Re: Kate Bush's Videos

[Doug Alan <nessus@ATHENA.MIT.EDU>]

> From: henrik@blblbl.UUCP (Larry DeLuca)

> It's not unique at all.  First of all, the poor girl is hell-bent on
> symmetry.  Doris Humphrey, in her book _The Art of Making Dances_
> (required reading for anyone *anywhere* in the arts) says, "Symmetry
> is death.".

Who made Doris Humphrey God?  To say that "symmetry is death" is like
saying "melody is death".  It's the epitome of arrogance.  There's a
place in the world for many things.  Including both symmetry and
asymmetry, both consonace and disonance.  Also to say what Kate is
hell-bent on now, at the age of 30, is a little presumptuous an
extrapolation from what she was into at the age of 20.

> Second, her approximation of the choreographic art is crude, at
> best.  Her efforts [...] are more akin to pantomime [...]

Who declared pantomime an invalid form of art?

> Dance is a compressed language.  It will, at its best, make clear
> new inroads of interpretation and understanding.  However, the
> choreography in the early videos [...]  doesn't serve to do anything
> other than weakly mirror the words in most cases.

> Kate Bush's choreography is hardly unique.  I see reams of the same
> stuff put on little girls in their first jazz classes because they
> are too young to learn anything more complex or their
> teachers/choreographers just aren't very good.  As a choreographer
> myself, I have found a lot of Kate Bush's music inspirational (I'm
> working on "This Woman's Work" right now -- to be presented in early
> September, and have also started drafting ideas for "The Ninth
> Wave") but really feel she's never realized the potential (or even
> come close to it) herself.

No one, including Kate, would call Kate a dancer.  She just doesn't
have the years and years of training and practice to be technically
exceptional in this area.  Kate, and other people with plenty of
experience in dance, however, felt that she had enough artistic vision
to express something worthwhile with what dancing ability she did
have.  Not that she could achieve the same level with her dancing as
with her music (without devoting half her life to dance), but that she
could do something that would be more interesting that watching her
stand there at the microphone.  Considering the amount of training she
had in dance, I think she did a pretty incredible job.

Your saying that "you see reams of the same stuff put on by little
girls in their first jazz class" strikes me as the same sort of
snobishness that you hear from classical music experts about rock
music, or from 70's Progressive Rock experts about Punk.  What they
are criticising doesn't meet some arbitrary, myopic, and ultimately
meaningless measurement of quality that just doesn't apply to the work
of artists with different views and different goals.  I've seen plenty
of bad talent shows, and I've yet to see someone who dances or
choreographs like Kate.  But then again, I guess I just don't have the
training to see how all dancing I don't like, is, in essence, the
same....  Or, perhaps, it's just that you expect Kate to be as good a
dancer and coreographer as she is musician.  In that case, get real!

> I hope the trend I've seen in _Hair of the Hound_ continues -- she's
> improved quite a bit, and letting other people do some of it has
> helped.  She still needs to give up symmetry almost altogether --
> she can say a lot more without it.

Well, I think you better give up on the idea of Kate achieving her
potential as a dancer.  She long ago decided that others are much more
qualified at dance than she, and she would leave the dancing to them.
The video for "Running Up That Hill" was her one last shot at dance --
she wanted to do one last piece of dance that she could be proud of --
and something that she thought would be a better presentation of dance
than in other rock videos she had seen.  Then she would hang up her
tutu, and put on her director's cap, which is what she currently wants
to work on.

|>oug /\lan

"I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing,
 than teach a million stars how not to dance"  -- e. e. cummings