The Artistry Of Vulnerability

Kate is a sweet, diminutive, young English rose.

An organisational reshuffle six months ago caused our spheres to overlap, and we've become casual acquaintances. Last week when I strolled into the reception, she motioned to me and asked, "do you dance?"

I decided to play along, shifting subtly to a leaden pose. "Do you really think I look like a dancer?" (add slightly disbelieving tone)

"Yes you do actually."

Darn. Normally that works. This one's a sharp cookie.

Kate had always thought that I'd looked familiar but could never place where she'd known me from. A chance conversation with a colleague let the cat out of the bag. It turns out that I'd shared a song with her one salsa night eight years ago. She told me she was just beginning then, and still remembers it clearly. Because even though the song had stopped, she kept on dancing on the inside.

A genuine compliment.

Kate's caused me to think about the persistence of a dance experience. What turns it into an Event? An landmark memory?

Louie Spence said that the performance of dance can be so emotionally evocative that it can make the watcher cry. The fourth episode of SKY1's exuberant 'Pineapple Dance Studios' is the best so far, especially the five minute sequence where Louie is down but not out after realising his age, being unable to stay the distance though an hour-long warm-up, which the teenage dancers around him don't even break a sweat through.

He rallies spectacularly once the music comes on and the youngsters, with their physical prowess, are awestruck. The videotape editing leads the episode to skim over the most important artistic truth that Louie reveals to his young charges; that a performance at the pinnacle of Art requires you to expose your emotional vulnerability to your audience.

It takes a mature performer to believe, and trust, that the audience's acceptance of a genuine effort is unconditional.

I've been wrestling with this since performing in Yarm. Being a better singer is now no longer about skill, it's about letting down my defenses to let people see how the song makes me feel. This invitation to vulnerability is so very alien, complete faith to be placed in strangers.

It's the reason why we seldom look into the eyes of those but our loved ones. As windows unto the soul, looking into someone's soul requires that we expose our own to them.

All the enduring artistic Events have this in common. An truth of expression born of vulnerability.

That's why I take umbrage to 'styling' as it's purveyed - it is not delivered nor received as an aspect of form for the conveyance of artistic expression. It is manufactured and consumed as a pair of sunglasses to shield the soul, a façade behind which we can shelter our vulnerabilities in comfort and yet still sell to our audience-partners as 'art'.

Each dance robbed of the possibility of forever.

But there is one great positive to say. In this place, those of us willing to risk, stand out to our kindred. Because we all show to each other, and are recognised by, our calling.

Loo Yen