The idea for this article came from the 2002 postcard from the Foundation for Community Dance and Dance UK. Across the top was written: 'Dance is the human activity most likely to promote joy.' This is no idle statement. In thinking about the idea of having fun, we are musing over notions of the human condition, a person's capacity for enjoyment, perhaps even when circumstances are far from ideal.
From conducting ethnographic studies of participatory dance projects there is evidence to suggest that dance can be an enjoyably intoxicating practice: 'We had never heard so much laughter in the house' was the feedback from the warden of the residential home in Bristol where a three-year dance project was being conducted for the elderly occupants. Burn and Rave, as the scheme was known, saw participants kicking their legs up for a seated Can Can and whirling around from one side of the room to another. Much younger dancers from other projects, such as one organised by the Birmingham Royal Ballet Education Department, spoke of the buzz and excitement performing gave them. Rehearsing the story of the mythical King Arthur, the teenagers were able to step out of their normal environment into the minds and bodies of courtiers, witches and sorcerers, and onto the stage. It was a stage normally reserved for the professional dancers: where highly skilled bodies, poetically moving, instilled a sense of magic.
In these projects, it was possible to see the imagination working through movement, whether it was dancing as part of a youth-enhancing chorus line, exploring the psychology of Merlin through movement improvisation, or, in another project mentioned below, to watch the slate mines of rural Wales come alive against the concrete backdrop of urban London. The imagination can be thought of as something that gives a person freedom, freedom from the defining concepts that regulate one's understanding of the familiar. It gives dance participants the opportunity to expand their horizons and open up their world.
This is not to say that these dancers indulged in fantasies (although they might have done that as well). To be directed in crafted movement, with time and space purposely manipulated, participants are firmly anchored in the reality of their own and other's bodies, as well as in the humanity of the themes explored. The philosopher Roger Scruton wrote: 'the aim of the imagination is to grasp, in circuitous ways exemplified by art, the nature of reality. Fantasy on the other hand, constitutes a flight from reality.'
This was seen in another project, which is still on going. Unlike the Birmingham teenagers, the adult male inmates of a maximum-security prison were far from star struck when faced with dance workshops by Motionhouse Dance Theatre. However, even after just a few days of learning Contact Improvisation skills the men were eager for more dance sessions. One lifer even remarked that this was the first time he had ever looked forward to a day since he had been in prison. The workshops may have got them out of their usual routine, but something else had started to happen over a period of three months. Contact Improvisation had given the men the freedom to start to discover another side to themselves, hidden beneath their cultivated macho, violent exteriors. One man confessed that it was the 'bare-faced' him that is coming out through dancing. In exploring movement and connection to others, in its honesty and sensitivity, Contact Improvisation had re-ignited the prisoners' confidence to not flee from reality, but to embrace a different reality. It had given them the freedom to open up and this was evidenced through their actions, relationships and gradual relaxation when moving.
Providing the opportunity to form and re-form movement, the projects looked at here gave participants the chance to explore possibilities of moving the body in new ways, as well as to juxtapose real and imagined situations and ideas. The freedom allowed by the imagination enabled the enjoyment of moving and interacting with others on this silent but creatively rich level.
Yet it is the perceived flippancy of enjoying moving one's body creatively, or watching someone else's for no particular purpose, that has led in the Western World to dance's categorisation as something fun and therefore not one of life's essentials. But there has been a concerted effort in recent years to change the perception that dance does not matter. There has been a strong focus on what has been termed as 'combating social exclusion' by the New Labour government and this has given the community dance movement the chance to parade its credentials in this area. The practice has long seen itself as an effective aid to communicating with disenfranchised communities and individuals and has now been given the chance to be seen as something useful, as a creative partner in social welfare.
Social exclusion is defined as the lack of access to the chances afforded by interacting in mainstream society. The Government has identified a number of reasons that they think combine to create exclusion: for example, 'unemployment, poor skills, low income, poor housing, high crime environments, bad health and family breakdown.' This definition gives a rather one-sided view of who could be excluded, but it is the one in popular usage.
New Labour has encouraged a number of social inclusion initiatives to be set up and the Department of Culture, Media and Sport has been keen to advertise the role that the arts and sport can play in the area of social amelioration. Following a 1999 DCMS report, PAT 10, that investigated how arts initiatives could act on social exclusion, the report stated that the arts were 'fundamental' to the regeneration process and that arts organisations and artists in receipt of public funds should see social inclusion as 'part of their business.'
As a firm advocate of dance's powers to enhance the lives of individuals and communities for the better, perhaps even transform them, the community dance movement has easily connected to the government report. One integrated dance company, StopGap, which regularly leads outreach workshops and projects, stated that it would enable:
"Participants to realise their potential through the creative and empowering experience of movement....[and would work] to empower people through improving their self-confidence, ability to express themselves and ability to work as individuals and team members."
