In the larger art world, community-based art struggles to break out of a subordinate category. Many artists believe that creating art through/with the community diminishes true artistic vision and strength. Fortunately, Liz Lerman’s Dance Exchange and the Urban Bush Women both challenge this concept, asserting that such community art benefits both the professionals and the laypeople, mainly by giving the public a chance to explore their bodies and express untold stories. The interactions also provides artists with endless inspiration to develop untapped methods of communication. In working to convey a community’s sentiments, one usually starts with nothing but raw emotion. To do so, one must almost necessarily depart from traditional uses of the arts, and this deviation from tradition embodies both Lerman and Urban’s overall concept. Although they both have an emphasis on and background in dance, they realize that emotional, social, psychological, and historical messages cannot be fully expressed within the restraints of long-standing dance customs. They instead embrace increased exploration of different types of communication and dance techniques. Resultantly, their companies are unaware of limitations. Through fearless experimentation with form and content, both dance companies validate the importance of community art while also changing the overall landscape of the world of dance.
Simply defined, form connotes “shape”. Lerman and Urban revolutionize multiple aspects of form, most importantly changing views on the accepted shape of the dancer’s body and the shape of traditional teaching methodologies. Historically, a dancer’s body was expected to look a certain way. As Lerman describes in her article “Feeding the Artist, Feeding the Art”, she became fed up with the fact that dance classes followed a set pattern: “warm up, impart information on how bodies could achieve more physical range, and teach certain stylistic dance patterns” while standing in lines “facing the mirrors and never touching” (Lerman 54). The focus on competition instead of self-discovery and improvement made for a negative learning atmosphere. In direct opposition to this former model, both Lerman’s and Urban’s dance companies include people of different shapes and sizes. While Urban’s team focuses on African American Women, Lerman’s embraces every walk of life and encourages involvement across generations and ethnicities. Since both companies are highly successful and renowned, they are a testament to the fact that size does not dictate what is beautiful in dance – it only enables people to experience different forms of beauty.
Such open-mindedness facilitates the companies’ ability to work within a community of non-dancers. They make it a priority to establish a safe environment so that participants feel free to experiment and challenge their personal expressive limitations. As I experienced during a class with the Urban Bush Women, the safe environment is created through introductions, activities geared towards acknowledging and communicating personal emotions, and positive group feedback. In sharing such a level of vulnerability, people almost immediately form connections. Once relaxed, the participants are more likely to be receptive to the suggestions of the dance company, allowing Lerman and Urban the power to expand each participant’s mind/body relationship and physical range. Observing each person’s progress also allows the artist to gain new insight. For example, in her article, Lerman recounts a time when she had college dancers work with elderly people. Not only did the elderly regain and rediscover their physicality, but the college dancers’ ranges increased, as well! Lerman concluded that the positive affirmations of the elderly gave the dancers confidence and that the exaggerated gestures needed to communicate with the hearing/vision impaired participants aided the dancers in their development of stage personality. Overall, the students danced better than ever. She also recognized that through shadowing the elderly to prevent any falls, dancers learned about problem-solving and the alternating roles of leading/following in a partnership. Thus, the companies ensure that the participants and dancers interact with each other, rendering straight lines and self-isolation a trend of the past (Lerman 57-59).
Moreover, through their unique and interactive ways of creating and compiling movement into dance pieces, Lerman and Urban also challenge traditional content. While Urban is more centered around political/social responsibility and civic engagement, Lerman remains pretty open-minded about her themes, requiring only that they stem from the community’s personal sentiments. For example, at the Urban class I attended, their guided activity began with a set scenario and then transformed people’s reactions to that scenario into gestures. In contrast, my experience with Jeffrey Gunshol, using Lerman’s technique, started with memories prompted by certain words, group storytelling, selective text from each story, and a series of gestures and variations on those gestures.
Despite the differences in the method used to acquire a piece’s theme and choreography, Urban and Lerman are similar in the use of multiple mediums when presenting a piece. With the exception of absurdist/futuristic movements that long ago dwindled into oblivion, media is usually kept relatively separate, especially in dance companies. However, Urban and Lerman recognize that emotional movements help define form. Experimentation with different senses also heightens emotional memory. Thus, depending on the specific community, a piece may or may not include any or all of the following: singing, text, movement, images, live music, etc. Lerman also emphasizes the location of a performance, preferring to present and even brainstorm in a community setting of importance and meaning. This change of place not only forces the performances to be highly improvisational (and adaptable to different space constraints) but also makes the movements and the message of historical importance, causing the choreograph to become real instead of solely symbolic. The location allows a fuller understanding of the topic and the place, providing performers with a new level of passion. As such, dancers find a way to merge excessive technique with true emotion.
As a result of their works, both Lerman and Urban have changed the perceptions about body types, the approaches to performance in both form and content, and the views on community-based art. While each performance piece may not contain an entirely global message, the work with the community does enable a trend of healing, a means of problem-solving, and the progression of artistic exploration.
Although I personally met Urban, I am partial to Lerman, as I find her methods to be more comprehensive and universally inclusive. While Urban’s official stage concerts do inspire the audience to dance from their chairs, it seems that the company keeps community performance separate from the formal stage. Granted, I could be mistaken. However, based upon Lerman’s bold visions and her determination to forever push the limits, I can confidently predict that we can expect to see radical community involvement in her formal concerts in the near future.
Works Cited
Lerman, Liz. “Feeding the Artist, Feeding the Art.” Community, Culture, and Globalization. Ed. Don Adams and Arlene Goldbard. N.p.: The Rockefeller Foundation, 2002. 51-69.
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