When I learn a new dance technique, I feel as though I’ve been transported into a new body, and am learning to walk all over again. I’ve always had two legs, but now I suddenly have three. I have to figure out how to use what is now an awkward third leg. But once I figure it out, that third leg can be put to good use. The learning process may not be pretty—it often isn’t—but the lessons are so valuable.
In our classes and rehearsals, Renee Robinson and Matthew Rushing have urged me to “stay in my body.” A correction made more evident by learning a new technique. Who would have thought that I would need reminding for such a seemingly simple notion? But then, I stopped to think, as I usually do… because I am a philosophy major… In Plato’s Phaedo, Socrates discusses the immortality of the soul while facing his own impending death. Socrates doesn’t fear death because he argues that when we die, the soul separates itself from the body. When someone devotes their life to practicing philosophy, they are also devoting their life to separating the soul from the body. Philosophers aim to see past their bodies. Just because my vision tells me that there is an external world, doesn’t prove the existence of the external world. To find an answer to this question, instead of picking up my pencil and saying,“HERE! Here is your external world!” I sit down in what is hopefully a comfortable armchair and think. I separate myself from my body.
Upon realizing this, my correction to “stay in my body” becomes ever more poignant. I do love philosophy. I find joy in abstraction. But in the dance studio, I’m doing a different kind of work. Ultimately I hope to be able to convey something to another person with my dancing. Communication—either to myself or with someone else—requires tangibility. Even metaphors require tangibility. Otherwise they would lose their power. An intangible metaphor wouldn’t communicate anything. In my philosophy classes I practice separation from my body, and in my rehearsals with Renee Robinson and Mathew Rushing, I practice finding my body again.
It seems that Ailey dancers are masters of the paradox of abstraction whilst maintaining tangibility. Their dancing moves me. As both Matthew Rushing and Renee Robinson have described to us in our discussions, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater holds up a mirror to their audience with their performance. One might wonder how on earth these superhuman dancers can be a reflection of what I am? I’m no superhero. What is it about their dancing that gives me that impression? I suspect it is the tangibility—or as Renee Robinson has described it, the vulnerability—of their performance that gives me that impression. They are superheroes that stay in their bodies so that they can meet and communicate with us.