Not Quite Caligula

Dance recital, culmination of ten months of weekly practice, monument to secular ritual and tradition.  Tight spandex, heavy makeup applications, glittered costumes, hair pulled back.  People congregate, drop their daughters in a staging area before they stake their place in line.. Rumors of a packed house prompt many spectators to arrive early.  Fathers, brothers, and grandfathers are among those mingling with the sixty percent female majority.

The up sell continues in the lobby.  After significant class fee, costume charge, and recital fee, you encounter t-shirts, flower bouquets, and pre-order recital DVDs.  My daughter played out the string, excited for the culmination of preparation but she never caught the dancing bug.  With my mother in law delivering the traditional bouquet of flowers, I felt no pressure to purchase any up sell items.

Finally, the house lights dim.

Show time.

Art evokes emotion.

The paint that attracts your gaze, sound that catches your ear, an artist creates in order for you to hear, think, feel, become witness to their experience. Picasso’s cubist portraits of lovers, Rodin’s sculpture of ‘Eve’ or John Coltrane’s ‘A Love Supreme,’ are examples of artists conveying their interpretation in a creative medium. How you feel when you behold Rodin’s ‘Eve’ or hear Coltrane’s emotion laden tenor on ‘A Love Supreme,’ is an emotion totally your own. However, each artist created their works to elicit certain emotions whether you feel them or not.

Sir Mix-a-Lot penned a song called Big Butts.

With Big Butts pulsating through speakers, one can easily envision how the song’s author intended listeners to physically interpret his song: quick movements, gyrations, emphasis on moving ones behind.

No issue with freedom of expression.

Picasso can paint as he sees fit, Sir Mix-a-lot or 2 Live Crew can rap however they want.

Unencumbered freedom of expression is a cornerstone of our democratic, free society.

HOWEVER, when artistic expression involves a human body, live human body, you expect to be at Lincoln Center, a dance club or the Canadian Ballet. Not at a nine year old’s dance recital.

Watching the needle move cultural norms from Ed Sullivan, the inability to show Elvis’ below his waist, to a dance recital with nine year old’s gyrating and fifteen year old’s contorting their bodies in two piece uniforms, one wonders if artistic expression should not be an inalienable right to a nine year old.

Do sports put you in uncomfortable sexual situations?

Neither the tennis outfits on prodigies nor leotards on pre-pubescent gymnasts ever elicited pangs of discomfort.  When the music pulsates, lyrics bespeak moving ‘booty,’ artistic interpretation should take the form of J. Lo, techno, dance club moves.

HOWEVER, I was not at a dance club or pop concert, I sat perplexed in the fourth row of my daughter’s dance recital.