Updates on the Microdance

Thinking Through the Portability of Dance in the Internet Era

Part 2

Sorry for the delayed updates on the blog!

Let me take a step back. I think there is a lot of value in thinking abbout what microdances can do but, first, we must consider their relationship to dance in general. I was describing this project to a colleague and I realized that I have not yet ellucidated the reason why this project stands out ot me. I first became interested in the microdance due to the legibility of the dance as a particular dance. Thus, what is interesting about this form of dance is not strictly that it is reproducible but rather that it is also recognizable as a given dance. This particular quality is of import.

To sort of circle back to why this project is ongoing and something that interests me, I would like to revisit the reason why we are here: I believe that the emergence of portable, memetic, dance archetypes hints at broader trends in dance in a way that might make the form more democratic. Now, before we get crazy I am not arguing that TikTok dances, as they are so often described (perhaps in a derrogatory way), are the harbinger of a new democratic era where all can dance. Certainly, anyone can dance, this is not in question here and we could argue forever about who can and cannot dance in our contemporary societies. However, by the same token, the microdance obviates just how simple the form can be that anyone, regardless of skill or mobility or familiarity with the conventions of dance, can pick up. This feels distinct from even simplified social dances that do require dancers to, at the very least, physically move around on the floor. In this sense, we can look at a microdance and recognize that its physicality is hightened and, in a sense, disembodied. Put differently, when I say that a microdance is not as physical, I am suggesting that the form itself does not rely on a masterful execution of a form but simply that the microdance is performed and recognized as a given microdance.

This is nothing new, of course; recognizability goes hand in hand with reproducibility in dance especially when we consider the didactic and memetic dimensions of learning and teaching dances. Otherwise, we would be stuck in a post-modern nothing new can every happen position that would be unsustainable. Moral panic aside, what the microdance here allows us to think about, in my opinion, is the logical extension of dance qua dance that makes it approachable to new dancers as well as non-dancers alike. A general attitude that is expressed when watching, for example, a ballet performance is “wow, that was impressive, I could never do that” which is not necessarily something that is expressed when watching microdances on TikTok. Rather than diametrically opposing dances and microdances, I am merely suggesting that ease of learning is one quality that microdances revel in such that they can almost appear to be simple and, for lack of a better word, democratic.

What is at stake, then, is the relationship that dance and its ow n productive methodologies. The microdance obviates the ease with which anyone can dance. It makes it simple how easy it can be for a dance to be recognizable as a dance in the same way that one might see a dance in a playground. Why does this matter? It honestly might not, but, to a certain degree, dance is an elitist form and, perhaps, rightfully so; in order to become a decorated dancer, artists generally undergo years of training honing their craft. A masterful performance is recognized as such by an audience, even if they themselves lack the skillset to perform at that level much in the same way a basketball fan can recognize a great 3-pointer when they witness one. This is where the microdance lives. It’s easy enough to learn a Tiktok dance and even easier to share online. Going back to our original example, a self-admitted non-dancer spends his time in between other activities (in this particular context, the performer has just enrolled in college and is juggling school and running his Tiktok account, which is entertaining all on its own) and learning a specific Tiktok dance that his idol, Sabrina Carpenter, has released alongside her latest record. Note the timing. A social dance, we could argue, relies somewhat on its legibility to other dancers as a dance. In the realm of online cultures, and specifically those more meme-oriented subcultures, timing is heavily tied to the value of a given culture-object. As such, it does matter that this performer wants to learn this specific form, almost as if he is running out of time. Now, it would not be arguing in good faith to call dance a mere extension of language (i.e. dance does not necessarily have to be legible in a semiotic-linguistic sense, to be a dance and its ontological status is perhaps more phenomenal than logocentric, but that is a conversation for another time) which is made obvious by how and when microdances are performed online and in real life.

I would like to stay here for a moment and tease out the relationship between timing and microdancing, if only for a moment longer. While it is the case that dances can survive and be performed across time, as noted in Diana Taylor’s Archive and Repertoire, there is perhaps a different sort of primacy and urgency to the microdance that require it is reproduced much more quickly than dance forms that, while relying on similar pedagogical mechanisms, are intelligible as dance in an almost institutional sense. What do I mean by this? While I do not wish to establish an artificial distinction between dances and microdances (since at their core they could be understood as indistinguishable and perhaps even a part of the same performative tradition writ large) it is nonetheless appreciate the differences as they emerge and what these differences might help us comprehend as this nascent form of dance performance. Virality, as such, is an important dimension for us to consider when we look at a microdance, as it is apparent from the form that there is value in performing a Tiktok dance as soon as it appears online. There is a certain kind of currency in the microdance that is not immediately applicable to, say, a ballet performance or a night out dancing at a disco. Put differently, it understands itself to have a value outside of its own form that can be put in conversation with other dancers worldwide thanks to the connectivity and communication that the Web 2.0 affords (and perhaps we could even call it a Web 2.5). This is expressed by the hopes, however expressed, by dancers who create and post these microdances: clicks matter. Recognizing this, it should come as no surprise that the attention economy thoroughly forms and informs this new form of dancing: as more and more users fight for less and less attention online, it might be advantageous to devise simple, DIY choreographies that new performers can quickly pick up and pass around virally. This is simply a theory I am thinking out loud, I am not of the belief that there is, somehow, a plan for how or why a form evolves. As people concerned with the history and the morphology of dance, it is important at times to offer how we think a dance emerges and why that might be the case.