Republic of the Philippines

Department of Education
Division of Cagayan de Oro City
GUSA REGIONAL SCIENCE HIGH SCHOOL-X
Gusa, Cagayan de Oro City-[

REFLECTION OF “DANCES
OF THE HEART, AND THE
SOUL,” CONTEMPORARY
DANCE

Submitted by:
Jodi Elle P. Cagampang

Submitted to:
Elfinda U. Lagumbay

REFLECTION
Contemporary dance is today defined by a heterogenous plurality. I had fun at the same
time mermerized by the performance that was given by the Powe Dance Company,
headed by, Sir Douglas Nierras, “ Dances of the Heart, and of the soul.” It reveals itself
as works of art and events that are experiential, critical, aesthetic, intellectual and in
many ways interactive. Contemporary dance is not focused solely on finding and
developing dance movements and thereby on choreography, but also investigates more
widely the choreographic, our corporeal-being-in-the world, in a variety of contexts,
participating in various discourses and using this information to create a work of art,
artistic situations, participatory events etc.

While contemporary dance art, as a cultural phenomenon, is defined by a

heterogeneous plurality, the very concept of choreography has also been defined anew.
Choreography as a concept does not refer only to “dance writing” or dance composition,
but is also understood as an open concept viewed from the perspectives of interpreting
and investigating e.g. the choreographic in everyday world, the cultural
performatives, the ontologies of things. In a similar way, choreography as a term has
become more everyday, extending its reach into people’s awareness and the public
discourse. The term choreography can be heard in both the economic and political
rhetoric, in the most suprising contexts, as a metaphor but also as an aesthetic and
functional term. The concept is no longer owned by dance as an art form; I recently
reviewed a master’s degree thesis from Aalto University where the intelligent
environments of the future were investigated by way of choreographic analysis. In
science, a sociologist may investigate the ”everyday choreography” of people, and a
politician may speak of the choreography of the negotiations.

One explanation for the concept of choreography becoming more common is the
increasingly complex systematic interlinking of our lives, and the demand on the
individual to move fast and navigate ”an information society that increasingly looks like a
network”. In such an environment, the choreography or the choreographic may well be
used as a concept that helps parsing and organising the events taking place. The
fragmentary nature of everyday functions is then ordered into a kind of space-time
continuum with direction. However, in the public discourse or on the political stage in
society, the organizing principles of each ”choreographic performance” (organizing
principles equals the manner in which actions are ordered and organized based on a
set of intentions and values) is often left unsaid, or is not unpacked but left shrouded in
the materiality of the performed actions and in the administrative and symbolic-
performative act of repeating and renewing an action.

DOCUMENTATION