Dancing is poetry, it is a physical movement that allows the person who is dancing to tell a story. Whether it is a story of happiness or sadness, there is a way for the story to be one of poetry. There is simplicity and difficulty with it at the same time.
Many stories in ballet talk about classic fairytales, from Sleeping Beauty to Swan Lake we see the story of young girls and their loves. Ballet tends to lean into this category of love story dance, and the dramatic elements of dance while modern and contemporary are where we find these stories that hold more sadness.
With dance being like poetry we are able to see the emotions that it evokes in the audience, most students who watch Nutcracker see the dream of being Clara or Sugar Plum. Parents and Grandparents see their kids on stage… and the onlooker who is just there see the story of excitement and dreaming in a child-like mindset.
One dance that invokes a lot of emotions in me is the Royal Ballet, “ Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”. Every time I watch it I see something new, from teh elegance to the goofiness in different characters. I love watching the Mad Hatter dance because I am able to see tap and ballet in one performance, it is very interesting because it is a rarity. I have a deep love for both styles and seeing them preformed together warms my heart in a brand new way.
The Mad Hatter gives the audience a sense of crazy and elegant at the same time mainly due to the costuming. Where dance is the poetry the costumes are the adjectives that add the extra beauty.
The whole of dance together is what makes this refined beauty, you can find that there are so many elements in a ballet that make up the story, one thing I am reminded of is the poem Poets Dance by Tonelius Oliver:
Poets Dance in the heart of rhythms
Discussion spoken in the pen
Energy being tampered with in the music
Limitations rarely occur in audio-silence
Artist writes from the heart of rhythms
The Poets are dancing
Flaming hot ink drips from the pen
The paper it's a sacrificial victim
It just seems to lay still
there's no escape when the Poets Dance
Rhythmic heartbeats offset the confrontation
of clumsy feet
To tap dance on paper is a joy one must experience
to fully appreciate
It's not for the faint-hearted
At the end of the poem it says its not for the faint-hearted, both poetry and dance are hard. If you have ever tried to write a poem then you know that it can be difficult, but the physicality of dance is also not for the faint-hearted. Dance is a poem with lines and stanzas that will continue for hours!
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