"Interpretive Dance"

I just cringed. I didn't just cringe, but I made some sort of animal sound, and probably rolled around the floor, arms and legs shooting out at a weird angles while I started to giggle, went into a headstand, cried and proceeded to execute the choreography from Waltz of the Flowers. Funny though this may seem, it's actually a pretty accurate description of what we did in my Solo Improvisation class on Thursday. Please, for the love of all you may hold holy, don't confuse "modern dance" with "interpretive dance." I don't actually know what "interpretive dance" is, but in its place I would be exceedingly happy if you started spreading the term "explicative dance" as that's a more accurate description of how dancers comment on the world using their bodies. Simply put though, don't ask a dancer if s/he does "interpretive dance."

As for this secret language of dance, us dancers like to talk about space. A lot.

• "fill the space" = put stuff onstage, this stuff could be your presence and awareness as a solo body onstage, but it could also be objects, other people, sheep, etc... 
• "see the space around you" = see the physical details in the room as well as the air in it, have an open presence 
• "go into the space" = go onstage 
• "eat up the space" = travel across the stage with gusto, move really big, high energy 
• "what a great space" = usually big stages get this reaction, but also warehouses, gardens, museums, living rooms... 
• "negative space" = space where there isn't anything, consider this both distally (like two sides of a room) and proximally (like the space created under your arm when you lift it to the side) 
• "enter the space" = go onstage 
• "leave the space" = go offstage 

and so on...

The thing to note about this is that yes, space can refer to a proscenium stage, but when you're making work site specifically and there is no traditional stage, "space" becomes a shortened version of "performance space."

We also like to talk about "pedestrian movement." When you see things done by dancers and you think "oh, yeah, I could do that!" (eg. people walking around and picking their noses) you probably can. Dancers train their entire lives to achieve superhuman powers and then have to train themselves some more to make you think they're regular people. It sucks, but if we don't they'll hire you and all those years of ballet academy and work-exchange toilet cleaning just went down the toilet. It's also super duper fun to stare down audience members for secret reasons they probably won't figure out until after you've stopped freaking them out, especially if it means nothing at all...

Lastly, "choreography" doesn't just refer to instructions given to a dancer moving around the stage. It can also be the way in which you manage traffic of audience members around a gallery, or where you choose to place musicians so audiences get a specific sound experience (points if you get them to turn their heads together), or how you decide to edit a film, or coordinate movements that generate sounds that create the score to accompany the dance that is making it (STOMP is a great example of this, also tap dancing), and so on.