#its so hard meeting people as is but theres also the undeniable fact that a lot of people just wont accept me

[generationa1trauma]

currently struggling w the concept that the community i so desperately want to be a part of relies heavily on talent and always involves some level of rejection through auditions

[exmeowstic]

hii bastion !! can i pls ask to learn more abt ur ship with graha ? :o is ur insert the wol, or some other role in ffxiv, what were ur first impressions of each other and how/when did they shift into smth more? (u dont have to answer all of these, im just shooting questions out !) id love to learn more!! (@dmclr)

HIHII I HOPE YOUVE BEEN WELL <33 ive been dead from work but i finally managed to type out words from my brain. readmore bc its more than i expected and im embawassed a bit 👉👈 (also obligatory warning for spoilers thru endwalker)

SO. MY WOL AND GRAHA. truthfully,, there is still a lot of thinking to be done in terms of my s/i bastion and how things play out for him/how he fits into the story/how he acts and thinks and feels about things! esp as i approach the end of endwalker, it seems like dawntrail mighttt give me a bit more breathing room to actually think abt stuff

i do have him as the wol, i just feel like theres a lot i kinda missed out on/would like to review bc i Tunnel Vision Focused on msq to the exclusion of almost all else lol (and it doesnt help that my progression thru msq had been Very on and off until now bc i would put the game down for months due to social anxiety. frankly anytjing before like. mid stormblood is a biiiit of a blur)

though its extremely funny because i think during the crystal tower questline first meeting graha he did not make. a Particularly Big Impression on me. i was just like "oh cool another friend!" and then moved on once that was wrapped up and he kind of stayed in that default area of "nice new friend" that 99% of people fall into for bastion for a while..

AND THEN SHADOWBRINGERS HAPPENED. (admittedly i did go in pre-spoiled on the exarchs identity long before i even properly got into the game period, but just Knowing the thing and playing through it all myself are two Completely Different Feelings imo and everything about the reveal and the expansion just wrecked me it was so goodddd!!!) this is where i became crazy in the head about graha and started truly thinking abt him and bastions relationship specifically...

mm like i said i am still very much thinking about/putting pieces in place regarding bastions feelings and relationships with various characters and things, but as of endwalker things are in a weird spot with him and graha :3 specifially in the way of like... bastion is having a hard enough time just trying to come to terms with the fact that he has any sort of feelings for graha (or anyone, really) in the first place.

with the amount of things that happen to/around/because of him, he kind of blames anything happening to anyone around him on the fact That he is around, and is. overly worried with the idea that the people he cares about may get hurt because they get caught up in the mess that is His Entire Life. as much as he wants to spend more time with graha and just go on adventures with him and Not Worry, it all sits very heavily in the back of his mind.

that being said, while theyre definitely still dancing around the finer points of their feelings through endwalker, bastion and graha are undeniably close. there is no way bastion could see that an old friend waited and hoped and worked for an entire century for the sake of him and his future and Not try to match that dedication. bastion wouldnt say hes in love if you asked him, but he would say hes determined to do everything in his power to fulfill his promise to graha, to stay by his side through adventure after adventure and see the world as soon as theyre able.

on grahas side it probably seems like hes had. a Lot more time to think about things, but in truth i think hes still very much putting together the pieces. between all but abandoning who he was for a hundred years to take on the role of exarch, and then getting his soul and everything merged into his old body in the source and having to process all that, especially when he was so sure he was gonna sacrifice himself during shb and wasnt really planning on surviving up until now its. it makes me ill to think abt everything hes been through. so for sure he is also still working through his feelings. even if theyre both in a weird uncertain position about it as of right now, they both know for certain that they would like to stay by each others side.. we will have to see where dawntrail takes them ^_^

tldr lotta stuff is happening right now for the both of them so my wol and graha are not 100% a thing yet. though i can certainly think about them kising catboy yaoi style <3

bonus Image Of Them if you read this far i thank you for your time <333

[petewentzisblack1312]

i see the sugar vid as a combo of both! im pretty sure it’s implied that the dad always had the deer legs! and to me it’s a metaphor for the fact that we often hate/resent others because we see parts of ourselves/our own insecurities within them. thats even an underlying in thing in like narcissistic abuse (the scapegoat child is often the one they see their shortcomings/insecurities in most). anyway either way its undeniably about mental illness/neurodivergency. and thats why it always makes me tear up. the message is just that we all deserve to be loved as we are – ugly, weird bits and all. and imo its hard, if not impossible, not to connect that to pete. i also think that other anon’s partner couldve been thinking like THE DEER LEGs MEAN WERE ALL THE SAME DEEP DOWN COLOURBLIND UWU but hopefully not lol

yeah i think thats probably the case! i dont think that metaphor carries super well into race though. maybe from the angle of "a black person annoyed that someone who wont hide the fact that theyre black to succeed" thing. idk how to articulate this precisely and im a little off my game atm but i think its a very "bigotry is a reflection of the self" type of deal, which is accurate, and the way the mv handles it isnt in a colourblind way at least.

fall out boy has always at its core been about that though, in a self acceptance way, and i think that angle and theme of accepting diversity and identity as it is and not trying to change who you are to fit in, and in fact finding people who love and respect you for who you are, makes sense considering theyve got a lot of diversity between the four of them. i think that might be why so many young girls are into their stuff and have been from the jump, being a teenage girl just puts you in that position from the jump. youre criticised for literally everything.

i also feel like theres a lot of black fans of fob, specifically those who are biracial or "act white" for this very reason. i want to do a survey to confirm that hypothesis because its something ive noticed, every black fob fan i meet has either been told they "act white" or is biracial, and it makes sense since this is a theme that rings throughout their music. like yknow how every emo band is like "im weird. im a weirdo. i dont fit in and i dont want to fit in." fob is like. we actually do not fit in and it fucking sucks but also why do we even want to if they hate our guts. idk im tired and rambling and need to rewatch the mv but ya!

[mayabruhbruh]

Stranger Things 4 Analysis and Theory

I don’t know if anyone else has done posts on this stuff yet (it’s really likely, but i’d not want to take the credit if i’m not the only one who’s thought of this)

I know @kaypeace21 has made tons of posts on the s4 movies from Video Store Friday, and many others have theories and analyses, but back in July I took it upon myself to research more into the very last few scenes of s3. Specifically the three months later time stamp, where Steve and Robin are in search for a new job.

My main focus was the four movies that they mentioned for Keith at the counter. “Animal House”, “The Hidden Fortress”, “Children Of Paradise”, and “The Apartment”.

(reminder that if you read this, it could be spoilers for the final cut of the actual show if i end up being correct about some of this, so read at your own risk)

My first theory, which I’ve already discussed in a separate reblog, is about The Hellfire Club. But i’ll say it here too.

Basically,

(sorry for the sucky quality)

Animal House is about two awkward freshmen going into college and joining a fraternity of rejects. It matches Mike, Dustin and the Hellfire Club perfectly! Personally, my lowkey theory is that they’re going to have to go though an entirety of initiation activities (possibly drugs too, if what we’ve heard is correct) and Lucas and Max will be in their own storylines up until the supernatural threat brings them back together again. This could be wayy off, but still its my idea.

