Recently, our town introduced reduced prices for certain local arts venues. We’re doing the theatres.
A special thing about The Grand Duchy is language. The country has four. Whenever something is language specific, it excludes. No language is ubiquitious, not all people speak them all. Those educated here do, but half the population are incomers, more likely to speak none, one or maybe two. So, as excellent as the plays here are, the potential audience is smaller than the population might suggest. That may be why theatres offer perfomances free (mostly) of spoken language, such as dance.
We’ve seen two dance shows, Folia and Pénélope. Both were stunning: catch them if you can.
(As an aside, I do understand why the Pénélope photographs concentrate on the beautiful ballerinas, but it’s very unfair on the guys, who were just as good. Ignore their bias: all on stage, whether man or woman, gave powerful solos in their spectacular collective performance.)
But I’m not reviewing these pieces. I want to talk about dance itself.
I am not a fit person. When I was a child, my school encourage pupils to develop a fitness habit, but they did so in a way that simply didn’t work for me. I have always wanted to do things that have purpose: in exercise terms, I am utilitarian. Sports, whether chasing bits of leather across grass, or running in circles for rather a long time, has no utility. How many lives did I save by sticking my head between other boys’ bottoms? How did I improve the world by hitting the same ball away, again, and again, and again, …? And that old hoary excuse that does try and give sport a slight edge of utility, to offer a substitute for the scourge of nationalism, ignores the slight little detail that the pyschological issues behind nationalism — bigotry, hatred, fear, cowardice — are far better fixed than distracted. That’s what I thought as a child, although not in those words, and that’s what I think now.
The other reason given to me as a child for taking exercise is the good old one of keeping fit. It’s true, exercise does keep you fit, and keeping fit is more beneficial than not. But the argument given to me then wasn’t that it’s good for you, or anything else sensible, no, I was told it’s a matter of pride, of self–pride, e.g. pure–blooded egotism. (This predates pride’s modern usage.) I regard such pride, then and now, as sin (yes, I actually listened to my religious teachers when they weren’t spouting on about giant invisible pixies). The teachers who told me to keep fit for pride just didn’t understand my reaction. I pointed out pride was a sin, they dove into the nonsense purveyor’s favourite excuse, exceptionalism, “self–pride is the exception from sin of pride”, just as many religious people claim pixies are evil fantasies but God is the exception (rather than realising God is human experience). Claiming an exception from reality didn’t change my mind, didn’t resolve my doubt, it just lowered my opinion of them. They convinced me that exercise to keep fit was just another form of egotism. It isn’t, of course, they spoke rubbish. Had they argued that keeping fit was oiling the meat machine, I might have listened, but, come on, keeping fit just to buff up the ego? Bollox to that.
I do remember some almighty idiocy from sports teachers. One guy, trying to give a pep talk, insisted we gave a hundred and ten percent. I had been educated in maths, something that happens in a school, and, not having been asleep when I was introduced to the basics of percentages, I asked him how it was possible to give more than a maximum? He didn’t even understand the question, let alone try and answer it, he just told me to give one hundred and ten percent. That totally put me off whatever he was trying to do: how on earth was I supposed to respect, let alone be enthused by, someone who clearly didn’t understand what he was yattering about? I still don’t get why that teacher stole from the world’s crappiest crappy coach, rather than from, say, Shakespeare, who wrote some great pep talks for his heroes to spout. Similarly, since then, I see many sporty people lack stuff up top: more than one boss (none recently) has fallen for the marketing nonsense of ‘super–foods’, e.g. when someone finds they’ve too much of some bizarre foodstuff, they market it as super–food, and sell it to idiots. Discovering your boss falls for obvious cons does not engender respect. Now, don’t get me wrong, sports and fitness is not idiocy, there are people for whom I have huge respect who are fitness nuts: but fitness is an idiot–magnet.
I suggest my school’s error was to not introduce pupils to dance. The form very obviously requires extreme fitness (and immense skill). It is a form of exercise that has an ulterior purpose: dance is art, art saves lives — it has utility! I like to think that, had I been introduced to dance as a teenager, had I felt the same delight then as I do now, I’d have wanted to try it, and I think I’d have loved it. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’d never have made professional, or even semi–: I’m clumsy, which is bad for catching low–flying ballerinas, & … well … imagine a quiet scene on stage, an emotional peak, when from the back of the silent dancer pack comes an earthquake–ripping fart. No, I could never have been a professional. But I might well have caught the bug.
To give my mum her due, she did try and introduce me to dance, although it was ballroom dancing. I’m sorry to say I see that to dance as Mother’s Pride is to bread. I tried it once. I was a bad choice of partner for people with feet. Again, I’d have never been any good at it, but, had I seen performances of the real thing, maybe I’d have grasped it, maybe I’d have caught the bug.
But perhaps I wouldn’t. In 1986 (I think), I had the great chance to see, and was immensely impressed by, the Bolshoi Ballet in a performance of Swan Lake (in Leningrad to boot). Of course the Soviets were showing off, but that kind of showing off is most welcome. I still remember the expression in the movement, being amazed that so much could be communicated by dance. But I never did anything about it: I did not then go to performances in the UK, let alone wonder how I could do some dance myself.
Whether or not being properly introduced to dance as a teenager would have given me a form of exercise I could follow, a form that wasn’t egotism or rubbing yourself against other boys, I don’t know, but I do know it is the only form of exercise that might have done. If teaching kids to look after themselves is important, then, for kids like teenage me, dance belongs in the school curriculum, a better than sport.