Dance as a Passion - Essay Example

?Dance Essay My relationship to dance is of passion and expression. It is something I have been doing since childhood. Dance provides me with a wayto enhance my expression. I see it as a complete language that is spoken through body. Different parts of the body move differently and yet in harmony with each other, so as to reinforce each other’s meaning. Dance is a stimulant. It is a relaxant and stimulates good mood. It serves as a catalyst when one wants to be in a certain mood for some time. It elongates the duration for which one can have that wanted feeling and makes one feel fulfilled and satisfied. Sometimes, only dancing in front of the mirror when nobody else is watching me helps me know myself more. I am surprised at the ideas on different ways to move my body that I get; they unveil hidden portions of my personality that I only get to see while I dance. Although it takes energy to dance, yet it is ironical that dance instills energy in me and I feel energized. While I move my body, it automatically occurs to me to life my eyebrows up or curl my lips into a smile that goes perfect with the moves I take. Dance holds value for me as it helps relieve tension and anxiety and alleviates mood. I dance mostly at too situations; one, when I am extremely happy, and the other, when I am extremely sad. When I am happy, it helps me retain the happiness, and when I am sad, it helps me shed away the sadness and forget my sorrows. More importantly, I use dance as a physical exercise. I am too lazy to follow a tough workout routine or to jog every day, so I dance. I play songs at the stereo system and dance on them at least for half an hour every day. It helps me burn calories and restore energy at the same time. It is a wonderful exercise because it does not feel like a liability when you are running or jogging. Doing exercise through dance is actually fun; it is like being in a party and dancing like crazy. While it does burn a lot of calories, one does not feel exhausted or feel like giving up while the exercise is on. The value dance holds for an individual depends to a large extent on how one understands it. Some people are just too dry and serious to understand the value of dance. To them, to dance might be like being a clown. People that enjoy dancing and get benefits out of it like me do place a lot of value in dance. I have been interested in the Indian classical dance since my childhood. That is so different from the conventional western dance. I think Indian classical dance embeds a lot of aspects of the Indian culture. I see a lot of difference in the classical dance performed by the Indian men and Indian women. It is, to some extent, an expression of the gender roles in the society. I tried to learn Indian classical dance in a school in my childhood, but it was not as easy as I had presumed it to be. They danced it at Tabla, the popular musical instrument. Being a western, it was very difficult for me to learn the Indian classical dance. I think it takes a fair understanding of a culture to learn the way people of that culture dance. I dance spontaneously depending upon the song. It mostly takes me a fast track to get me in the mood to dance. I have danced on disco and pop songs on the birthday parties of my friends. I have practiced both dancing alone and dancing socially. I am more comfortable dancing alone than dancing socially. The major reason I see behind this is that I have not learnt dance at some institution successfully and thus am not a very good dancer. When I dance socially, I have this feeling that I am being watched by others. It occurs to me not to dance than dance badly, so I dance very less publicly. However, when everybody is dancing and there is not much watching around, I also do my bit, like at the birthday parties of my friends. When I am in the mood of dancing and I am alone, I tend to make sure that there is nobody else watching. I even draw the curtains of my windows down to make sure that nobody far away gets a glimpse. I dance alone in absolute privacy. When I dance alone, I feel comfortable. I concentrate on the synchronization between the songs played in the background and the moves taken by my body rather than on struggling with the thought of doing it perfectly because others are watching me. Dancing has been a fundamental part of the memorable popular culture. Celebrities that are both handsome and dance well have played a major role in making dance an essential part of the popular culture. These celebrities include but are not limited to Jennifer Lopez, Christina Aguilera, Ricky Martin, and Madonna. All of them are good-looking and know how to dance at the same time. It feels so good to watch them sing and dance and is very motivating for the audience. With the passage of time, as technology advanced and the audience got greater and more frequent approach to such experiences, dance became an essential component of the popular culture. Today, no song is complete unless it is accompanied with a fancy video. I like dancing a lot. Indeed, I have a passion for dancing which reflects from the fact that I even joined an institution to learn it properly, though it somehow did not work. The genre of music that makes me feel like moving is pop music. I can especially never resist moving to the sound of a violin as it is played. It drives me crazy. Even if I don’t move much, I at least starting swaying my head, open my hair to let it fall free, and waft in the air while I move my head furiously. I might not move my feet at all. Even if I am sitting, I am moving enough to be recognized as somebody dancing. I cannot help moving my body to songs full of energy like “Livin La Vida” by Ricky Martin. When such songs play, I literally stand up from whatever position I was in and dance to the song as I watch people dancing in the song. Another genre of music that I move to is the Indian classical music as it has always been my favorite since my childhood. I don’t know how exactly to move on it, but I like to imitate the dancers as I watch them. I love how the Indian dancers make a lot of use of their hands, especially fingers, and facial features including eyes and lips. I am obviously not a good dancer on the Indian classical music, but I always try to learn as much of it as I can. Being western, it is indeed strange that I find so much interest in the Indian classical dance particularly considering the fact that we don’t get to watch it very often here in the west, but I think that the Indian classical dance is a completely different dimension of dance that many western dancers are not even introduced to. Essay 2 The actors perform wonderfully individually. Some of the performances were rather weird especially Elaine’s and Napoleon Dynamite’s, but that did not deter them from being interesting. Most of the actors that perform individually either deliberately want to make sure that nobody is watching them like Carlton does or try not to look at others watching them while they dance e.g. Elaine, Napoleon Dynamite, and Elliot. One element that is significant in most of the clips featuring men is too much use of feet in dance which is why they constantly keep changing locations also. For example, Carlton, Jon Heder, and Elliot all keep changing their locations too much all the time whereas Elaine dances on the same spot. It would change drastically if women changed their location while dancing so frequently and made so excessive and aggressive use of feet while dancing. In fact, considering the fact that most of the women wear shoes with long heels, it is practically not possible for them to move their legs that much or they would get their ankles and joints fractured. Women are too delicate to dance as aggressively as men do. Anyway, if a woman managed to dance that aggressively and energetically, it would be obviously great to see such a dance. Our impression of women’s danceability versus men’s is that women have to dance not only with their body, but also with their facial expressions since they are generally pretty. Men, on the other hand, are expected to display their muscular strength e.g. like Carlton does at 00:40 seconds in the video, and energy in dance. Elaine’s dance is significant in terms of gender since she dances at one spot and does not slap her feet against the floor like men in the other videos do. However, one thing that makes her dance absurd is her facial expressions. She keeps smiling all the time that plays a role in making her performance amusing. Carlton’s dance is significant in terms of race because it is full of energy, locations change frequently, and there is much display of strength; all of these elements are significant of men’s dance. Billy Elliot’s dance is a different expression because that is an angry dance. Billy Elliot remains furious throughout the performance and the aggression reflects in his dance. He does not even stop unless he is hit by the steel wall. Napoleon Dynamite’s dance reveals how dance fills energy in the body. Before the dance, he seems so laggard but when the music plays, he dances energetically. He becomes so energetic that he keeps dancing in inertia for a while even after the music stops playing. The audience is expecting a very slow and lazy dance just like Napoleon Dynamite seems. However, it does differently at 00:36 when Napoleon Dynamite jumps opening his legs slightly more. The audience becomes part of the performance by exchanging looks with each other first when he shows a transition from the slow moves to the jumps at 00:36, and then being unsure about whether they really like the performance, and finally being sure that they approve of it. Read More

 

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