As for Max and Lucas...

I’m not sure about the entirety of the plot of this movie, but the last line sounds a lot like something that would happen between Lumax. Lucas is a basketball jock now, I think that’s crystal clear now seeing from the Pep Rally poster, and how he’s always been the one in the group to be able to mask his nerdy side. For Dustin and Mike, I know it’s much harder for them. Anyways, Max, I’m pretty positive by now, is going to be extremely distant and defensive from everyone just like she was in the beginning of s2, since she just had a big change happening in her life. It’s the same now, except with the grief and loss of Billy. My guess, from the hints of this movie and other stuff, is that Lucas is going to come face to face with his reputation as a popular kid, and his love for Max. Like the summary says, he must decide between the advancement of his career or the girl that he loves. Real hard hitting stuff.

Onto the next one. MIKE WHEELER. (or will byers)

I watched an analysis video on this movie, because I haven’t seen it yet, but again the very last line is what I’d like to focus on.

My. Jaw. Dropped.

I’ve read many analyses of Mike Wheeler being gay (courtesy of @kaypeace21 @hawkinsschoolcounselor and MANY others), but I dunno, I was always just so skeptical no matter how much it made sense. But when I saw this WHAT THE HELL?!?’);/&? It’s stupid of me to not have believed it sooner, but I hope this is the movie that foreshadows Mike’s storyline this season. I’m assuming Mike will have to “prove his expertise in battle”, or perhaps prove he can go through with all of the initiation shit for The Hellfire Club, while hiding his growing revelation that he might be gay/bisexual.

BUT a possibly more likely scenario would be that this movie connects with Will Byers’ storyline this season instead. Perhaps the hardships of a new school and a new town has Will shaken up, and he also has his sexuality awakening that he has to hide from new people. I say that it’s more likely for him, because Will has always been more heavily queer-coded (not exactly heavier, but just extremely much more apparent and obvious opposed to Mikes queercoded subtext that we really had to dig for).

I also didn’t mention this in my reblog from earlier, but I want to address my opinions on the apparent cheerleader that meets Mike and befriends one another. One of my friends on twitter said Chrissy (her name, or so we think lmao) might be a key component to Mike being able to discover and come to terms with his sexuality. But then again, a different friend of mine thinks that the amount of content were getting is oddly suspicious, and that the Duffers are feeding us all the wrong information to lead us to all the wrong conclusions. But, at this point, why not both. At the moment, everyone thinks that Chrissy is Mikes new love interest, but what if she really isn’t, and they’re pulling a Robin on us (i call it a robin because it was technically straight-baiting in s3 LMFAO). I’m not saying that she might be a lesbian (although 👀 it says on her character info that she’s 18 (robins got some game to work with now ahaha)) but it could be a straight-bait up until she helps Mike realize his sexuality (i would have said realizes his love for Will😍😍 but recently ive been trying not to input byler into everything i fucking say, so theres how that’s going). Anyways. Last movie!

Now, I’m currently not super concrete on this one to be completely honest. I have a few in mind...

Okay, so don’t attack me, but this could possibly be a mileven storyline. It sort of fits. They have an undeniable connection, but “their fortunes shift considerably and they’re pushed apart” aka the misfortune of the mindflayer and hawkins not being safe for them leads them to moving away and literally being pushed apart. I don’t know about the pursuing other relationships, but we still have no idea what’s going on with El Hopper tbh, i havent a single clue what’s going to be happening with her storyline atm. But either way, that could be it.

ORRRR the MUCH more likely scenario, Jancy :)

Bloggers on here have already predicted that they wouldn’t be endgame, and I was only slightly skeptical because although their relationship was built on shared trauma, a very unstable foundation to have for a ship tbh, i still hung onto the fact that they cared for eachother a lot :,( But the entirety of their season 3 bickering and this summary kind of sealed the deal.

Just like Mike and El, Nancy and Jonathan have been pushed apart aswell. It was already seen in season three that they’d be better of leading separate lives, aka Jonathan was doing fine at the internship, whereas Nancy could have been somewhere better for herself. I doubt they broke up at the end of season 3, but there’s bound to be new relationships for them seperately. It sucks bc I love Jancy, but s3 showed how badly they snap at one another when there isn’t a life threatening event at hand. Jopper on the other hand, I thought their bickering was adorable, but i’m getting off track, sorry lmfaoo.

Once again, I probably am not the first to talk about these, but jsyk if you steal this from me specifically i will track you down and end you. I’ve been speculating about these things since April and July, which is pretty weak tbh, but that was when i had nothing better to do LMFAO. i hope i got at least something right, but i haven’t seen many of the video store friday’s movies, which sucks bc those could really help. But whatever.

(i wrote this really late at night, and it’s poorly edited bc my eyesight sucks lmfao, but i hope you get what i mean)

And that’s it! I hope you like it, or had some sort of impact from it idk, just sharing my thoughts tbh. Anygays, if you have any questions/added ideas/thoughts of any kind, my inbox is always here, you can private message me, and comment if you want!! i love y’all sm lmfao, so excited for the upcoming content were about to get soon, byee!

[writingguide003-blog]

Zadie Smith: dance lessons for writers

New Post has been published on https://writingguideto.com/must-see/zadie-smith-dance-lessons-for-writers/

Zadie Smith: dance lessons for writers

From Fred Astaires elegance to Beyoncs power, Zadie Smith is inspired by dancers as much she is by other writers

The connection between writing and dancing has been much on my mind recently: its a channel I want to keep open. It feels a little neglected compared to, say, the relationship between music and prose maybe because there is something counter-intuitive about it. But for me the two forms are close to each other: I feel dance has something to tell me about what I do.

One of the most solid pieces of writing advice I know is in fact intended for dancers you can find it in the choreographer Martha Grahams biography. But it relaxes me in front of my laptop the same way I imagine it might induce a young dancer to breathe deeply and wiggle their fingers and toes. Graham writes: There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

What can an art of words take from the art that needs none? Yet I often think Ive learned as much from watching dancers as I have from reading. Dance lessons for writers: lessons of position, attitude, rhythm and style, some of them obvious, some indirect. What follows are a few notes towards that idea.

Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire

Alamy; The Life Picture Collection/Getty Images. Top: Getty Images

Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly

Fred Astaire represents the aristocracy when he dances, claimed Gene Kelly, in old age, and I represent the proletariat. The distinction is immediately satisfying, though its a little harder to say why. Tall, thin and elegant, versus muscular and athletic is that it? Theres the obvious matter of top hat and tails versus T-shirt and slacks. But Fred sometimes wore T-shirts and slacks, and was not actually that tall, he only stood as if he were, and when moving always appeared elevated, to be skimming across whichever surface: the floor, the ceiling, an ice rink, a bandstand. Genes centre of gravity was far lower: he bends his knees, he hunkers down. Kelly is grounded, firmly planted, where Astaire is untethered, free-floating.

