Thursday, February 03, 2011

Dance

I was reading the overly PC writings of some guy on the Internet. He's an experienced dancer, but he's also WAY too hung up on being egalitarian.

Some people were talking about how a lot of dancers don't really interpret the music when they dance. This tends to be true of people with no real dance training or skills. It's especially true of the folks who just kinda squirm and wiggle in place when they "dance." I mean, really -- no reasonable person would say that that's "interpreting."

Yet this one bozo got all huffy and politically correct about the whole issue. He said, "Who are you to make that judgment? As long as people are moving to the beat, they are interpreting the music!"

Now that is just horribly, horribly naive. Music involves far more than just a beat. It also involves rhythm, moods, and much more. I don't think that I can completely define what it means to interpret a musical number, but it certainly involves far more than just moving to the beat.

This guy was trying to be all egalitarian. He didn't like the idea of people saying that folks who just wiggle around on the dance floor aren't interpreting the music. I can appreciate the fact that he was striving for some sort of equality, but in the process, he was taking an absurd and completely unreasonable stance.