Dance: A Creative Art Experience

5. Form as Organic Unity

Chapter 5 FORM AS ORGANIC UNITY Form in any art rests upon a deeply rooted principle that is based upon the same biological foundation as human behavior and activity. Copyrighted Material Copyrighted Material T HE FOLLOWING chapters on form will be more readily understood if we state at the outset how the term is here used. If we grant that everything (whether a material object, such as an apple, or an idea, mood, or image of the mind) has form, a shape or defining characteristic by which it is known, then form is the "appearance" in which an external or internal experience presents itself. In order to have external, observable form, an art must use some medium, which, in dance, is movement. To exist as an art form, this motor activity must be associated with imaginative content and mental discipline. This necessity presents two phases belonging to art form. One is the unseen, inner dance, which is the organization of the mental attributes into content; the other is the outer, observed dance, which is the result of the organization and execution of the motor elements. When the fusion of inner and outer experience is attained, form is achieved in its fullest meaning as art form. In the last analysis we can say that form in all its implications means organization. The particular way in which all the contributing elements, physical and psychical, are selected, organized, and manipulated, constitutes style. Now let us first consider form generally, as organic unity. If dance is to express emotional experience by means of visible motor symbols, obviously its movement forms must have reference to the forms of the related activities in experience. So form is a characteristic of all that we experience as well as a character101 Copyrighted Material DANCE: A CREATIVE ART EXPERIENCE istic of that which expresses experience, and the two are organically related. We are too inclined, perhaps, to think of form as belonging only to that part of a dance which can be seen-that is, its movements-and to neglect to go deeper and discover that form in any art rests upon a deeply rooted principle that is based upon the same biological foundation as are all forms of human behavior and activity. Wherever there is life, there is an organic tendency to form. It is a creative tendency determined by the laws and forces of life itself. The forms of plants and the movements of animals and human beings as well as their biological functioning are the results of an inner determining activity. But man goes further. He of all creatures is destined by the very laws of his nature to achievements of another order. Unlike the animal, he is driven by convictions and ideas of the perfect that are not innate, but are the results of experience and education. How much simpler life would be if the development of an individual to his fullest psychophysical stature were as simple as that of the plant and animal, whose development is determined by an instinctive 01'dering . But the expressive forms of man's ideals and visions nevertheless are organically related to an inner activity. It is a property of the human organism to take the raw materials of sensation as unorganized energy, and to organize and relate them, thus endowing experience with a structure and individuality of its own. In such a process, life patterns are constructed, and observable 102 Copyrighted Material FORM AS ORGANIC UNITY behavior becomes the form of their expression. If the concept of organic form is applied to all that man thinks and executes, we can see how significant its application is to his works of art. Any work of art, to be significant and convincing, should grow from what its creator has within, growing and changing as the germ idea changes. Visual appearance is then the result of inner impulsions and is genuine in conception. As has been said, man can fashion only as he knows. Art is but a fashioning from life, and life is a progressive scale of values, developed from experience , which becomes more and more enlightened by experience and the developing intellect. The notion of visible form as organic unity, when applied to art activity, helps us to understand why, at the different socalled stages of cultural development, we have such varying art forms. The...