Allow me to explain through interpretive dance

When you think of interpretive dance, you may associate it with flinging one’s body waywardly around a room or office workers busting out at parties. Just because one feels like one is a cascading wave out at sea, however, doesn’t mean the wave’s about to crash for the audience. It is an art form that requires particular techniques and artistic interpretations to make it effective. When Kate Bush dances in a grassy meadow in Wuthering Heights, she grabs our soul.

Isadora Duncan was a huge influence on interpretive dance. In Duncan technique, the dancer’s feeling originates in the soul. Its ‘locomotive movements’ are based on universal human actions but the apparent freedom of the style is harnessed by rigorous technique. She was greatly influenced by the fluid, natural forms of ancient Greek art and these were often embodied in the style of her dances. While Duncan set out to break away from the formal structures of ballet, she influenced many practitioners, including Frederick Ashton, the founding choreographer of the Royal Ballet, who created a tribute to her in 1975.

Interpretive dance is often used to express very abstract, often political, concepts through movement. In Dog Days (2007) Guta Hedwig protested against the Bush administration by setting 19 Bushisms such as “I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully” to music and dance. Dancers used movement and props such as fish bowls and pink balloons to interpret the dark subtext beneath Bush’s malapropisms. During the same period renowned choreographer (and no stranger to interpretive dance) William Forsythe was dramatising the Iraq War with Three Atmospheric Studies at Brooklyn Academy of Music.
What makes the form so triumphant is its focus on the individual. Interpretive dance oozes pop art sensibility and is often mixed with other styles in video clips, broadway musicals and films.

Having said all this, I wouldn’t for one second want to discourage people from dancing badly at parties.

Image: Guta Hedwig in Dog Days. Photography by Anja Hitzenberger