Meaning of Dance in Moving Midway by Godfrey Cheshire - Essay Example

Essay about the documentary film Moving Midway - Godfrey Cheshire, Director (2007) Moving Midway was a documentary that showed the importance of tradition as Godfrey Cheshire used an in-depth analysis to show a poignant description of antebellum mystique and his ancestral roots. It was seen in the documentary that Midway has been the family home of the filmmaker since the 1800s and the filmmaker tried to trace his history to this place and the tradition of the people there. The name Moving Midway was used by the filmmaker to show that his family home was moving from where it was to another place.

Traditionally, dance has been the means of communicating amongst the people there as they used this to tell stories about their cultural heritage. It is therefore pertinent to analyze the value of dance as a non-verbal communication.Dance as a nonverbal means of communication played very significant roles in Moving Midway. Through dancing in the documentary, the people usually expressed their emotions without having to make any verbal communication with other people. The dancers in the movie are seen using their facial expressions, eye contacts, touches and body languages of people to manifest their emotions and let people know how they feel about a particular situation or circumstance (Cheshire, Hinton & Silver).

Dance was also a way that the characters in Midway Movie tried to teach the people their rich cultural heritage and historical background. It is clear from the film that dance, which is a non-verbal means of communication breaks language and cultural barrier when it comes to the expression of emotions amongst the people that take place in this dance. The documentary also brings one to the fact that a person’s expression of anger or sadness through the use of dance as a means of non-verbal communication is the same all over the world.

Through dancing, the information obtained from the expression of these emotions is used to accurately predict things that happened in the past and tell the mood of the people dancing. For instance, it was clear from the documentary that dancing helped to easily differentiate between people that were happy and the ones that were sad. The mood of the dancers is clear for all to see as the level of entertainment is dependent on how joyous and highly entertaining the dance is (Cheshire, Hinton & Silver).

Moving Midway is a documentary that showed that there are some things that are actually inherited and passes across the bloodline. In this case, dancing was the known attribute of the characters as they showed that they are richly blessed with this talent. It was in the culture of the people of the plantation in Moving Midway to communicate non-verbally through dancing and this shows the significance of dancing as a non-verbal means of communication.From the documentary, it is clear that Godfrey Cheshire tried to show the value of dance as a means of non-verbal communication.

The mood and the atmosphere of the region that the documentary was cast was reflected in the dancing pattern of the inhabitants if the plantation. Thus, dance is a very important means of non-verbal communication.Work CitedMoving Midway. Dir. Godfrey Cheshire. Perf. Godfrey Cheshire, Robert Hinton, Charlie Hinton Silver. First Run Features, 2007. DVD