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6. Verbs of Motion
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6. Verbs of Motion 'No, thanks. I am dancing. Drawing by Saxon; © 1967 The New Yorker Magazine, Inc. 108 [100.25.40.11] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 03:37 GMT) E R H A P S T H E Russians dance so well because their language is so responsive to nuances of movement. From childhood they are made aware of, become sensitive to, the most subtle distinctions of motion, because their verbs are capable of extraordinary precision. With a bit of a prefix or the change of a vowel, a single word may mean: to set out, to go by, to approach, to get as far as, to arrive, to enter, to come upon, to drop in on, to make the rounds, to cross, to leave for a few minutes, to move away from something, to go away, to go too far—to say nothing of further slight variations which specify that the movement goes up or down or around, and there are different verbs to tell whether you do it in a vehicle or on foot and whether you do it every day or only once. The dancing master has no need for a string of adjectives that slowly explain the kind of movement he wants; he can quickly and exactly snap out his order. (He also has an advantage in counting: compare our flat "one" to his incisive, energetic "r-r-raz.") Movement is the essence of dance. But the variations in ideas of how and how much dance has differed from ordinary movement , of what and how it has represented, expressed, or exemplified , should lead us to realize that works considered dances have been made of many kinds of movement and have used these kinds in many ways. Which is not to say that anything goes. Movement in dance (even if it lacks the grace and agility of "dance movement ") is presented, framed, isolated from the world of practical motions that terminate with the attainment of a goal beyond themselves . What objects dance refers to, what properties it exemplifies, range from such specifics as Ivan the Terrible, through the ladylike graciousness of the Sugar Plum Fairy, to commentary on the modes of dancing itself. But dance is always about something, something that it displays, draws to our attention, not as a means to something else, but as an end in itself. It creates a world that 109 P no / Next Week, Swan Lake exists apart from our real world, yet resembles it enough that perceiving the dance world can illuminate the real one. The glory of dance is that it has found so many ways to make us freshly conscious of all in the world that is "passing and coloured and to be enjoyed." Most philosophers who have discussed dance do so on a level of generalities, which is only proper since their job is to deal with theories of art. As a pragmatist, however, I cannot help wishing they would go further, though often it is hard to see how their ideas could be applied to specific dance events. Of modern philosophers who have given serious attention to dance, Susanne Langer has written most extensively. Her theory of dance as the dynamic image has, quite rightly, attracted wide attention, for her ideas are of the greatest interest. Yet the possibility of their application remains problematic. Certainly Langer is correct in her claim that dance does not create its physical materials—bodies, space, gravity—but uses them "to create something over and above what is physically there: the dance . . . it springs from what the dancers do, yet it is something else." However, she continues with a more questionable assertion: "In watching a dance, you do not see what is physically before you—people running around or twisting their bodies; what you see is a display of interacting forces by which the dance seems to be lifted, driven, drawn, closed, or attenuated. . . . The physical realities are given. . . . But in the dance, they disappear; the more perfect the dance, the less we see of actualities." I maintain that we do see what is before us even though the effect of the dance, when it succeeds, projects an energy, an ambience , a significance that is more than the sum of the events we observe occurring in time and space. We do not, to be sure, see the workings of the muscles of the dancers nor (we hope) hear their accelerated breathing or their heartbeats. But we do see their...