Likewise, the aristocrat and the proletariat have different relations to the ground beneath their feet, the first moving fluidly across the surface of the world, the second specifically tethered to a certain spot: a city block, a village, a factory, a stretch of fields. Cyd Charisse claimed her husband always knew which of these dancers shed been working with by looking at her body at the end of the day: bruised everywhere if it was Kelly, not a blemish if it was Astaire. Not only aloof when it came to the ground, Astaire was aloof around other peoples bodies. Through 15 years and 10 movies, its hard to detect one moment of real sexual tension between Fred and his Ginger. They have great harmony but little heat. Now think of Kelly with Cyd Charisse in the fantasy sequence of Singin in the Rain! And maybe this is one of the advantages of earthiness: sex.

When I write I feel theres usually a choice to be made between the grounded and the floating. The ground I am thinking of in this case is language as we meet it in its commonsense mode. The language of the television, of the supermarket, of the advert, the newspaper, the government, the daily public conversation. Some writers like to walk this ground, recreate it, break bits of it off and use it to their advantage, where others barely recognise its existence. Nabokov a literal aristocrat as well as an aesthetic one barely ever put a toe upon it. His language is literary, far from what we think of as our shared linguistic home.

One argument in defence of such literary language might be the way it admits its own artificiality. Commonsense language meanwhile claims to be plain and natural, conversational, but is often as constructed as asphalt, dreamed up in ad agencies or in the heart of government sometimes both at the same time. Simultaneously sentimental and coercive. (The Peoples Princess. The Big Society. Make America Great Again.) Commonsense language claims to take its lead from the way people naturally speak, but any writer who truly attends to the way people speak will soon find himself categorised as a distinctive stylist or satirist or experimentalist. Beckett was like this, and the American writer George Saunders is a good contemporary example. (In dance, the example that comes to my mind is Bill Bojangles Robinson, whose thing was tapping up and down the stairs. What could be more normal, more folksy, more grounded and everyday than tapping up and down some stairs? But his signature stage routine involved a staircase pressed right up against another staircase a stairway to itself and so up and down he would tap, up and down, down and up, entirely surreal, like an Escher print come to life.)

Astaire is clearly not an experimental dancer like Twyla Tharp or Pina Bausch, but he is surreal in the sense of surpassing the real. He is transcendent. When he dances a question proposes itself: what if a body moved like this through the world? But it is only a rhetorical, fantastical question, for no bodies move like Astaire, no, we only move like him in our dreams.

By contrast, I have seen French boys run up the steps of the High Line in New York to take a photo of the view, their backsides working just like Gene Kellys in On The Town, and I have seen black kids on the A train swing round the pole on their way out of the sliding doors Kelly again, hanging from that eternal lamppost. Kelly quoted the commonplace when he danced, and he reminds us in turn of the grace we do sometimes possess ourselves. He is the incarnation of our bodies in their youth, at their most fluid and powerful, or whenever our natural talents combine ideally with our hard-earned skills. He is a demonstration of how the prosaic can turn poetic, if we work hard enough. But Astaire, when he dances, has nothing to do with hard work (although we know, from biographies, that he worked very hard, behind the scenes). He is poetry in motion. His movements are so removed from ours that he sets a limit on our own ambitions. Nobody hopes or expects to dance like Astaire, just as nobody really expects to write like Nabokov.

Harold and Fayard Nichols

Getty

Harold and Fayard Nicholas

Writing, like dancing, is one of the arts available to people who have nothing. For 10 and sixpence, advises Virginia Woolf, one can buy paper enough to write all the plays of Shakespeare. The only absolutely necessary equipment in dance is your own body. Some of the greatest dancers have come from the lowliest backgrounds. With many black dancers this has come with the complication of representing your race. You are on a stage, in front of your people and other people. What face will you show them? Will you be your self? Your best self? A representation? A symbol?

The Nicholas brothers were not street kids they were the children of college-educated musicians but they were never formally trained in dance. They learned watching their parents and their parents colleagues performing on the chitlin circuit, as black vaudeville was then called. Later, when they entered the movies, their performances were usually filmed in such a way as to be non-essential to the story, so that when these films played in the south their spectacular sequences could be snipped out without doing any harm to the integrity of the plot. Genius contained, genius ring-fenced. But also genius undeniable.

My talent was the weapon, argued Sammy Davis Jr, the power, the way for me to fight. It was the one way I might hope to affect a mans thinking. Davis was another chitlin hoofer, originally, and from straitened circumstances. His logic here is very familiar: it is something of an article of faith within the kinds of families who have few other assets. A mother tells her children to be twice as good, she tells them to be undeniable. My mother used to say something like it to me. And when I watch the Nicholas brothers I think of that stressful instruction: be twice as good.

The Nicholas brothers were many, many magnitudes better than anybody else. They were better than anyone has a right or need to be. Fred Astaire called their routine in Stormy Weather the greatest example of cinematic dance he ever saw. They are progressing down a giant staircase doing the splits as if the splits is the commonsense way to get somewhere. They are impeccably dressed. They are more than representing they are excelling.

But I always think I spot a little difference between Harold and Fayard, and it interests me; I take it as a kind of lesson. Fayard seems to me more concerned with this responsibility of representation when he dances: he looks the part, he is the part, his propriety unassailable. He is formal, contained, technically undeniable: a credit to the race. But Harold gives himself over to joy. His hair is his tell: as he dances it loosens itself from the slather of Brylcreem he always put on it, the irrepressible afro curl springs out, he doesnt even try to brush it back. Between propriety and joy, choose joy.

Prince & Micheal Jackson

Redferns; Sygma via Getty Images

Michael Jackson and Prince

On YouTube you will find them, locked in many dance-offs, and so you are presented with a stark choice. But its not a question of degrees of ability, of who was the greater dancer. The choice is between two completely opposite values: legibility on the one hand, temporality on the other. Between a monument (Jackson) and a kind of mirage (Prince).

But both men were excellent dancers. Putting aside the difference in height, physically they had many similarities. Terribly slight, long necked, thin-legged, powered from the torso rather than the backside, which in both cases was improbably small. And in terms of influence they were of course equally indebted to James Brown. The splits, the rise from the splits, the spin, the glide, the knee bend, the jerk of the head all stolen from the same source.

Yet Prince and Jackson are nothing alike when they dance, and its very hard to bring to mind Prince dancing, whereas it is practically impossible to forget Jackson. It sounds irrational, but try it for yourself. Princes moves, no matter how many times you may have observed them, have no firm inscription in memory; they never seem quite fixed or preserved. If someone asks you to dance like Prince, what will you do? Spin, possibly, and do the splits, if youre able. But there wont appear to be anything especially Prince-like about that. Its mysterious. How can you dance and dance, in front of millions of people, for years, and still seem like a secret only I know? (And isnt it the case that to be a Prince fan is to feel that Prince was your secret alone?)

I never went to see Michael Jackson, but I saw Prince half a dozen times. I saw him in stadiums with thousands of people, so have a rational understanding that he was in no sense my secret, that he was in fact a superstar. But I still say his shows were illegible, private, like the performance of a man in the middle of a room at a house party. It was the greatest thing you ever saw and yet its greatness was confined to the moment in which it was happening.

