dancers writing

dancers writing is a long term project committed to encouraging and supporting dancers in developing the skills needed to be able to successfully communicate in media other than dancing to whomever they choose, in whichever way they choose. as such, dancers writing is a project larger than what could ever be presented on this website. this website’s purpose is to document and share those efforts and those results of the project that manifest in a number of styles of writing. the writing presented on this website is often critical, analytical, and poetic; feminist and activist writing. 

dancers, generally speaking, and as a population, have been systematically overworked and underpaid since dancing began to appear on the stages of European courts. dancers, generally speaking, and as a population, have been systematically trained into obedience (training dancers into obedience is still a common practice in stage and theatre dance training in every genre across the board). dancers, generally speaking, and as a population, being conditioned to constantly strive towards the highest physical and virtuosic standards, are essentially conditioned to invest all their time to physical practice, often to the extreme of being shamed for having other interests, such as reading, writing, contemplating, and resting.

it is due to such historic, cultural, systemic, and extreme treatment of generations upon generations of dancers that dancers today and in general struggle with understanding that intellectual effort matters. but not only that. dancers today are struggling with understanding that intellectual effort needs not be understood –– practically speaking –– as different from spiritual, emotional, and any other embodied effort: all of which are also physical experiences.

dancers writing commits to helping building skills and participating in the community’s efforts to build new frameworks to help understanding of alinear, atemporal, embodied, diffractive, and cross-, trans-, and inter-disciplinary as knowledge and as cultural value. dancers writing commits to helping building skills and participating in the community’s efforts to develop skills needed to successfully communicate the experiential as knowledge within and outside the communities of dancers, choreographers, and artists in general.

 

pavleheidler for dancers writing