, and it became my lifeline and my way to express myself in ways that I could never do in words. Dance became the outlet for me to unleash my darkest emotions; the torrent of anger buried deep; the confusion of being lost and losing all hope; the welling sadness that I tried to hide from the world. I went from looking forward to nothing in my life, to looking forward to dancing and sharing in other dancers company and joy. This was not a quick process, and it took lots of close friends and family to help me make each trudging step, yet I was able to crawl, then hobble, then walk and eventually run. Once dancing helped me to express all of my darkest emotions, it then became a tool for me to express good emotions. I became a flirty, mysterious, and joyous dancer who looked like he was enjoying life to the fullest- and I was. Dance lifted me up and gave me my safe outlet like nothing else could, save a loving God. There were times I wondered why he didnt come down and help me Himself, but now as I look back, He put dance into my path to help me all along. Dance helped transform me into my happy and fun loving self again that I was before tragedy struck. That is part of my past and my pain, and there is no one in this life that escapes this life unscathed. The longer Ive been around the wonderful dancers in this department, the more Ive come to realize that almost each and everyone has used dance as a means of therapy at some point. It can heal mental, emotional and physical pains.

Dance can do this for anyone and everyone who will simply invest themselves in it. You must give it your all when you are in the studio or on the stage, and if you do, you will experience expression like youve never experienced before. There is much debate about what kinds of movements should be considered dance. I have been in debates with probably hundreds of individuals during my dance career concerning this subject: from the average Joe who doesnt dance and doesnt understand the purpose of it, to my colleagues in the dance class or studio. This to me is one of the most frustrating parts of being a dance major because everyone has varying opinions. My belief is simple, and I will explain myself after- any movement done with rhythm is dance, and any movement that expresses true emotion is dance. I hear people respond to me when I say these two statements all the time with the following, So Basketball is dancing then huh? or, Then acting is dancing too right? Almost every time these statements are said sarcastically, but these people are overlooking the simplicity of my beliefs. First they dont understand what rhythm is. Everyone is born with rhythm flowing through him or her. We live because of our bodies rhythms- once those rhythms stop, so do we. If a rhythm makes you move, then that is dance. Its that unseen force of hearing or feeling a rhythm and having to get up and do something about it that makes it dance. Does that mean that sports could be dance? I truly believe so. I have seen some of the most graceful movements done by athletes. However, my criteria still stands for what is considered dance. As for acting being dancing, my retort to people who tell me that is simply they are not expressing true emotion. They are aligning their feelings with some outside character- it is not their own feelings. The greatest part of being a dance major at BYU is

seeing the ownership happen in dancers everyday and every practice. We have choreographers enter our studios and work spaces and create movement for us. However, we take it upon ourselves to make the movement ours by putting ourselves on the floor, literally. We put our own personal emotions into our dancing, regardless of what people have told us we should be feeling during a dance. We take what they created, and then make it our own by putting our emotions we wear on our sleeves into it, sometimes our deepest emotions that no one else knows about. That is what I mean when I say True emotion. My beliefs concerning dance are simple, yet extremely personal to me. Dance is a healing and expressing source for our souls, and it can also be found in our movements of rhythm, and true movement expression. Dance can be a God-given blessing in a persons life, to help lift them up in times of struggle or pain. Far too often when lifes struggles come our way, we shy away from trying to let ourselves feel emotion. This is folly as a human being, because our vast range of emotions is what makes us human. Take away that expression and what are we- lumps of clay with a heartbeat. If a person wonders if they are a dancer or not, remember the words of Martha Graham when she said, if you must ask (about being a dancer), then you are not. Dancers are born this way, and we must dance till our rhythms stop.