The Ice Queen

So my belly dancing troupe did this performance this past Sunday, September 30th, to this song called the "Ice Queen". Originally the instructor had this storyline she made up in her  head she wanted to recreate through dance. She had everyone in the dance cast as some sort of character in the story about this princess who has this gift that these two evil women are trying to get from her but these angels are trying to protect her but get defeated by the evil ones. She never quite finished the story because by then I was added in the dance and messed up the story, plus the dance wasn't completed and she didn't quite figure out how to end the story in the form of dance. I wanted to examine how we perceive story through movement in a very simple way. Was movement the first way we told story? Was movement and spoken word the original storytelling way? Is that way we have "body language?"

Upon trying to research the answers to the questions I only ran into that "dance has told stories for thousands of years," and  ballets. Ballets (in the work sense of the word) essentially are plays with nothing but movement just as operas are nothing but music. I suppose you could say that the answers to those questions respectively is yes, yes, and yes. A lot of what we know about  body language (consider clicking the link I found it quite interesting but not able to mention a lot of the stuff in this single post) when communicating on a daily basis is greatly used in dancing. Body language is almost used more than spoken word when you think about it, how do we understand our pets and how they feel since they can't communicate in our language?I know I can only pick up on what my rabbit says by his body language because he doesn't make noises. We are getting off track here, sorry.

When doing a dance you are trying to express your story without words; you use your facial expressions and movement vocabulary over all else. If you stick your fist in the air you can convey either anger, success, joy, or maybe you won a battle but that all depends on your face. I find it unique how dance contrasts writing so much; in writing you are trying to convey a point without inflections of the voice, body language, or any visual aid of any kind. In dance you are doing the exact opposite, you are using the music and it's tone in sync with your body and that is all. So much can be told in a dance with no words at all. I guess it's so hard to elaborate on such a topic because most of it can only be explained by experiencing it.