Dancing and Writing (not simultaneously)

For a while I’ve been pondering what type of art I wanted to discuss on here and, while architecture is something I’m contemplating in the future, dance is truly what struck me as something I wanted to share.  It’s something I hold in the utmost esteem when done well despite my rather deficient technical knowledge. Still, it strikes me that the movement of the body is something each literary artist might struggle to describe.  Word choice and rhythm being of the utmost importance when we try to impart for internal immersion that which we feel and sense externally.

Even the concept of doing so is sometimes panic inducing for me.  For too often literature fails to deliver by belaboring every little tic, twitch, step, etc, causing the reader to be forced into reading loads of words and clumsily delivered intricacies that work contrary to the spirit of what was being attempted.  Just as an unintentional misstep or stiffness brings the viewer of dance into painful awareness of each movement, so too does poor word choice and too much detail do to the reader.  The artist in both cases suffers over each word or step and strives to successfully deliver it all without the audience ever knowing or feeling it.

Here I would like to share with you some clips from So You Think You Can Dance.  Each routine is different, designed carefully by different choreographers, and meant to communicate completely different moods and never am I left thinking “that looked like work!”  Sure, it was and I am certainly wowed – but it strikes me as a very bad thing for a reader to be left thinking the book was arduous to write.

Which is your favorite?  What does it seem to communicate?  What did you like/not like?