I have a vague understanding of Dance, meaning as a Discipline and Art, rooted in various dance styles.
But I get the NYTimes, and each of the various dance companies have ads that feature the most sculptural, athletic/erotic, in-motion-but-posed photos of the hottest human beings imaginable. Cool - thanks!
But the key word there is “sculptural” - the photos feature a stationary moment. And yet Dance is, by definition, Humans in Motion. Any posed photo is a micro second and, more importantly, not the point relative to whatever motion/action the dancer is executing.
Do I get it? Is this a kinda-weird dichotomy to Dance People, or just something an outsider is confused by?
They are just like any ad for any thing
They are putting the best, cherrie-picked photo of beautiful Dancers in a beautiful pose to intrigue you and make you buy a product (or tickets to the ballet).
Dancers generally have beautiful bodies. Movement is their business.
Wouldn’t be cool to have newspapers like the Harry Potter movies, moving pictures with sound?
An advertisement for a dance is not a dance. Just like a movie poster is not a movie. It’s one small piece designed to get you interested in the whole work.
Yes, clearly. And movie posters can have their own issues capturing the essence of a movie in a snapshot-appealing sort of way. I was just looking at a standard Sunday Arts page of those ads and pondering the fact that, in reality, you would see any one of those poses for maybe a microsecond, and it would never register in that posed way, but rather as part of a dance motion.
What is dancing, but a whole series of poses. Unless the dancers are posed in some way they would never be able to achieve while dancing, I’m good. One of my friends is a dancer with the local ballet company, and the best still photos of her are a very good reflection of what she looks like in motion.
For me, a lot of those poses are static at that point, but the idea of movement is inherent. They are unstable, about to jump or land, have a twist in them, whatever. The poses often let me appreciate little details of hand gesture or head position that I don’t always notice in a performance, but which add to the effect. So the pictures prompt a response based on memory and anticipation. Then there are the costumes, the lighting, the set and so on to give an idea of what the performance will be like.
A photo is not the same as a dance; it’s like a photo of food. It’s meant to look beautiful and/or evocative.
Ah, that works. Yes, I think a big part of it is how you see the photo’s pose within the context of the dance motion happening.
For the food photo analogy: there are food photos that, hmm, cross a line to you, aren’t there? Where a food has been so glamorized or the photo so messed-with that you don’t feel good about the food that is being presented to you as something special. ?? I can’t cite a specific example right now, but some photos that feature melting butter on the food serving or other fat-deliciousness strike me as yucky.
I don’t think the sculptural dance photos cross the same line as some food-sales photos, just thinking through that analogy.