Jackson was exactly the opposite. Every move he made was absolutely legible, public, endlessly copied and copyable, like a meme before the word existed. He thought in images, and across time. He deliberately outlined and then marked once more the edges around each move, like a cop drawing a chalk line round a body. Stuck his neck forward if he was moving backwards. Cut his trousers short so you could read his ankles. Grabbed his groin so you could better understand its gyrations. Gloved one hand so you might attend to its rhythmic genius, the way it punctuated everything, like an exclamation mark.

Towards the end, his curious stagewear became increasingly tasked with this job of outline and distinction. It looked like a form of armour, the purpose of which was to define each element of his body so no movement of it would pass unnoted. His arms and legs multiply strapped a literal visualisation of his flexible joints and a metallic sash running left to right across his breastplate, accentuating the shift of his shoulders along this diagonal. A heavyweights belt accentuated slender hips and divided the torso from the legs, so you noticed when the top and bottom half of the body pulled in opposite directions. Finally a silver thong, rendering his eloquent groin as clear as if it were in ALL CAPS. It wasnt subtle, there was no subtext, but it was clearly legible. People will be dancing like Michael Jackson until the end of time.

But Prince, precious, elusive Prince, well, there lays one whose name was writ in water. And from Prince a writer might take the lesson that elusiveness can possess a deeper beauty than the legible. In the world of words, we have Keats to remind us of this, and to demonstrate what a long afterlife an elusive artist can have, even when placed beside as clearly drawn a figure as Lord Byron. Prince represents the inspiration of the moment, like an ode composed to capture a passing sensation. And when the mood changes, he changes with it: another good lesson.

Theres no freedom in being a monument. Better to be the guy still jamming in the wee hours of the house party, and though everybody films it on their phones no one proves quite able to capture the essence of it. And now hes gone, having escaped us one more time. I dont claim Princes image wont last as long as Jacksons. I only say that in our minds it will never be as distinct.

Janet Jackson Madonna Beyonce

Michel Linssen/Redferns/Getty; Dave Hogan/Getty; Matt Slocum/AP

Janet Jackson / Madonna / Beyonc

These three dont just invite copies they demand them. They go further than legibility into proscription. They lead armies, and we join them. We are like those uniformed dancers moving in military formation behind them, an anonymous corps whose job it is to copy precisely the gestures of their general.

This was made literal on Beyoncs Formation tour recently, when the general raised her right arm like a shotgun, pulled the trigger with her left and the sound of gunshot rang out. There is nothing intimate about this kind of dancing: like the military, it operates as a form of franchise, whereby a ruling idea America, Beyonc presides over many cells that span the world. Maybe it is for this reason that much of the crowd I saw at Wembley could be found, for long periods, not facing in the direction of the stage at all, instead turning to their friends and partners. They didnt need to watch Beyonc any more than soldiers need to look fixedly at the flag to perform their duties. Our queen was up there somewhere dancing but the idea of her had already been internalised. Friends from the gym stood in circles and pumped their fists, girlfriends from hen nights turned inwards and did Beyonc to each other, and boys from the Beyhive screamed every word into each others faces. They could have done the same at home, but this was a public display of allegiance.

Janet Jackson kicked off this curious phenomenon, Madonna continued it, Beyonc is its apex. Here dancing is intended as a demonstration of the female will, a concrete articulation of its reach and possibilities. The lesson is quite clear. My body obeys me. My dancers obey me. Now you will obey me. And then everybody in the crowd imagines being obeyed like Bey a delightful imagining.

Lady writers who inspire similar devotion (in far smaller audiences): Muriel Spark, Joan Didion, Jane Austen. Such writers offer the same essential qualities (or illusions): total control (over their form) and no freedom (for the reader). Compare and contrast, say, Jean Rhys or Octavia Butler, lady writers much loved but rarely copied. Theres too much freedom in them. Meanwhile every sentence of Didions says: obey me! Who runs the world? Girls!

David Byrne

Rex/Shutterstock

David Byrne and David Bowie

The art of not dancing a vital lesson. Sometimes it is very important to be awkward, inelegant, jerking, to be neither poetic nor prosaic, to be positively bad. To express other possibilities for bodies, alternative values, to stop making sense. Its interesting to me that both these artists did their worst dancing to their blackest cuts. Take me to the river, sings Byrne, in square trousers 20 times too large, looking down at his jerking hips as if they belong to someone else. This music is not mine, his trousers say, and his movements go further: maybe this body isnt mine, either. At the end of this seam of logic lies a liberating thought: maybe nobody truly owns anything.

People can be too precious about their heritage, about their tradition writers especially. Preservation and protection have their place but they shouldnt block either freedom or theft. All possible aesthetic expressions are available to all peoples under the sign of love. Bowie and Byrnes evident love for what was not theirs brings out new angles in familiar sounds. It hadnt occurred to me before seeing these men dance that a person might choose, for example, to meet the curve of a drum beat with anything but the matching curving movement of their body, that is, with harmony and heat. But it turns out you can also resist: throw up a curious angle and suddenly spasm, like Bowie, or wonder if thats truly your own arm, like Byrne.

I think of young Luther Vandross, singing backup a few feet behind Bowie, during Young Americans, watching Bowie flail and thrash. I wonder what his take on all that was. Did he ever think: Now, what in the world is he doing? But a few performances in, it was clear to everybody. Here was something different. Something old, and yet new.

Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov

Sipa Press/Rex/Shutterstock; Getty Images

Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov

When you face an audience, which way will you turn? Inwards or outwards? Or some combination of the two? Nureyev, so fierce and neurotic, so vulnerable, so beautiful like a deer suddenly caught in our headlamps is faced resolutely inwards. You cant take your eyes off him, as people like to say, but at the same time he is almost excruciating to watch. We feel we might break him, that he might crumble or explode. He never does, but still, whenever he leaps you sense the possibility of total disaster, as you do with certain high-strung athletes no matter how many times they run or jump or dive. With Nureyev you are an onlooker, you are a person who has been granted the great honour of being present while Nureyev dances. I dont mean this sarcastically: it is an honour to watch Nureyev, even in these grainy old videos on YouTube. Hes a kind of miracle, and is fully cognisant of this when he dances, and what did you do today to warrant an audience with a miracle? (See also: Dostoevsky.)

With Baryshnikov, I have no fears of disaster. He is an outward-facing artist, he is trying to please me and he succeeds completely. His face dances as much as his arms and legs. (Nureyevs face, meanwhile, is permanently lost in transcendent feeling.) Sometimes Baryshnikov wants to please me so much hell even try tap dancing with Liza Minnelli, risking the scorn of the purists. (I am not a purist. I am delighted!) He is a charmer, an entertainer, he is comic, dramatic, cerebral, a clown whatever you need him to be. Baryshnikov is both loving and loved. He has high and low modes, tough and soft poses, but hes always facing outwards, to us, his audience. (See also: Tolstoy.)

