Considerations about Expectation in Dance - (Sunday, October 11th 2020)

 Following today's discussion with my lovely MA group I'd like to share my thoughts briefly.

We touched topics such as: moral and ethic, ethics agains individualism, applying modifications when re-staging repertoire. 

Would it be ethically correct to make small changes when learning something that has already been set? Very good points have been made, by saying that: Dance is evolving, dancers are different, and even though we are trained to be perfect and coordinate with others during a dance, we still are individuals and also interpret roles in different ways. 

Indeed there is this tricky paradoxical situation where you are told (or you tell your students): 'You have to learn repertoire exactly as it is, because it cannot be changed'. But also, how many times have you heard from a teacher/choreographer/director: 'Make it yours' or 'Show me how you interpret it'?. I did. A lot.

I guess you can still learn a piece of repertoire and make it look as 'clean' as you can, but in the moment YOU are dancing it, it is YOUR interpretation. Our bodies work with different conditions, dynamics, responses to music, external impulses and facial expressions. 

So, technically there is no right or wrong, however there is this need of 'meeting the expectations'.

As we are trained to work hard and 'give out' a lot, us, dance people, sometimes can be quite critical with what our expectations are. So we talked about meeting for example parents expectations as a teacher, the audience expectation as performers, as well as our expectations as audience members when seeing a dance performance. 

We talked about mistakes on stage. How do you react when spotting a mistake on stage? What is a mistake and is it THAT bad? If you are a dancer and make a mistake when performing, how do you feel? 

I remember being told during my ballet training things such as: 'If you make that mistake, you'll ruin everyone's hard work!'. 

Do you actually? 

I believe mistakes happen, because we're human. If I spot a mistake while watching a performance I don't judge that performance ON THAT particular moment. In fact, it reminds me that dancers are human, they have bad days, bad performances, bad moments. They learnt a lesson from it which led to more self-discovery and awareness. Everything is happening live and they found solutions instantly. 

As a dance teacher I always remind my students that it's not so much about trying to be perfect (example: never allowing mistakes), it's about how you deal with them that makes you a professional or an expert. 

Teatro Alla Scala in Milan, October 2019. Photo by me.