De-aging Dancerism? The aging body in contemporary and community dance

Abstract

Simple walking became dance when the Judson Dance Theater questioned established theatrical conventions in the 1960s. These artists attempted to establish an outlook on dance that did not differentiate between a dancer's body and an ordinary body. However, they introduced the issue of audience participation in the field of dance without questioning their culturally accepted young, able bodies. Another form of participation in dance is the cultural activities of Community Dance, a form established in the United Kingdom in the 1970s, which is open to the elderly. In contrast to the UK Community Dance, where the audience started to dance themselves, the Community Dance movement in the United States is due to the interest of particular artists, such as Anna Halprin, working with the audience, who are members of various communities. While the negative prejudice towards aging exists in dance markets, the question remains: If seniors dance, is this cultural movement but never raised to the status of “art”?

The situation of dance in Japan with the presence of professional aging dancers allows us to question the established dance techniques and structures of young professional dancers and old amateurs in Western Community Dance. Aging depicts the aesthetics of Japanese dance and synchronizes the form with alternative forms of dancing. In the case of Butoh dancer Kazuo Ohno, who achieved global success at 74, the issue of aging runs parallel with dancing. Instead of being disciplined by Modern Dance, Ohno improvises and creates the spontaneous living moments, thereby being liberated from institutionalized dance technique. The philosophy of life within craftsmanship aestheticizes the aging during Ohno's lifetime of dancing. The example of Ohno's aging blurs the boundary between professionalism and amateurism, as well as that between dance art and Community Dance, which are based on the cultural expectation of ‘dancerism’ in youth-oriented dance culture.

Notes

¹ In terms of art creation as communal act, dance scholar Peter Brinson writes of Community Dance: ‘The historical justification for this community approach is the old craft guilds where creation was largely a communal act.… The creation of art, therefore, like most other creativity, is not solitary. Its solitary image is a nineteenthcentury myth, against which young artists rebelled in the 1950s and 1960s. Art is always a result of collaboration with others both in itself and in organization and planning’ (Brinson 1998: 129).

² Jovana Foik also formulates this point (2008: 19).

³ Anna Halprin speaks this in her film Returning Home (quoted in Ross).

⁴ From Anna Halprin's talk during her workshop, Spark television programme (2006).

⁵ In the preface of the 1976 Pulitzer Prizewinning Why Survive? Being Old in America, physician Robert Butler asserts that ageism exists in the US: ‘Old age in America is often a tragedy. It demands our energy and resources, it frightens us with illness and deformity, it is an affront to a culture with a passion for youth and productive capacity. At best, the living old are treated as if they were already half dead’ (Butler 1975: xi). Butler differentiates ageism from the classic fear of old age, gerontophobia, which refers to a rarer, unreasonable fear or irrational hatred of older people.

⁶ Tamotsu Watanabe during panel discussion, International Symposium, ‘Kazuo Ohno: Butoh and Life’, Meiji Gakuin University and Graduate School of Arts and Letters, Tokyo, 17–18 November 2007 (Watanabe 2008).

⁷ Tetsuo Arakawa explains the term Gei and its historical formulation of Do (Tao) in the theory of poetics since the tenth century. Gei is expected to be incomplete for the process of lifelong artistic training as Do (Arakawa 1998: 421).

⁸ In terms of Japanese aesthetics of ageing in dance, I explain these points further in my dissertation (Nakajima 2011: 88–156).

⁹ This refers to Butoh dancer Masaki Iwana's talk (see Sasaki 2006: 206).

¹⁰ Masaki Iwana introduces Nario Goda's comments (Sasaki 2006:206).

¹¹ Since 2008, NPO Japan Contemporary Dance Network has introduced the British model of Community Dance in Japan, and now this model coexists with the previous dance structures. Refer to the website of Community Dance Japan: http://cdj.jcdn.org/.