Such claims are wide-spread.
Changing outlooks can be seen in the projects mentioned in the beginning of this paper, although not necessarily social inclusion projects per se. The Burn and Rave initiative was a good example of how ageist attitudes were curtailed by the liveliness and youthful gaiety of the now dancing octogenarians. Moreover, the prison project demonstrated how men, vilified by society, could start to reconstruct relationships around trust and touch in a non-sexual, non-violent way, at least on the dance floor.
A sense of pride was also seen in the young participants of Dawns I Bawb. The North-West Wales community dance organisation was situated within a large rural area with high unemployment and drug use. Operating in an area that fitted the government's criteria as harbouring social exclusion, Dawns I Bawb created an environment where the young dancers could channel energy through dance and engage imaginatively with their surroundings. When performing at London's South Bank Centre in 1999, the dancers showed work strongly influenced by the physical landscape of North-West Wales. Through dance, the young people had found a way of reinvigorating pride in where they lived. The creative energy of Dawns I Bawb's work has seemingly opposed the stagnation left since the degeneration of heavy industry in that area.
These are brief illustrations, but on a larger scale, there have been several independent reports praising the positive effects the arts have on communities and socially excluded groups. Some conclusions point to the growth of personal confidence, the strengthening of community development and the promotion of good health. The notion that dance is good for people is one of the fundamental beliefs of the community dance movement and the one that distinguishes community dance from, for example, concert dance.
But having 'goodness' is also essential if dance is to be recognised and to be taken seriously beyond its own circle. For dance to fit into funding tick boxes and a newsroom script, it has to be seen to be following policy agenda. Since 1997 in the UK, this has consisted of an interest in social inclusion. It is dance's chance to climb out of the frivolous and irrational pit where it was consigned and community dance is well placed to act upon this agenda.
It would be too simplistic to assume, however, that all Community Dance projects do contribute towards social inclusion or that the participants themselves confirm claims of exclusion existing beforehand. Indeed, it is prudent to ask whose definition of exclusion is being used. There is also a danger that community dance gets characterised as a tool for social welfare and nothing else. Although as such, it would be a commendable utilitarian enterprise, it would not allow the practice to be seen as part of an artistic and creative phenomenon for its own sake.
I would like to suggest that it is in part because of the capacity for enjoyment and because of the creativity experienced by groups participating in Community Dance projects that they are often successful in encouraging social inclusion. But at the same time, if the social welfare label sticks, if thinking about dance as an artistic and creative phenomenon is neglected by decision makers, one reason for its success could be masked. Community dance would then be in danger of separating itself from the concert dance tradition that nurtured many of its practitioners, and inspires some of its participants.
Indeed, it has been suggested by a number of arts commentators that to adhere to a utilitarian agenda undermines the art form in question. Louise Jury writes that, 'nobody adores theatre because it rehabilitates young offenders. You love it because it makes your mind buzz.' To instigate a community dance programme in order to create social inclusion misses the point of doing dance. Easing exclusion may be the result but is it its raison d'être? Sharing the delights of creating ideas and challenging one's body through dance and movement, surely can be seen as the germ to the empowerment that politicians and community dance leaders talk about. But without that enjoyment, dance surely cannot even begin to empower. The inmates in the prison would not have stuck with the dance workshops had they not been fun, as well as challenging.
Dance may play a role in relieving the suffering or violence in a human spirit and the pain in a human body. In doing so, the practice highlights man and woman's capacity for joy through sharing creative, structured movement. One man in prison commented that he could not believe that he could get such an adrenalin rush out of doing something legal. Certainly for one woman, Chrissie, featured in the film Dancing Nation, it is the release from the mundane through imaginative movement that allows her to 'take off', to fly. I am reminded of a writer who said: 'I don't write books so that children can read, I write them so they can fly.'
In the case of Rose, one of the participants in the Burn and Rave project, crippled with arthritis and frail, she stated quite firmly: 'I'd rather pop my clogs while we are all together doing this than alone in my room.' For Rose, the dance project was a weekly burst of the joy of life, and a fitting way to complete the last act of living. It is having fun that is the serious business.
Dr. Sara Houston is a lecturer at the University of Surrey Dance Studies Department. Email S.Houston@surrey.ac.uk
Dance projects and organisations featured in the paper:
Burn and Rave, Bristol Area Dance Agency 1998 - 2001
Arthur part 1: Living the Legend, Birmingham Royal Ballet
Education Department, 1999 - 2000
Dawns I Bawb Bliz '99 day, Royal Festival Hall, London, 1999
Dancing Inside, Motionhouse Dance Theatre and HMP Dovegate, 2003 - 2004
This article is adapted from papers presented at two conferences: Pulses and Impulses in Dance in the Community, Portugal, October 2003; and the European Society for Philosophy annual conference, Ireland, 2002.