I am teaching the fifth class of the term and an eight-year-old girl asks me: "When will we start to dance?" This class is part of a programme recently initiated in Mértola to implement regular dance training, aimed at children over seven, teenagers and young adults and approached through creative and contemporary dance.
I am from Lisbon, the capital city of my country, which is where I grew up and developed a professional dance career. Mértola is a small town in the southeast of Portugal, an isolated area in the province of Alentejo. I started going there for holidays in the 1980's and 15 years later, together with local friends, I began developing cultural activities for the community among which were dance workshops for beginners.
As a member of a local association called AMDA (which is devoted to promote cultural alternatives for young people) I direct the dance programme; the aim is to develop a sustainable project, with the support of local institutions such as the Municipality of Mértola.
The project provides weekly classes throughout the school year, as well as a performance workshop for the older students, where we plan and develop a performance piece that is presented throughout the region during the summer and contributes significantly to the visibility of the project. This has important effects in recruiting new students, gathering financial support and promoting to a general audience awareness of the benefits artistic activity can bring into the community.
The training programme I use has three main aims: 1) promoting body awareness and achievement of physical skills through contact with basic movement techniques and notions of time and space; 2) experiencing non-verbal communication and exploring self-expression and group dynamics through creative exercises; 3) allowing a connection between the notions people have about dance and my wide and rather more artistic vision, by engaging their social dance experience.
I chose contemporary dance as the main framework for this programme because I regard it as something inclusive; different techniques can be utilised if necessary, form is more a consequence than a starting point and content can be integrated.
I also take into consideration the particular context of this community; and have had to identify what dance means for the people with whom I work, either students or an audience. The available references in Mértola are mainly two: the way it appears in social occasions (such as balls or discos) and what is shown by television on video clips or talk shows.
While I can deal with the undefined and variable vocabulary of social dance, the 'commercial dance' of television presents a much bigger problem. This model of dance, which appears not to demand very specific skills, is actually based on quite strict forms, sometimes unnatural for the body and heavy with messages of sexuality, power, and fashion. All this supports mainstream behaviours that can conflict with the principles of an artistic and educational practice since it contributes poorly to the aims of my work in this community and increases the already marginalized status of dance as an art form.
In Mértola, folk dance balls are still the most common model of public parties and social dancing. Normally a live band plays on stage and in a central area people dance in pairs, using simple steps to move around. Young and old mix together and the dances pass from generation to generation, hardly changing across time. Less frequently, since there is not a local venue, teenagers also have the experience of a 'disco' dance environment, where aesthetics that come from different styles of music influence motion and social behaviour. While folk dance balls stimulate physical contact and assure preservation of traditional coded steps, discos open space for individual response to music and plurality of styles. Nonetheless, in both situations dance appears in an informal environment where people socialize by dancing, talking, watching, drinking, etc. Dancing skills are mastered differently but everyone is free to engage, interpreting more or less the available 'vocabulary'.
In both forms of social dance I see aspects that have similarities with artistic dance practice. In folk dance balls, pairs move around in circles clearly creating a spatial pattern, and their movement, although quite simple, requires the knowledge of a basic procedure; thus, both space and movement reveal specific organisation and the control over a certain technique. In discos, although many people tend to stay within elementary rhythmic oscillations of the body responding to the music, the possibility of movements is endless, depending mostly on variable stimulus of sound and group styles and available space. It is not unusual to see people playing with different ways of moving, improvising and generating fluctuating dynamics on the dance floor. This sort of freedom resembles that which can be experienced in creative dance. Social dance as it has been described can also lead to a basic dictionary type of definition about dance: to move the feet and body rhythmically, usually in time to music.
The people I work with might not have a clear understanding of different dance genres, purpose and history, but through a practical experience of dancing their bodies know about the pleasure of movement and the feeling of joy and unity coming out of social integration by doing it with other people. Once aware of this process, I believe it is easy to understand dance as a conscious use of the body, where movement choices are made, and confidence is achieved to perform within a group. Thus, people find in their own personal or social experience an open definition of what dance is, as well as the possibility to acknowledge basic principles which are common to artistic dance: formal, temporal and spatial organization, movement styles, creative interpretation and performance. Another positive element of social dance that I think necessary to consider is the idea of pleasure. The pleasure aspect, and awareness of it, is something that I want to import from the social experience into my classes, which are based in contemporary dance in general and involve more than learning ways of responding with the body to music.
In my own experience as a dance professional I often enjoy exploring movement while dancing in a relaxed social environment, and this has sometimes been an important resource for creative artistic work. If my students can see the possibility of using the information I give them in the environment where they normally dance, then I think I am making a useful contribution to the education of the body.
Because this is not a professional or vocational training programme, I also think about the wider benefits. Naturally they are a pleasant diversion from work or school activity, which provides some time to relax and have fun but they also contribute to daily use of the body (correcting posture and pedestrian motion) and improve the quality of individual dance performance on public occasions. The reason I feel it is important to consider social dance in the programme for this community is that it is the closest reference about dance that they have, it is on social occasions that they can practise what they experience with me and it allows them to work in the class with codes with which they are familiar.
In the local community, feedback is quite immediate and quite straightforward. By attending the classes, the community legitimates the need for my job in this place. My role is to widen the concepts and experiences people might have of and with dance, but since our references are quite different, I have to carefully combine what I think they should get in touch with and what initially stimulates them to be there. Although I believe that approaching social and artistic dance is useful and necessary in this case, the social dance experience is only valid if surrounded by other principles, which are developed through dance as an art form. Hopefully, by recognizing and being able to perform certain parts, the students will understand the need of all the other components of the class such as technique and the creativity exercises based on expression of feelings and intention that challenge their capacity for engagement and concentration.
This is the first time I have worked on a long-term programme for a local community, so in response to my young student I'll say, "Be patient, we will get there soon". To myself, I take her question quite seriously and look for a way to tackle the issue of "what is the reality of dance?"
Paula Varanda is a contemporary dance artist, teacher and choreographer living and working South East Portugal and Lisbon, and can be contacted on carpa22@net.sapo.pt