Dancing!!!!

April, 24, 2011 Dubai, Sharmila Dance extravaganza annual show


Having have danced for the past 9 years a variety of different styles of dancing, I have realized that dance is a beautiful and very powerful way of cenveying feelings and telling stories.

I thought about the class exercises  on how music, along words can magnify its emotion, and thought about when I uses to dance for a performing arts company. In Dubai, I was part of an academy, for which i participated in every annual show for three years, as well as annual work shops in which we got the chance to have famous choreographers from the world to teach us the basics of different dance flavors. It was easy to notice, that dances such as salsa, cha cha cha and african dances had a faster beat and transmitted a happier mood to the audience when watching ( along with happy facial expressions and gestures), tango and flamenco where more passionate and strong, normally transmitted more dramatic stories about strong feelings of love, vengeance, passion or death ( of love) and hip hop and street jazz where more modern styles which used bodies to tell more actual subjects of sociality such as violence, sex or partying. I like to think this is a realistic approach, as it is a style music with an expected response from the dancing. Dancing, I think is great as a story teller, as using body gestures and movements to a particular rhythm and tone can be very descriptive, and really walk the audience throughout what a person ifs feeling and what they are doing. it is also an effective way o showing internal monologues, as sometimes the dance can be used in the context of showing the inner thoughts of the actor/person, or even their dreams. Dancing can also be applied to other forms of theatre performances and styles which don't necessarily have to be musical theatre or physical theatre, as the other day, watching Laura's IPP, she incorporated movements in the style of theatre of Commedia d'l rate. I really liked the moment in which the main actor (Loyd) and his wife encountered each other after him coming back from the war. They performed a set of synchronized, sharp, movements moving their upper body from side to side, bending forwards and backwards towards each other and turning at the same time, to portray a comical intent to capture and avoid each other, with the use of music.

Lyrical dances are dances created based on the lyrics of the song. I discovered, while dancing, that they are normally the only type of dances that best explain the situations, as they describe exactly what the song says. A clear example of this for me is the dance I liked below, from the song of James Brown, "Its a man's world" which i performed in a show.

http://www.sharmiladance.com/Videos2010_big.html

This is a man's world, this is a man's world
But it wouldn't be nothing, nothing without a woman or a girl

You see, man made the cars to take us over the road
Man made the trains to carry heavy loads
Man made electric light to take us out of the dark
Man made the boat for the water, like Noah made the ark

This is a man's, a man's, a man's world
But it wouldn't be nothing, nothing without a woman or a girl

Man thinks about a little baby girls and a baby boys
Man makes then happy 'cause man makes them toys
And after man has made everything, everything he can
You know that man makes money to buy from other man

This is a man's world
But it wouldn't be nothing, nothing without a woman or a girl

He's lost in the wilderness
He's lost in bitterness ......