Once I met Baryshnikov over a New York dinner table: I was so star-struck I could hardly speak. Finally I asked him: Did you ever meet Fred Astaire? He smiled. He said: Yes, once, at a dinner. I was very star-struck, I hardly spoke. But I watched his hands all the time, they were like a lesson in themselves so elegant!

Swing Time by Zadie Smith is published on 15 November (Hamish Hamilton, 18.99). To order a copy for 15.57, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846.

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us

[fitnessexpert00-blog]

Fitness Isnt a Lifestyle Anymore. Sometimes Its a Cult

New Post has been published on https://fitnessqia.com/must-see/fitness-isnt-a-lifestyle-anymore-sometimes-its-a-cult/

Fitness Isnt a Lifestyle Anymore. Sometimes Its a Cult

San Franciscos Fort Mason park is empty in the early morning darkness, every surface the color of a used cast-iron pan. Its pouring rain, and Ive been wandering around since just after 6, trying to find well, Im not exactly sure. All I know is that, according to a Facebook post, members of one of the strangest fitness groups in the country are supposed to be meeting here right about now. But the Google Maps screenshot I pulled from the website seems to have directed me to a parking lot. Or the front door of the high-end vegetarian restaurant Greens. Its hard to tell.

I check Facebook again.

What are you planning to do for the first Monday of 2016? Sleep in? Lazily slog on into work? No need for that. Come join us for #DonutMondays at NPSF (Gil, dont forget the donuts!). Fort Mason. 6:25AM

Just as I start thinking Ill have to find my own doughnut, a woman in her mid-twenties jogs up to me looking equally lost. Shes dressed in a gray Adidas jacket, black leggings, and a tank top that resembles caution tape. Her wet hair is stuck to her forehead as though shes just been dunked in the Pacific.

Do you know where November Project meets? she asks with a slight accent. Relieved, I tell her Im trying to find them as well. Im Stine! she says.

And then she hugs me.

What distinguishes November Project is not just the fact that its freejust as instructors arent paid, members dont paybut the degree to which it actually is a social identity. The movement extends beyond exercising to encompass rituals and customs, social expecta­tions, and repercussions for failing to participate. Thats right: If you skip a November Project workout, youre not out any cash, but the fallout is arguably more severe. Youre, well, shamed. Online. Its weird.

Spoiler: Not a lot of people miss workouts. Teixeira calls it an absolute feast for someone studying motivation for exercise.

One member compared November Project to a church. More commonly, people refer to it as a cult. Never in the pejora­tive Im-trapped-and-I-cant-escape sense, though. More like, This is the greatest-tasting Kool-Aid in the world!

Laura McCloskey leads the San Francisco tribe in a high-intensity workout. Hugs and hand-holding are not optional.Jake Stangel

While we walk, Stine, whos originally from Denmark, tells me about her obsession with November Project. Shes been a member of the Boston tribebears repeating: tribefor about four months and is visiting San Francisco for the week. Its been such a great way to meet people. Cities can be lonely, but you have this instant community, she says, using a nice-enough line that begins to sound like propaganda as I hear other members repeat it.

Two people who say it a lot are Brogan Graham and Bojan Mandaric. They are November Projects cofoundersand they totally fit their gladiatorial-sounding names: 6-foot-tall, bald, tattooed former collegiate rowers. Back in 2011, when the friends were trying to stay motivated during a Boston winter, they agreed to work out every weekday morning at 6:30, keeping track of their progress on a spreadsheet named for that first month, November.

Then, for reasons neither can quite remember, they sent out a tweet to see if anyone would join in. Two people became three, and a movement was born. When the Boston tribe reached 300 people, Graham and Mandaric got matching tattoos.

In the past few years, fitness has developed into some­thing of a social identity — at least among plugged-in, upper-middle-class, roughly millennial-age urbanites.

It was a powerful turning point for Graham. During his sophomore year at Northeastern University, he was charged with assaulting a rival college rower. Though the charge was dropped in exchange for community service, he lost his scholarship and was kicked out of school. The experience shaped Grahams views on community and inclusion. Got a bad rap? I dont care, he wrote in the movements official history. Are you at November Project to be kind, work your ass off, and start your day right? Then thats all that matters.

As Stine is telling me how much she loves November Projects instant community, we find who were looking for. Unmistakably silhouetted against the foggy morning sky, about 40 people stand in a lopsided semicircle, arms crossed, heads bowed against the wind. They could be praying.

A woman in striped leggings and a North Face trucker hat climbs onto a park bench. Good morning! says Laura McCloskey, the San Francisco tribe leader, in a stage whisper. Were going to do a workout that I just came up with! I want everyone to break into groups of four! Find your four! Try to group up with someone you dont normally pair with!

Jake Stangel

Before we start, she asks if today is anyones first time. A few people raise their hands. I, not quite ready to give up my anonymity, do not. The newbies are directed to state where they come from, how they got here, and whether theyre single. A version of this happens at every November Project meetup, one of the traditions borrowed from Graham and Mandarics original Boston tribealong with chants, stair laps, a rallying move called the bounce, and, of course, physical affection. People come looking for a sense of belonging, Mandaric says. We foster that.

The same thing goes for November Projects other tactics for promoting inclusiveness. Hashtags are essential follow November Project on Twitter and youll see a lot of #hills­forbreakfast, #sleepwhenyouredead, and #justshow­up. Members usually don highlighter-colored sportswear, stenciled and spray-painted with the logo #grassrootsgear. The result is a group of people who look alike, sound alike, and hug alike.

Toward the end of our workout, a man in my squat group finally discovers that I didnt announce myself as a new member. Were going to fix this, he says with a grin. He outs me to McCloskey, who has me wave to everyone during the group photo (another ritual) and apologize for not making my presence known. Eventually, everyone becomes part of the tribe.

Jake Stangel

In Graham and Mandarics crew days, their coach had a policy: If anyone missed practice, the whole team had to do dry-land workouts. It worked because nobody wanted to let the group down. When they started November Project, they knew theyd need a similar system for keeping people accountable to the tribe.

I feel a tiny bit of thisan expectation that no one is above the groupwhen Im teased for not introducing myself. But thats nothing compared to what happens to someone who doesnt show up for a workout. For that, November Project has perfected a bizarre, more 21st-century form of establishing accountability: online shaming. This is known as We Missed You.

From November Projects website: If you decided that staying in bed was a better option than working out with your friends (who you promised that youll be there) then your face will be featured here.

Members usually don highlighter-colored sports­wear, stenciled and spray-painted with the logo #grassrootsgear.

By face, they mean embarrassing photos lifted from the shamed members Facebook profile or supplied by friends. Posts go on to explain that this person committed to attending a workoutmade a #verbal, in tribe-speakbut reneged. Screenshots of text messages and emails confirming said #verbal are posted, along with guesses as to why the absentee might have failed to show upanything from you must have gotten too drunk the night before to perhaps you were lost on a Segway tour. Its an elaborate expression of profound disappointment in the offending person, and there are hundreds of examples on the website.

