artistic directors jamey hampton + ashley roland
Athletics and Artistry: Striking the Balance
Heather Wisner | November 18, 2009
Dance Spirit Magazine
Speed, precision, balance, endurance: Dancers need these skills as much as any athlete does. But what separates dancers from athletes is artistry. It’s harder to define but just as vital. Think about it: A dancer with sky-high jumps and extensions still makes an unsatisfying Giselle if she doesn’t convey the emotion within the story. The audience needs to feel something from the performance. On the other hand, an emotive but technically mediocre performer isn’t thrilling either. It’s only when the two elements are combined that something complete and remarkable is created.
No one knows how to color and shade powerful performances better than the pros, so we asked veteran dancers, choreographers and teachers to share their thoughts on mastering athletic and artistic skills, and the importance of each. Turns out striking a balance between them is key: A dancer today needs both tools in her belt and the judgment to know which to use—and when.
Ashley Roland, dance/choreographer/co-founder of BodyVox:
Every dancer is an athlete. What we do with our bodies demands strength, agility and balance. We play like a team: When we come out onstage, we work as a collective. There’s something more powerful in that for me than putting one person out in front who does amazing tricks. When you see a basketball team, they’re not thinking about the placement of their arm in relation to their shoulder. We do think about that. We take athletics to the next level.
Every time I go onstage, I have to decide: How much energy and power do I want to apply and how much do I need to save to get through the last minute? In every dance concert I see, I’m drawn to people who are physical beings and performers. To be both, you have to develop athleticism and layer artistry on top of that. Artistry is a gift.
Jamey Hampton, dancer/choreographer/co-founder of BodyVox:
Usually dancers start young, when they’re approaching the peak of their physical powers. As a dancer ages, his or her body becomes less physically able to respond to the mind in that way, but the mind, the soul and the artistry grow. There’s an x–y graph growing in two ways: Artistry is ascending and physicality is descending. There’s a sweet spot where those two intersect, where people can pull off balance, height and hang time, while also achieving a level to speak with the body, to tell the story within.
Technically our dancers are far better than they have ever been, and a choreographer can be seduced by those abilities. But the successful choreographer uses those abilities in service of story. That’s where my sweet spot lies. Athletics has that element of reaching deep into the human spirit for the sake of winning. That exists for dancers, too – reaching deep within your soul because it’s imperative to do so, to remain expressive and alive as a human. That’s where that cross happens.