| When you are dancing…for that two and a half minutes…it’s a love affair, between you and your partner and the music. You feel the music, you feel your partner, she feels you and she feels the music. So there the three of you are together. You’ve got a triangle, you know. Which one do you love best? —Frankie Manning |
Ballet dancer Daniel Cho wrote* of his first time collaborating with a partner: “The performance was an out-of-body experience I will never forget.” Accustomed to solo dancing, Cho was overcome by what had transpired, adding: “It was such a complete departure from reality that after we bowed and left the stage, all we could manage to do was stare at each other in complete silence.” They danced to Yo-Yo Ma playing Bach, and Cho said that “for a couple of minutes nothing existed or even mattered besides me, my partner and the music.”
Back in 2011, I’d formulated the “Magic Dance Triangle” (image above), magic dances being those sublime moments when everything seems to click. The triangle’s points were the essential elements of a dance: You, me, and the music. For a newer dancer, awareness might shift between these points in turn, focusing on one while momentarily neglecting the others. With experience, I envisioned shifting more smoothly, and moving toward the ability to hold all three in a global awareness.
There, at the center of the triangle, was the essence of the magic dance: The ability to encompass everything, all at once. This was when I’d find myself “in the zone,” able to spontaneously respond to and harmonize what was happening musically, with my partner’s movements, and with my own penchants. Obviously I wasn’t the first to this concept, as evidenced by Frankie Manning’s quote, above, which I’ve rerun due to it’s relevance to the topic at hand. Perhaps the red circle I’ve labeled magic should instead be, per Frankie, love.
See you on the dance floor —Sean Donovan
*Sharing, Supporting, Empowering: Why Partnering Feels More Poignant Than Ever (Dance Magazine)