The Poor Dance

It only makes sense to begin this blog by first explaining the mission.  This blog will hopefully provide an outlet for my personal thoughts, ideas, and beliefs regarding art, artistry, and dance while also creating a forum for other artists, dancers, choreographers, etc. to join the conversation.  I want to learn.  I want to teach.  I want to share.

Quite frankly I know that the internet is full of bloggers who think themselves experts on a given topic.  I'm not trying to do that.  It would be very helpful to my personal process for those reading this to challenge my conclusions and ideas.  This not only will help me to learn, but might provide others with new information.  Keeping this in mind, I will moderate the comments, but I will do my best to include all comments relevant to the current topic.  Also, the moderation process reminds me to respond.

Now, for anyone confused either by the title of this blog or the quote, let me explain.  Jerzy Grotowski was a Polish theater director and founder of the Laboratory Theater.  I've recently become very interested in his work, which will provide fodder for future posts, but it is his idea of the Poor Theater which really drew me in.  Grotowski sought to discover what is essential to theatre as an individual artform, stripped of the unnecessary additions of other artforms.  In this sense, his theater was poor in having less 'stuff' than a theater which included the 'rich' additions of music, dance, extravagant lighting or scenery.  This is not to say that he was opposed to these additions, at various times in his career he praised them.  Instead, his was a search for the potential of theatre as an artform strictly unto itself.  Grotowski's conclusion as to what was essential to theatre was simple - the actor and the audience.  Even this topic is debatable, but it struck close to home because several months ago, I heard Bill T. Jones, Karole Armitage, and Elizabeth Streb discuss this exact concept - the role of the relationship between performer and audience member.  A couple of months later, I had a similar conversation with David Dorfman.  Therefore, I've decided to adapt Grotowski's term for the essence of theatre into my search for the essence of dance.

If the philosophical nature of that last paragraph has you questioning whether you will return to this blog, I apologize.  Because I want to discuss art and artistry, there will be posts that go into strange realms of thought that truly have no 'answer'.  But rest assured that I also want to discuss practical points in choreography, dance, and artistry.  Hopefully, the practical discussions will lead to a better ability to tackle the philosophical quandaries.

With that said, welcome to The Poor Dance.