Paddy OLeary, a member of the San Francisco tribe, remembers when he skipped a workout in 2013. A fellow member made him a We Missed You video; he hasnt missed a workout since. Other victims confirm the tactics effectiveness. You look like an idiot for sleeping in when everyone else is having an amazing time, says Holly Richardson, also in San Francisco. Its not worth it.

McCloskey makes no apologies for the policy. November Project is successful because it relies on word of mouth and accountability, she says. If I tell you that I will meet you at the corner of Market and Sanchez to run to November Project, come rain, snow, or dinosaurs, I will be there. In the event that someone sends one of those pathetic just cant do it texts at 5:55 am, we have the right to roast them. And roast we do.

Jake Stangel

Heres the fundamental thing about shaming: According to behavioral psychologists, its not supposed to work. Sure, it might force someone to make a change in the momentcontestants on The Biggest Loser shedding pounds before a national audience, for instancebut the effects dont always last. When your goals, attitudes, or values are shaped by external motivators, its unlikely youll stay satisfied or committed for long.

This is certainly true when it comes to working out. For decades, experts in behavior modification have tried to get people to commit to exercise. So far, nothing has worked, says Jack Raglin, a professor of kinesiology at Indiana University. It doesnt matter if youre paid to exercise, if youve paid to exercise, if you might die from lack of exercisemost people just dont stick it out.

Yet theres an undeniable element of shaming to this latest generation of exercise fads. It may have started with fitness trackers, which made people more aware of their activity levels in relation to othersreach 10,000 steps or your coworkers will know youre a slob. From there, programs began capitalizing on group pressure. In Orangetheory workouts, your calorie burn and heart rate are displayed on a screen. CrossFit posts scores as well, believing it encourages people to push harderand now its in 13,000 affiliated gyms worldwide.

But this motivation strategy, researchers like Raglin and Teixeira suggest, could be as doomed as any other. You may initially want to impress your peers or get your moneys worth, but those considerations rarely lead to true behavior change. If the standard adherence rate for exercise holds, Raglin says, half the people will stop showing up to these classes within a year.

Youd think this would apply to November Project too. After all, the threat of We Missed You is external. But there are some differences. November Project members are not paying anything to be there, the goals arent about burning the most caloriesyet people show up anyway. And many of them have been at this for years, without ever missing a single workout. Its clearly working for some people.

Jake Stangel

True motivation, Teixeira says, takes something extra, something intrinsic. If members of a group think they are gaining useful skills, feel personally valued, and perceive that they have control over their actions, they are more likely to fully commit. Teixeira believes November Project gives you a bit of all these things. And indeed, everyone I talk to seems like a lifer. But then again, I only talk to people who are there. The one real data point we have is that November Project continues to expand. A recent partnership with the North Face aims to help grow the movement.

Jennifer Hurst, an associate professor of health and exercise science at Truman State University, suggests November Project may be succeeding at pulling off a rare thing: positive shaming. It only works when the person truly cares what the shamers think, she says. The desire for social connectedness and the positive feeling some get from the environment must be worth the time, energy, and sacrifice. That explains why the rituals, cultlike as they seem, are so crucial. You dont want to disappoint people you hug, not to mention chant and bounce and dance with.

A number of years ago, Raglin and his colleagues found that married adults who enrolled in a recreational fitness program together had an average adherence rate of over 90 percent, compared to just 50 percent for those who enrolled on their own. The married pair didnt necessarily exercise together or even in the same room, Raglin says. They simply came and left together. Yet the social benefit was quite profound.

That may also help explain November Projects success. Members might not be married to each other, but theyre married to the group. And the group is what holds November Project together.

Jake Stangel

It turns out some November Project members actually are married to each other. At one of my workouts, a young couple tells me they met in the Boston tribe. The movement encourages this sort of thingleaders are expected to host mixers and speed-dating events. The phrase There will be babies appears on the blog and in promo material.

Yes, its all a bit creepy, and I dont blame passersby who look at us funny (there are many of them). And no matter how many times Im told that We Missed You is not about shaming, its about love, I wont be entirely convinced. But you cant deny the smile on these peoples faces. Nobody looks like that when theyre huffing it alone on a treadmill in their garage. I wont be heading up a November Project tribe back home in Santa Fe, but if one comes to my town, I wouldnt say no to a few hugs.

With dawn creeping over the edges of the city, we put our arms around each other and start to bounce. Yall good? someone says, in signature November Project whisper-shout. Fuck yeah! the group whispers back.

Surprising myself just a little, I say it too.

Meaghen Brown (@meaghenbrown) is a freelance journalist based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the former online fitness editor for Outside.

This article appears in the July 2016 issue.

Read more: http://www.wired.com/

[vitalmindandbody]

Zadie Smith: dance assignments for columnists

From Fred Astaires elegance to Beyoncs power, Zadie Smith is inspired by dancers as much she is by other writers

The connection between writing and dancing has been often on my brain recently: its a path I want to keep open. It feels a little ignored to report to, say, the relationship between music and prose maybe because there is something counter-intuitive about it. But for me the two forms are close to each other: I feel dance has something to tell me about what I do.

One of “the worlds largest” solid patches of writing advice I know is in fact intended for dancers you can find it in the choreographer Martha Grahams biography. But it loosens me in front of my laptop the same room I reckon it might induce a young dancer to breathe deeply and wiggle their paws and toes. Graham writes: There is a vitality, a life force, an intensity, a quicken that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of day, this show is unique. And if you impede it, it will never subsist through any other medium and it will be lost. The nature will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how precious nor how it compares with other formulations. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the canal open.

What can an prowes of words take from the artwork that needs none? Yet I often contemplate Ive learned just as much from watching dancers as I have from reading. Dance readings for writers: lessons of orientation, outlook, lilt and form, some of them obvious, some indirect. What follows got a few memoranda towards that idea.

Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire

Alamy; The Life Picture Collection/ Getty Images. Crown: Getty Images

Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly

Fred Astaire represent the gentry when he dances, claimed Gene Kelly, in old age, and I represent the proletariat. The separation is immediately satisfying, although it was a little harder to say why. Towering, thin and elegant, versus muscular and sporting is the fact that it? Theres the obvious stuff of silk hat and tails versus T-shirt and slacks. But Fred sometimes wore T-shirts and slacks, and was not actually that towering, this is the only way held as if “hes been”, and when moving always appeared heightened, to be gliding across whichever skin-deep: the storey, the ceiling, an ice rink, a bandstand. Genes centre of gravity was far lower: he stoops his knees, he hunkers down. Kelly is floored, securely planted, where Astaire is untethered, free-floating.

Likewise, the aristocrat and the proletariat have different relations to the field beneath their feet, the first moving fluidly across the surface of the world, the second specifically tethered to a certain smudge: a city block, a village, a factory, a stretching of plains. Cyd Charisse claimed her husband always knew which of these dancers shed been working with by looking at their own bodies at the end of the day: bruised everywhere if it was Kelly , not a blemish if it was Astaire. Not only aloof when it came to the field, Astaire was aloof around other publics figures. Through 15 times and 10 movies, its difficult to detect a few moments of real sex strain between Fred and his Ginger. They have enormous unison but little hot. Now think of Kelly with Cyd Charisse in the fantasy sequence of Singin in the Rain! And maybe this is one of the advantages of earthiness: sex.

