Passion is not a substitute for technique

[clevermanka]

I've been seeing this quote from Martha Graham floating around lately, and I gotta say: It's stupid, it's wrong, and I hate it. After much conversation in comments, I'm amending this to: It's stupidly misused, it's wrongly taken out of context, and I hate it.

Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.

BZZZZZT. Thank you for playing, Martha. You should have kept your ideas in your choreography and out of Bartlett's Quotations (I don't think she's actually in Bartlett's but you get my point). See amendment, above.

One can make the argument that this motto works for people who are just sorta dancing along to life. You know, like at drum circles or dance clubs or whatever. But more often than not, this piece of garbage gets dragged out to justify Some Really Shitty Dance Performances.

"But I feel it in my heart!"
"But so-and-so dancer does this!"
"But I have passion, and that means you should respect my dance!"

Shut the fuck up. No, really. Shut. The Fuck. Up. And sit down while you're at it.

Passion is all well and good, but having it does not mean that you should perform for an audience. Dance at a hafla. Dance with some friends. But until a range of people (not just your best buds) agree that you are competently skilled in a style, refrain from performing for a public audience. This goes for experienced dancers, too! If you're trained in classical Egyptian and you want to try some Tribal Fusion stuff, don't assume you'll be fine with just a few classes and practice videos. You're learning a new style. Humble yourself and get some honest feedback from people who are trained in that style.

When/if that range of people gives you constructive criticism, don't justify your lack of precision and technique. There is no quicker way to alienate yourself from people who want to help you than to discredit advice given from decades of personal dance experience. Of course, if all you're looking for is kudos and back-slapping, then I have no time or patience for you.

Just Sit. Your Ass. Down.

This post brought to you by current ridiculousness on the LJ bellydancing comm. On the plus side, it's been a while since that comm had much activity, so it's nice that someone got it hopping.

SILVER LININGS!

Comments

[redheadfae.livejournal.com]

"insert super-cool gif here that I cannot now find"

I LOVE YOU SO MUCH

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

[redheadfae.livejournal.com]

[redheadfae.livejournal.com]

haha.. the other half of that gif didn't pick up:

[bluetourmaline.livejournal.com]

Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.

I suspect that Martha Graham was using "great dancer" to mean "as opposed to very good dancer", whereas people misread her to mean "as opposed to ordinary human being."

Consider that Martha Graham's circles would generally have been made up of some of the most technically advanced professional dancers of her time; she was pondering why some of them resonated with audiences and some of them didn't. It simply would not have occurred to her to include amateurs who bumble around and dance for fun in the domain she was thinking about. Like the way for things that I am deeply involved in, I may not think, a lot of the time, that 99.9% of the planet doesn't have the foggiest idea how to do what we do, and to them everything looks like magic (and a decent undergraduate singer to them sounds just as amazingly good as a Met headliner, when we know the difference).

So it isn't really her fault; it's neglecting context.

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

Good point. I should make up a name for misuse of this quote. Like a Godwin's Law for dancers.

[redheadfae.livejournal.com]

Good point, indeed.
Quite frankly, as a Martha Graham-trained high school dancer, those assholes using that quote are just as stupid. Her technique is goddamn HARD, and she didn't intend her quote to be used as an excuse. Typical is that one-leg stance held for fucking ever. My teacher made me do that *with a pirouette on that leg* in one performance.

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

Thank you for posting this video, because it brings up another point that I'm sure Little Miss Thing would argue (if she thought of it). "You just don't like this style of dance."

Yeah, well, I don't like modern dance, either. Like, at all. There is no way I could sit through a whole performance of the style in that video (I've tried and I've failed--twice). I barely managed to watch the video to minute 1:30.

But I appreciate and admire the fuck out of the dancing skill exhibited in it. TECHNIQUE LIKE WHOA.

[redheadfae.livejournal.com]

Good point!! And not something that many people acknowledge rationally
(like we do )

I loved doing modern dance, but I dropped it when the music became so weird that I couldn't feel it anymore, unfortunately the same thing has happened to me with bellydance music.

And.. If you can stand it, the one-leg thing is at 2:12.. you can see her trembling at holding that weird pose.

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

That leg pose looks a bit like she got stuck trying to do a roundhouse kick.

[redheadfae.livejournal.com]

Bingo! That's exactly how I felt doing that shit, only I didn't know roundhouse kicks back then.

[miischelle.livejournal.com]

"On the plus side, it's been a while since that comm had much activity..."

Yeah, i was just thinking it's been never since I've seen some ONTD_Political style arguments over there...



Also, the whole passion -vs- technique argument is only valid when you have actual technique to speak of. Learn The Rulz. Then break them.

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

Learn The Rulz. Then break them.

Exactly!

[miischelle.livejournal.com]

Also, in this particular case, all of those bellydance moves she said she was doing would have been much for obviously bellydance moves if her costume had been more like a bellydance costume.

Crapping out on technique, removing anything visually identifiable as bellydance and dancing to a not-bellydance song....you're just BEGGING for it,.

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

Perfect icon is perfect.

