Friday, December 30, 2011

Uncrossable Barriers

I do not get dance.

I don't hate every dance I see, and I've successfully not hated some dance performances, but I am dumfounded that it exists in such abundance and in so many forms.

I love music, and over the years I've been introduced to music I didn't like, or didn't get, but mostly with the venerable forms I come to appreciate or even love it. I definitely didn't get opera when I was a kid, but over the years and with my mother's influence, I have seen the light. I have a favorite opera singer, even. One of the great birthday presents of recent years was when my wife got me tickets to my favorite opera singer at Ravinia.

I've gone through such transformations with various forms of classical, jazz in a few forms, cubist paintings, and many others.

But not dance. I have seen the Bolshoi ballet, the Bolshoi academy, and the Hubbard Street Dance group. I have tried, and I can appreciate the athleticism for sure, and occasionally there's a bit of a dance, or an individual performance that is just amazing, but unless it's essentially tap dancing from the 1940s or '50s, I just get so bored so fast.

I kind of want to love dance as much as I love most other art... I just don't seem to be able to.