When I write I find theres generally a choice to be made between the grounded and the float. The ground I am thinking of in this case is communication as we meet it in its commonsense mode. The communication of the television, of the supermarket, of the advert, the newspaper, the governmental forces, the daily public discussion. Some columnists like to walk this sand, recreate it, violate fragments of it off and use it to their advantage, where others scarcely recognise its existence. Nabokov a literal aristocrat as well as an aesthetic one barely ever applied a toe upon it. His language is literary, far from what we think up as our shared linguistic home.

One argument in defence of such literary speech might be the style it acknowledges its own artificiality. Commonsense language meanwhile claims to be plain and natural, conversational, but is often as erected as asphalt, dreamed up in ad business or in the heart of government sometimes both at the same epoch. Simultaneously nostalgic and coercive.( The Peoples Princess. The Big Society. Make America Great Again .) Commonsense language claims to take its result from the behavior people naturally express, but any columnist who truly attends to the practice parties address will shortly find himself categorised as a distinctive stylist or satirist or experimentalist. Beckett was like this, and the American columnist George Saunders is a good contemporary sample.( In dance, the illustration that comes to my attention is Bill Bojangles Robinson, whose occasion was tapping up and down the stairs. What could be more normal, more folksy, more grounded and everyday than tapping up and down some stairs? But his signature stagecoach procedure concerned a staircase pressed right up against another staircase a stairway to itself and so up and down he would tap, up and down, down and up, entirely surreal, like an Escher magazine come to life .)

Astaire is clearly not an experimental dancer like Twyla Tharp or Pina Bausch, but “he il be” surreal within the meaning of surpassing the real. He is transcendent. When he dances a few questions proposes itself: what if a organization moved like this through the world? But it is only a rhetorical, fantastical query, for no figures move like Astaire , no, we only move like him in our dreams.

By contrast, I have appreciated French boys run up the steps of the High-pitched Line in New York to take a photo of the opinion, their backsides working just like Gene Kellys in On The Town, and I have accompanied black girls on the A train swing round the pole on their way out of the slither openings Kelly again, hanging from that eternal lamppost. Kelly paraphrased the cliche where reference is danced, and he reminds us in turn of the goodnes we do sometimes possess ourselves. He is the incarnation of our mass in their youth, at their most liquor and potent, or whenever our natural aptitudes compound ideally with our hard-earned skills. He is a demonstration of how the prosaic can become poetic, if we work hard enough. But Astaire, where reference is dances, has nothing to do with hard work( although we know, from profiles, that he worked very hard, behind the scenes ). He is poetry in motion. His crusades are so collected from ours that he adjusts a limit on our own aspirations. Nothing hopes or expects to dance like Astaire, just as nobody really expects to write like Nabokov.

Harold and Fayard Nichols

Getty

Harold and Fayard Nicholas

Writing, like dancing, is only one of the arts available to people who have nothing. For 10 and sixpence, advises Virginia Woolf, one can buy article enough to write all the plays of Shakespeare. The only absolutely necessary paraphernalium in dance is your own form. Some of the greatest dancers have come from the lowliest backgrounds. With numerous black dancers this has come with the complication of representing your hasten. You are on a stage, in front of your people and other parties. What look will you show them? Will you be your soul? The very best soul? A representation? A typify?

The Nicholas brothers were not street teenagers the latter are the family of college-educated musicians but they were never formally trained in dance. They learned watching their parents and their parents peers performing on the chitlin route, as pitch-black vaudeville was then announced. Later, when they entered the movies, their executions were generally filmed in this way as to be non-essential to the storey, so that when these films played in the south their dazzling strings “couldve been” snipped out without doing any harm to the soundnes of the plan. Genius contained, genius ring-fenced. But also genius undeniable.

My talent was the weapon, bickered Sammy Davis Jr, the supremacy, the way for me to fight. It was the one method I might hope to affect a mans supposing. Davis was another chitlin hoofer, initially, and from straitened situations. His logic here is very familiar: it is something of an article of faith within the kinds of houses who have few other resources. A mother tells their own children to be twice as good, she tells them to be irrefutable. My baby used to say something like it to me. And when I watch the Nicholas brethren I think of that stressful rule: be twice as good.

The Nicholas brethren were numerous, many importances better than anybody else. They were better than anyone has a right or need to be. Fred Astaire called their routine in Stormy Weather the greatest sample of cinematic dance he ever sight. They are progressing down a monstrous staircase doing the splits as if the divides is the commonsense mode to get somewhere. They are impeccably garmented. They are more than representing they are excelling.

But I always thoughts I recognize a little difference between Harold and Fayard, and it interests me; I take it as a kind of exercise. Fayard seems to me more concerned with this responsibility of representation when he dances: he looks the fraction, he is the part, his propriety unassailable. He is formal, contained, technically indisputable: a recognition to the race. But Harold sacrifices himself over to rejoice. His hair is his tell: as he dances it slackens itself from the slather of Brylcreem he always put on it, the ebullient afro scroll springs out, he doesnt even try to clean it back. Between propriety and rejoice, choose joy.

Prince& Micheal Jackson

Redferns; Sygma via Getty Images

Michael Jackson and Prince

On YouTube you will find them, locked in numerous dance-offs, and so you are presented with a striking choice. But its not a question of grades of ability, of “whos” the greater dancer. The choice is between two entirely opposite evaluates: legibility on the one handwriting, temporality on the other. Between a tombstone( Jackson) and a kind of mirage( Prince ).

But both men were good dancers. Putting aside the difference in meridian, physically they had many similarities. Atrociously slight, long necked, thin-legged, powered from the torso rather than the backside, which in both cases was improbably small-time. And to its implementation of influence they were of course evenly indebted to James Brown. The divides, the increases from the divides, the gyration, the glide, the knee bend, the jerk of the thought all stolen from the same source.

Yet Prince and Jackson are nothing alike when they dance, and its very hard to bring to psyche Prince dancing, whereas it is practically impossible to forget Jackson. It chimes absurd, but try it for yourself. Sovereign moves , no matter how many times you may have mentioned them, had not yet been house inscription in recall; they never seem quite secured or saved. If person asks you to dance like Prince, what will you do? Spin, possibly, and do the splits, if youre capable. But there wont appear to be anything specially Prince-like about that. Its strange. How are you able dance and dance, in front of millions of people, for years, and still seem like trade secrets merely I know?( And isnt it the occasion that to be a Prince fan is to feel that Prince was your secret alone ?)

I never went to see Michael Jackson, but I received Prince half a dozen occasions. I pictured him in stadiums with thousands of people, so have a rational recognizing also that he was in no sense my secret, that he was in fact a celebrity. But I still say his proves were illegible, private, like the performance of a soul in the middle of a area at a house party. It was the greatest happen “youve been” imagine and hitherto its greatness was confined to the moment in which it was happening.

