dance on paper

This winter in Paris, the Centre National de la Danse (CND) invited Daniel Nagrin as a part of a series entitled, “Dance and Resistance,” a set of performances, conferences and colloquiums on political dance activity in New York since the 1930s. The New Dance Group will be highlighted, which was a collective of dancers and workers formed in 1932 who critiqued social injustice, war atrocities, class alienation and sexism through their dances. Works will also be performed of Anna Sokolow, Charles Weidman, Helen Tamiris, José Limon and Donald McKayle as well as present-day companies such as Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, together sharing their own take on the theme of one of the series’ expositions, “Dance as a Weapon.”

Daniel Nagrin (born in 1917) trained with Martha Graham and Anna Sokolow among others, and was an active member of The New Dance Group. Six of Nagrin’s solos were performed Saturday evening by Shane O’Hara, now the artistic director for Nagrin’s foundation, and following the performance, four dances on film were screened in Mr. Nagrin’s presence, which allowed for a post-viewing commentary.

All of this is to say (!), during the Q&A session, which was assisted by a translator and available headsets for the audience, Nagrin responded to the French crowd’s questions with candor and typical New Yorker frankness. Nagrin admitted he had braced himself for a French intellectual onslaught, and he was correct in his preparation. In response to one audience member’s inquiry into the theme “Dance and Resistance” (a theme Nagrin himself did not choose to be classified under), he stunned the crowd by rejecting the proposed idea, then saying austerely, “Words are gorgeous. But, they are also very dangerous.” This silenced the French audience member and other subsequent questions. You could have heard a pin drop.

I mention this portion of the session because it brings up a monolithic difference in the dance cultures of France and the United States: the act of dialectics. I have been living in France for over one year now, and the sheer difference of the amount of cultural and theoretical discussion has been stupefying. The French are a loquacious population, and not only do they converse more than the average American, their dialogue is usually more logical and well-constructed.

This is quite a change from New York, where talking about dance usually resorts to informal, qualitative jargon, most of the time just marginally descriptive or just plain creative. This has its own merit, as it is may be truer to non-spoken movement than trying to relive dance through words. (I remember Susan Rethorst mentioning an experiment with Tere O’Connor where they gave each other feedback with movement itself, purposefully avoiding any verbal interaction.)

Since I am not dancing much at the moment, I’m taking advantage of this intellectually rich environment, slowly delving into texts and theories, most of which aren’t dance-related. Whether I realize it or not, these readings and discussions will affect what I might create later on. And even though I believe the beauty of dance is in its unspoken expression, being able to speak about it logically and constructively can only enhance its credibility as an art form. So, I both respect and criticize Daniel Nagrin for rejecting those harmless questions: as the creator of his works, he is the first to decide what they are, yet on the other hand he dismisses a discussion that could have been, well, pretty darned interesting. But at 90 years old and unable to move without a cane, I think you can do whatever the hell you want… (granted you are not some untried Nazi general.) Nagrin didn’t leave the stage without graciousness, however; at the final applause, he turned verklempt and thanked the audience tearily. This even caused some tears of empathy in my own stoic self, for we dance artists work so hard for so little, and Nagrin certainly deserved more than the modest recognition he received that night in a small dance studio in the outskirts of Paris.

22 novembre 2007