DEFINITION OF DANCE

Dance is anything that involves the human body, in space, in motion, however fast or slow, as a communicative expressive medium for the human spirit; in fact the spirit of life itself. If one’s dance is to stand on one spot and tremble for half and hour - that is dance. Or to run around a room like lightning - that is dance. There is no right or wrong as regards what constitutes the form of dance but ‘totalness’ or ‘non-totalness’

ATTITUDE

There is too much prettiness in dance. I am not interested on prettiness but in beauty and beauty contains the whole spectrum of reality: from dark to light, creation to disintegration, life to death. The dancer/artist should see through the eyes of a child - just as the child can look with as much fascination on the decaying carcass of a bird as on a flower

IMPROVISATION AND TRANCE

The performer should strive to reach the state of readiness to receive the ‘spirit’ of the dance. Unless he/she is driven by the spirit of the dance, there can be no truth. The process of preparation and training involves emptying oneself - a process of humility, of shedding, of no-thinking - requiring clarity of form and vision... and honesty

This does not mean, however, that the performer is unaware of what he/she is doing when driven by the spirit of the dance, but is in a state of total awareness, in which there is no space, no gap or divide, no area of thought or intellect between perception and pure action. The two are inseparably linked

It is important for each dancer to search for their own right conditions, materials, focal points or catalytic agents to enable them to undergo this process. This is a shamanistic approach to dance and is what I term: THE BODY FORM STRIVES TO BECOME RECONNECTED

DANCE AS CATALYST

I use images from the subconscious, from dreams and the imagination, from everyday life and from ‘substance’. I want these images, manifest through the dance, to act as a catalyst directly stimulating the mind and imagination of the spectator according to their own experience and perception of life

Lindsay John