"Performance" and ritual
Photo: Geoffrey Dunn
“Performance” and ritual
“Performance” underpins the approach to action in the world in our times. We have to perform at work, as parents, offspring, consumers, citizens, partners and in the myriad other roles we are required to do in our daily lives. In each domain we are assessed, either formally or informally. For example in workplaces our “performance” is assessed against criteria in formal ways whereas as parents we are assessed against implicit and explicit expectations at cultural and societal levels.
Performance is of course the core domain of artistic practices. Many cultural arts practices began as ritual invocations. Today performance is the central manifestation of creative practices. Even when we are not professional artists, we still find ourselves measuring our expression against performance benchmarks—are we as good as the virtuosic artist we admire in our chosen artform?
Arguably dance as an artform is most challenged by the virtuosic dimensions of performance. In the times we live in, body itself has become a site of extreme mastery. Dominating the body and bending it towards the vision of the mind is the prevailing approach. This is inevitable in the mind-dominated era in which we live where mechanistic models of perfection and mastery tantalise us with their illusions of control. Dance, as the expression of the body, faces particular challenges in this regard.
I speak to many people who are intimidated by dance. They often tell me that I should stop using the word “dance” in my work. Words like “movement” are suggested as alternatives. However movement is not dance—dance proposes a language that is, in its most ancient expressions, body-led, and manifesting a “meaning” in the world that is not of the mind or of words. Like any language, dance includes a cosmos of itself, it holds within it a culture and meaning making that is both self-referential and referencing external realities. When we equate dance with movement, it is because we have lost sight of the completely different possibilities of dance to manifest reality within and without.
When dance is removed from ritual contexts and offered as performance, it becomes something else. That is not to say that dance as performance is not valuable and beautiful. Rather it is to draw our attention to the fact that the ritual dimensions of dance may not be sustained in performance contexts. A ritual is a multi dimensional occurrence. It involves specific intentions from all people at this gathering. These intentions are supported by the dynamics of the encounter—the nature of the space, the relationship between all gathered in that space, and how one prepares to enter and leave that space. A ritual is not a “performance”, it is a remembering, an invocation of an ancient (timeless) existential sensation about birth, death, or of the fertility of our land and our bodies. In many rituals the experience is to unite us with elemental experiences that affirm the continuum between us and all of life. Performance separates because it is based on comparison and results in a hierarchy from the best to the worst.
Dance as a ritual practice is a precious remnant of ancient wisdom that recognised the need for experiences free from mechanistic impulses of the mind. A ritual tradition holds an intelligence that is sophisticated—they are not simply made up randomly. This intelligence is no less astute than the mind-led intelligence we uphold and celebrate in our times, in fact I would propose that it is far more expansive and complex.
The freedom from performance goals is the contemplative attention that is open to receiving signals from Consciousness pulsating within and without us.