An emotional dance!

I felt that this warranted it's own blog for the sheer fact that the words have been resonating since it was stated. "We want to learn an emotional dance!" This was the request of the two school teachers who were asking me to teach them a dance for the new year concert. They wanted a dance similar to the one i taught the tenth graders two weeks ago.  This was a bit of an odd request to me as I sat there making them listen to Frank Sinatras "New York New York". Of course, when they found out how many hours (9) were crammed into three days so the kids could learn that dance, their tune changed. The dance I taught those students was a bit of a mix...hip hop, modern..maybe even some contemporary mixed in. To dancer's in the states, we usually start for fun. It's something to keep our time occupied while expelling energy while mommy and daddy run errands. As we get older, we are taught to feel our movements. Dance teachers mold our bodies until the right body placement becomes second nature to us. In modern we learn to connect our movements, feel the floor rough up our feet as we move along, and connect to ourselves in an almost spiritual way through our own creations.  In ballet, we learn a foundation. The techniques that will make us strong and will mold us into better, well rounded dancers. In a way I think that all of my peers in college felt this connection at some point during their stint at Dean College. Watching a ballet, or a modern group, this raw emotion is felt. So what about Mongolian dance? I have to say, when I was dancing at my swearing in, and in my school's concert, I felt very little however, I have not grown up with this form of dance. While I find it very interesting, attaching any kind of emotion to something so new and alien is difficult to do. This, in my mind warrants a question. Do Mongolian's go through the movements just because that is what is taught or do they feel everything that we feel when we dance; love, hate, sadness, joy all those raw animistic emotions? We are taught to show our emotions, and for some of us, dance was and is that outlet. Do Mongolians? I hope so, and I would like to think so.  There is one student at my school that also performed for the 90th anniversary. She performed a traditional Mongolian dance and seemed so excited to be onstage. She was all smiles, and very much lost in her dance, her movements.  The crowd wasn't there to her. It was her and that dance, her and her passion. So in closing (as I couldn't get back to sleep until I expelled what was on my mind) I think every culture has an emotional dance. The difficulty is being able to see how these emotions are expressed because cultures are so different. I plan on going through with teaching and performing "New York New York" with my teachers, but I have also decided that I will be performing my own very "emotionally driven" dance to see what kind of interesting conversations I can spark from it.