[redheadfae.livejournal.com]

YES!

and "all that she said"

Hypothetically

[femfataleatron.livejournal.com]

Given two dancers of equally impecable technique, the one with more passion will win 5 out of 7 times (to the death of course).
Marta's quote implies that passion is in addition to, rather than exclusive from technique. If some nob thinks passion can replace technique they should become a Painter. I suggest Abstract Expressionism.

Re: Hypothetically

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

Marta's quote implies that passion is in addition to, rather than exclusive from technique

The quote might imply that. I would say, taken out of context, that it most definitely does not--and that's the situation I'm talking about here.

I wholeheartedly support your suggestion that the persons in question go elsewhere.

Re: Hypothetically

[bluetourmaline.livejournal.com]

Don't diss painters, here!

I've gone through the Prado in Madrid specifically to take photos to support my thesis that Picasso had damn good realist technique before he chose to go break all the rules. So did Dali. So did most of the other famous modern painters. They learned the rules - then broke them, but the fact that they knew all the ways to make a paintbrush obey their wills was still what set them apart, whatever they chose to actually paint.

Which I think is what applies here --- you have to make sure you can make your body do whatever the heck your mind wants, and then use it to make your mind show your passion.

[chaya.livejournal.com]

Whoever thinks the primary quality necessary for dance is passion needs to watch the first 4 episodes of any season of So You Think You Can Dance.

Passion is great, but first you need to be able to pull off that split without a trip to the hospital.

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

Ha ha ha ha ha! Yes indeed.

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

I'm betting you wouldn't enjoy butoh because it's not so much about the physical technique as it is the mental.

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

No, I don't enjoy watching it. But, like with modern dance, I certainly respect the ability of someone who does it well.

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

I also don't believe Martha Graham's quotation is incorrect. It's just misapplied. You can be technically perfect, but if you lack the passion, you have no stage presence. The connection to the audience needs to be there.

Also, great dancers will have technique, just as will good dancers. It's the passion that makes them great, imo.

FWIW, I don't mind the OP's video. It's not my favourite performance, but I wouldn't walk out, boo, or give it a thumbs-down.

I'm also not a fan of belly dance only shows. I prefer a variety show format, with performances in a wide variety of styles. I want to see good tap, ballet, aerial, modern, butoh, burlesque, hiphop, and belly dance in the same show.

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

I concede that it's not the quote that's wrong, it's the misuse.

You know, I didn't mind the video, either. I didn't like it, but it wasn't the worst thing I've seen. If it was as bad as all that, I wouldn't have bothered to attempt a critique. Her attitude, though? Damn. Girl needs to get over herself.

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

If there were posts deleted, I didn't get to see them. In her defense, I think she is just shell-shocked at the cattiness. It's not an attitude I've seen often in that lj community.

(She's actually a really cool chick. I've hung out with her a couple of times.)

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

Interesting that you've met her in person. If you have the opportunity to interact with her again, you might mention to her that defending problematic things with examples of how other, (debateably) better dancers do that same thing, is probably not a good idea.

Also, she needs to be clear in regards what response she's hoping for by posting a video of herself. If she'd qualified her post with "This was my first time trying this style--what do you all think?" and then accepted comments with grace and humility, I bet you dollars to doughnuts the reactions to her would have been different.

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

Oh my god, and now she's responding to posts on the LJ comm that I commented to back in 2005 and is stalking me in my own LJ.

*BANNED*

[miischelle.livejournal.com]

...now I have to go look up what butoh is.

WHY DO YOU MAKE ME EDUCATE MYSELF?!?!?!?

oh wait...

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

Hahaha!

I <3 butoh, but can understand why many do not. Also, be warned. Just as there are a lot of bad belly dance performances out there, there are also a lot of bad butoh performances.

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

Shan has a bunch of great dance clips under her Dance Du Jour (http://shanmonster.livejournal.com/tag/danse%20du%20jour) tag. I remember her posting some butoh stuff there.

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

I should get back to updating that, shouldn't I?

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

I CERTAINLY WOULD NOT COMPLAIN, NO.

[redheadfae.livejournal.com]

Please do! I wants edumacating too.

[siro-gravity.livejournal.com]

I feel exactly like this when a student puts a picture on the wall on critique day, that has NONE of the technical features it needs to have, and which I have specifically written into the assignment, and then says "yes, but I like it...and this is my art!!

I went to the bd link you provided above. I know very little to nothing about bellydancing (or any kind of dancing, really). I thought her opening sentence invited a rip fest. Then after seeing the video, my first thought was confirmed.

Only to click in and see the comments, LOL!

One thing that tends to be true about LJ, though, is that there is no criticism here. Or at least it is true in photography communities.

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

One thing that tends to be true about LJ, though, is that there is no criticism here. Or at least it is true in photography communities.

Wow, that must just be the photo communities. Whole hell of a lot of criticism in the bellydancing comm, that's for sure!

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

Oh, weird thing. In Ontario, haflas aren't the same as anywhere else I've been. Here, they're typically performances, not parties. Weird, huh? The first hafla I was invited to upon moving here, I got up and danced, and received a few strange looks, because I wasn't a featured performer. Oops.

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

That is weird. And too bad. I think haflas are super important for new dancers, and experienced dancers trying something new.

Oops indeed.

[belluthien.livejournal.com]

DAMN she's scary.
y

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

No kidding. People need to come with warning markings. Like insects. Or snakes.