It's not the dance, it's the competition!

Anselm Lingnau

Message 54958 · 12 Feb 2009 13:48:52 · Fixed-width font · Whole thread

[I am *so* not going to post this.]

Campbell Tyler wrote:

> I do just wonder how Anne Thorn must be feeling about all the comments from
> everybody she has been reading on her dance. I must admit I would have
> been in a small heap by now, absolutely resolved never to enter a
> competition like this again. But I guess if you are going to let criticism
> affect you then you know not to submit your efforts to the public gaze.

Just for the record, I sincerely congratulate Anne Thorn on winning the
competition and hope that she gets all the recognition that should come with
that.

I don't really have an issue with »The Homecoming Dance« as such. Many people
seem to like it, after all. It is safe to say that it is not the greatest
dance ever written, but it will probably do what it is supposed to do for
the »Homecoming 2009« celebrations this year, and we will see whether it has
the legs for more. The books (RSCDS and otherwise) are full of dances like
this, most of which don't have the legs for more, so predicting that we will
probably not see a lot of it once the celebrations are over isn't really
singling it out for criticism, IMHO.

As far as the technical points I made about the dance are concerned, which I
think amount to valid objective criticism rather than personal peeves, I
would have brought up exactly the same issues if I had been present when the
dance was »test-driven«, either in Anne Thorn's own group or under the
auspices of RSCDS Membership Services.

However, and that brings us to the meat of the issue as far as I am concerned,
I cannot for the life of me buy the idea that this dance is the absolute best
out of a field of no less than 93 dances that various people, including (it
seems) some very experienced and notable devisers, could come up with. »The
Homecoming Dance« is by no means a *bad* dance, but I would have expected
something considerably *better* to come out of the competition.

Therefore, stipulating that the Society exercised its usual care about
evaluating dances for publication (blind tests and so on), this seems to
imply that the other 92 must have been even more so-so ... which in turn
means that there must be something desperately wrong with contemporary dance
devising if all these very smart people together could not match what
somebody like Roy Goldring seemingly managed to churn out on an industrial
scale. Considering that the idea of an ongoing, living tradition is a major
selling point of SCD as a pursuit, does that mean that we are coming to a
point where »all the good ones are taken«, and, if yes, what do we do about
it?

Anselm
--
Anselm Lingnau, Friedberg, Germany ..................... xxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxx.xxx
The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the study of
nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by
no authority; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no
conclusion. -- Thomas Paine