August 8 – 12, 2005, is ‘rerun week’ at The Artful Manager. While I’m on vacation, enjoy some favorite entries from the past.
Choreographer/dancer Liz Lerman has always provided a broad and engaging perspective at any professional conference I’ve seen her present. A friend (thanks Becky) recently forwarded this 2001 keynote address she gave to a performing arts educators forum (available as an Adobe Acrobat file here). I’ll just let it speak for itself:
I think there was a time when people danced and the crops grew. I think they danced as a way to heal their children. I think they danced as a way to prepare for war�we know that because we know some of those dances. I think they danced when they had to examine complex questions that they couldn’t answer any other way. I think that dance was a way to address the mysteries.
When I think about that time, I like to ask this question. Who got the best parts? If it is so important for the crops to grow and the rain to fall, whom did they trust? I think maybe they trusted the fattest person, the person with the most weight. You would think so�it would make sense. Or the oldest person, the person with the most wisdom. I’d like to imagine that they had a set of values in place that led them to understand why a particular person was dancing before them. And I’d like to think that everyone understood the dance. They didn’t have to read about it in the paper the next day and have it explained to them. And I don’t think it was because it was simple dance. I think that the dancing was highly abstract. There was no dumbing down in those cultures. The reason everyone understood the dance was because they all knew the dance.
Read the rest, it’s well worth it.
