The Curious Dance of Inspiration

            As I watched the different performances, I was captivated, I was thoroughly impressed, and despite my limited technical knowledge in an artistic area like dance, I really enjoyed it. I was really interested in what made it so interesting, and why I was moved by a couple of the particular performances. Why is it that dancing is able to inspire us, or bring out certain feelings?

From an individual perspective, one of the pieces that stuck out to me was the last dance performed by the ballroom team. This dance had me set on the edge of my seat, not because it was suspenseful, or I thought that something monumental was going to occur, but simply because of the way that their style and flow were literally entrancing. I went home that night and thought about what it was that made that dance stick out to me so much, but I don’t think that I came to a final reason. One speculative answer could be that their bodies moved in a direct parallel to my feelings and imagination as the music played, but I don’t know if I can settle with the answer that it was just feeling that grasped my attention. Nor did it feel like some eerie supernatural experience though. I thought that it might have been some relation to experiences that I’ve had, but if it is, it’s too multifarious for me to understand. I know that there is some logical answer for my admiration but it will probably take more experience to come to a solid conclusion.

Obviously the love of art like this is something shared by many people so I considered why the beauty of dance is understood by almost everyone. Howard Gardner is a developmental psychologist and a professor at Harvard. He came up with a theory back in the 1980’s that I find applicable to this question. He discusses how there are multiple intelligences, instead of just the traditionally valued western ‘logical-mathematic’ kind, there exist other categories of understanding and knowledge that can be learned. In his book “Changing Minds” he references the way that everyone we meet has something that they can teach us. The dancers that were in the World of Dance undoubtedly possess the spatial and bodily-kinesthetic knowledge Gardner talks about.  We all have varying degrees of understanding in different intelligences and often this determines our ability to relate to expressions of knowledge like the ones exhibited. I think that this is a useful theory in understanding the way that we relate to art such as dance. Although, maybe we are just predetermined to think of certain movements of the body as beautiful, I've heard of studies that have attempted to confirm ideas similar to this. Is special movement a value learned from society or intrinsic to being human?

In conclusion, this was an experience that got me thinking about what makes something beautiful, and how it is interpreted. I will definitely be attending a couple more performances like this one, with the hope that my ability to interpret and understand becomes greater.