[Tango-L] Can we please just dance?

[Jonathan Thornton]

Chas,

I am attempting an answer to your question because I can't yet tell you how
music can be transmitted with poor posture and a weak axis but I have
experienced it and know that it can. I find it an important question as I
struggle to understand the shared feeling part of dance. So what follows is
not an explanation but an attempt to begin to explore an extremely difficult
topic to verbalize.

I suspect the reason has to do with something that has been called touch
rather than the larger postural and motor muscles. Dancing involves the
coordination of quite a few areas of the brain. Certainly it involves the
auditory and sensory motor.

The distinction I'm trying to find is between large motor athletic ability
and the expressive touch and feeling. These appear to be separate functions
that are coordinated. The fine motor touch area seems to me to be the
response system that is where what we call chemistry is felt. I think like
smell this area is highly variable depending on the individual.

What I have experienced is that I've danced with partners who had very
excellent movement but I didn't get a finer sense of their expressing the
music. I'm not saying they didn't but my personal receptive area didn't seem
to coincide with their expression. Another way to put it is no chemistry.

I have also embraced beginning dancers who were unsure, moved with
hesitation but at the level of fine motor sensitive touch they responded in
a very expressive way to the music. Part of this has to do with breathing
and the very subtle shaping of motor response.

Manfred Clynes' study of touch that he calls Sentics,
http://www.microsoundmusic.com/clynes/ is one possible avenue to explore
this aspect. The phenomena is there but I haven't come across any
enlightening discussions of it. If anyone has books or articles to recommend
I'd be interested.

Yes posture and what Feldenkrais calls arcture is very important. I think
people very in how important expressive touch is for them. If you have known
someone like that perhaps this thought experience might demonstrate what I
am talking about and perhaps what Deby meant.

Imagine a very ill friend hospitalized and you come and sit at their bedside
and take their hand. With some people there is a reassuring warm pressure,
but someone who is very kinesthetically expressive those hands through very
tiny subtle movement can speak an eloquent nonverbal communication even
though that person is too weak to even stand.

My observation is that whichever brain part is responsible for this, and
like tonality, color etc. people very in their sensitivity to these things,
this is an important media of communication of feeling for some dancers. At
least this is the possibility that I'm attempting to explore at present.

I hope this suggests some possibilities to you.

Jonathan Thornton



On 7/27/06, Chas Gale <hotchango at msn.com> wrote:
>
> ---Deby Novitz wrote---
> "Personally for me, poor posture and a weak axis can be
> forgiven if the dancer understands the music and can transmit it."
>
> Again I am confused. Can someone tell me how music, or anything else can
> be
> transmitted with poor posture and a weak axis?
> Thank you in advance,
> Chas
>
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-- 
"The tango can be debated, and we have debates over it,
but it still encloses, as does all that which is truthful, a secret."
Jorge Luis Borges