Ideas in Motion

I work as a teaching artist in New York City public schools, teaching dance and dance appreciation. In the territory of art, dance is a dangerous place, full of stereotypes and resistance, particularly for high school students. When I walk into these classrooms, I can feel the students' thoughts: "A man ... a dancer?"

Assumptions begin to flow and can quickly harden. Do I face the music and dance, or should we talk? Both. I have found a way to encourage questions and spark conversations through the art of dance itself.

Using movement as our meeting point, my students (multiracial New Yorkers) and I (a white man raised in the Los Angeles suburbs) gain a new perspective on each other. I do not set out to teach about racism or homophobia, but when I encourage critical thinking in response to the art of dance, those issues often emerge.

I begin by challenging students. I ask them to observe and then analyze their observations. I make several entrances into the classroom and ask the students to tell me who I am, based on their observations of my movement.

I appear as a ballet dancer, back straight, head high, arms stretched in a circle in front of me; then as a hip-hop rapper, swaggering with an erratic gait and pumping arms. I offer more obscure characters: a bharata natyam dancer moving in the classical dance style of southern India, a performer of the Beijing Opera or a baroque dancer.

"What part of my body is leading?" I ask. "Where is my weight? What emotional state do I project? Who is this person? How do you know?"

I want their gut reactions, and I get them: "Strange." "Weird." "A rapper." "A crazy man." "It looks like Shantelle (a student)."

I don't want them to censor these responses. They are the raw material we need to build on.

Then I tell them who I was trying to be, and they learn something about the history of dance. I talk about the relationship of ballet to Louis XIV and the movements of his courtiers. I explain the class basis of baroque movement and ask them, "How does a rich person walk? How does a rich white person walk? How does a rich white woman walk?"

With each adjective, the ante goes up. They have been encouraged to freely verbalize their thoughts; now I challenge them to express their ideas in movement. "Don't just tell us; show us what you mean," I say. An African American student demonstrates a stiff, controlled, "rich white" walk, and laughter rises in the classroom.

I do not argue with their initial interpretations (sometimes difficult for political, contentious me), but I offer up questions: "What are the judgments you're making? Why do you think this person moves a certain way? Is this what you actually saw, or is it a parody of what you saw?" I listen, knowing that I must respect their observation and analysis before they will accept mine.

Sometimes I prompt a discussion, but often it erupts on its own: "That's a stereotype," a student offers. "Not all white people walk like that." Once the territory of stereotypes is entered, we cannot avoid the one that seems permanently attached to male dancers, the stereotype that dance is something "feminine" and therefore "gay."

Homophobia stands as an enormous roadblock for students' understanding of dance. Otherwise talented and creative students will go to great lengths to demonstrate their discomfort with the art form. Preparing one class to see a series of male duets entitled "Two Guys," in a performance by the Juilliard Dance Ensemble sponsored by the Lincoln Center Institute, I ask the girls to show how a "guy" walks and the boys to demonstrate a woman's walk. The boys bluster with outrage initially but finally produce their own clownish parodies of a feminine walk.

From somewhere in the room I hear the word "faggot."

I do not ignore it. "Walk like a faggot," I challenge them. They do it, parading their accepted notions across the floor. I hate this, but I want to see if we can get beyond the snicker and the mincing to the heart of a stereotype.

A voice pipes up indignantly: "That's prejudice." No one disagrees. I remind them of some stereotypical movements they have already acknowledged: "feminine," "white."

I explain that "Two Guys" is a series of male duets, where men dance as partners. "Usually, when you see two men making physical contact, what are they doing?" I ask.

"Fighting;" "beating each other up," a couple of girls respond simultaneously.

"And if they're not fighting, what assumptions do you make about them?" The students know by now that it's OK to say it out loud: "Gay."

We talk about how stereotypes limit our perceptions of the world and our experiences of art. By giving voice to the stereotype that's blocking our view, we begin to broaden our vision. The students are now more open to the nuances of "Two Guys," which does not explore overtly "gay" themes but does show variations of male contact through the language of dance.

In another class, I prepare students to see a performance of "Escapades" by the Alvin Ailey Repertory Ensemble (once again sponsored by Lincoln Center Institute). I explain that the dancers are all black, and I ask, "How do black people move? Is it different from white people?" The demographics of the class affect their answers (most of my students are African American or Hispanic; I have not tried this on an all-white class).

What I usually see and hear is a repertory of responses and movements wedged between cultural pride and stereotype. I put on a tape of Martin Luther King Jr. speaking at the March on Washington and ask them to move to the words, to respond physically. We analyze those movements both for their content (proud, strong) and for their physical attributes (leading with chest, arms extended, head tilted up). If they are miming the speech, we examine how we can represent abstract ideas through movement.

I give some historical framework, telling them that African American choreographer Ailey began creating his dances during the Civil Rights Movement, at a time when blacks were still considered by white choreographers to be physically "wrong" for concert dance: They lacked grace and discipline, and their "butts were too big" for the classical balletic line. We acknowledge the ridiculousness of such ideas (it is important to have a white man acknowledge the stupidity of white assumptions).

I put on a tape again (Martin Luther King Jr. or Malcolm X) and ask what kind of body would belong to this voice. They talk of strength, of pride. I show them a few moves from the Ailey piece they will see, and we return to the idea of stereotype: "Is this how a stereotype moves? How does a hero move? Is this movement heroic? Was Ailey perhaps trying to re-envision the black body, to replace the stereotype with an archetype?" We discuss "archetype," and I ask them for other examples. Now they will be looking for something when they watch the Ailey piece, and they will see more.

By watching artists and listening to us talk about our work, students can discover that a body and a mind can be wider than one definition, one identity. When we explore the rough terrain of stereotypes through our own observations and experiences rather than through accepted dogma, we find the freedom to change our perceptions of the world and new ways of engaging ourselves in it.

The adolescents where I live have learned to be tough. In making their bodies more flexible, I hope to make their minds bend a bit as well.