Jackson was precisely the opposite. Every move he made was perfectly legible, public, endlessly reproduced and copyable, like a meme before the word dwelt. He made in likeness, and across age. He deliberately sketched and then observed once more the edges around each move, like a policeman drawing a chalk front round a organization. Deposit his neck forward if he was moving backwards. Cut his trousers short so you could read his ankles. Grabbed his groin so you could better understand its gyrations. Gloved one hand so you might attend to its rhythmic genius, the road it interrupted everything, like an utterance mark.

Towards the end, his strange stagewear is more and more tasked with this job of sketch and mark. It looked like a formation of armor, the aim of which was to define each element of his person so no crusade of it would legislate unnoted. His arms and legs multiply buckled a literal visualisation of his flexible joints and a metal waistband passing turn left in communities across his breastplate, accenting the transformation of his shoulders along this diagonal. A heavyweights region accentuated slender hips and partitioned the torso from the legs, so you observed when the top and foot half of their own bodies gathered in opposite directions. Finally a silver thong, rendering his eloquent groin as clear as if it were in ALL CAPS. It wasnt subtle, there was no subtext, but it was clearly legible. Beings will be dancing like Michael Jackson until the end of time.

But Prince, treasured, elusive Monarch, well, there lays one whose epithet was writ in liquid. And from Prince a writer might take the lesson that elusiveness can own a deeper glamour than the legible. In “the worlds” of words, we have Keats to remind us of this, and to express what a long afterlife an elusive master can have, even when targeted beside as clearly depicted a illustration as Lord Byron. Prince represent the inspiration of the moment, like an ode composed to captivate a happen agitation. And when the mood changes, he changes with it: another good lesson.

Theres no impunity in being a gravestone. Better to be the person still jamming in the wee hours of the house party, and though everybody films it on their telephones no one proves quite able to captivate the essence of it. And now hes disappeared, having escaped us one more time. I dont claim Princes epitome wont last-place as long as Jacksons. I exclusively say that in our brains it will never be as distinct.

Janet Jackson Madonna Beyonce

Michel Linssen/ Redferns/ Getty; Dave Hogan/ Getty; Matt Slocum/ AP

Janet Jackson/ Madonna/ Beyonc

These three dont only invite emulates they challenge them. They go further than legibility into proscription. They conduct infantries, and we join them. We are like those uniformed dancers moving in military constitution behind them, an anonymous force whose responsibility it is to mimic precise the gesticulates of their general.

This was realise literal on Beyoncs Formation tour lately, when the general heightened her fucking arm like a shotgun, drew the provoke with her left and the racket of gunshot resound out. There is nothing insinuate about these sorts of dancing: like the military forces, it operates as a anatomy of franchise, whereby a decree opinion America, Beyonc is presided over by many cells that span “the worlds”. Maybe it is for this reason that much of the crowd I ascertained at Wembley could be found, for long periods , not facing in the direction of the stage at all, instead turning to their friends and collaborators. They didnt need to watch Beyonc any more than soldiers need to look fixedly at the flag to perform their duties. Our ruler was up there somewhere dancing but the idea of her had already been internalised. Pals from the gym sat in curves and spouted their fists, girlfriends from hen nights made inwards and did Beyonc to each other, and boys from the Beyhive hollered every word into each others faces. They could have done the same at home, but this was a public display of allegiance.

Janet Jackson knocked off this curious phenomenon, Madonna persisted it, Beyonc is its apex. Here dancing is intended as a demonstration of the girl will, a concrete articulation of its reach and possibilities. The exercise is quite evident. My body obeys me. My dancers obey me. Now you will obey me. And then everybody in the crowd thoughts being obeyed like Bey a delightful imagining.

Lady scribes who induce similar passion( in far smaller gatherings ): Muriel Spark, Joan Didion, Jane Austen. Such writers offer the same essential qualities( or apparitions ): total controller( over their structure) and no democracy( for the reader ). Compare and contrast, say, Jean Rhys or Octavia Butler, dame novelists often adored but rarely replica. Theres too much freedom in their own homes. Meanwhile every convict of Didions says: obey me! Who moves the world? Girls!

David Byrne

Rex/ Shutterstock

David Byrne and David Bowie

The art of not dancing a vital exercise. Sometimes it is essential to be awkward, uncouth, jerking, to be neither lyrical nor banal, to be positively bad. To carry other the chances of mass, alternative appreciates, to stop making sense. Its interested in me that both sets of creators did their worst dancing to their blackest sections. Take me to the river, sings Byrne, in square trousers 20 epoches too large, looking down at his yanking hips as if they belong to someone else. This music is not excavation, his trousers say, and his motions going any further: maybe this mas isnt mine, either. At the end of this stratum of logic lies a liberating contemplate: perhaps none genuinely owns anything.

People can be too precious about their patrimony, about their tradition columnists especially. Preservation and protection have their place but they shouldnt stymie either liberty or fraud. All possible aesthetic expressions are available to all peoples under the clue of adoration. Bowie and Byrnes obvious love for what was not theirs brings out new slants in familiar seems. It hadnt occurred to me before realizing these men dance that all individuals might choose, for example, to match the arc of a drum drum with anything but the matching curving shift of their own bodies, that is, with harmony and hot. But it is about to change you are eligible to balk: throw up a strange slant and unexpectedly spasm, like Bowie, or wonder if thats truly your own forearm, like Byrne.

I think of young Luther Vandross, singing backup a few feet behind Bowie, during Young Americans, watching Bowie flail and beat. I wonder what his take over all that was. Did he ever suppose: Now, what in the world is he doing? But a few conducts in, it was clear to everybody. Here was something different. Something old-fashioned, and yet new.

Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov

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Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov

When you face an audience, which direction will you turn? Inwards or outwards? Or some compounding of the two? Nureyev, so fierce and neurotic, so vulnerable, so beautiful like a deer unexpectedly caught in our headlamps is faced resolutely inwards. You cant take your eyes off him, as people like to say, but at the same meter he is almost excruciating to watch. We detect we might smash him, that he might crumble or explosion. He never does, but still, whenever he leaps you feel the possibility of setting up total disaster, as you do with certain high-strung athletes no matter how many times they range or leap or dive. With Nureyev you are an onlooker, you are a person who has been granted the largest honour of being present while Nureyev dances. I dont make this sarcastically: it is an honour to watch Nureyev, even in these grainy old-time videos on YouTube. Hes a kind of miracle, and is fully cognisant of this when he dances, and what did you do today to authorize an gathering with a miracle?( See likewise: Dostoevsky .)

With Baryshnikov, I have no anxieties of natural disasters. He is an outward-facing creator, he seeks to please me and he supersedes altogether. His look dances as much as his arms and legs.( Nureyevs face, meanwhile, is permanently lost in transcendent find .) Sometimes Baryshnikov wants to delight me so much better blaze even try tap dancing with Liza Minnelli, risking the sneer of the purists.( I am not a purist. I am delighted !) He is a charmer, an entertainer, he is comic, stunning, cerebral, a clown whatever you need him to be. Baryshnikov is both adoring and affection. He has high and low modes, tough and soft constitutes, but hes ever facing outwards, to us, his audience.( See also: Tolstoy .)

Once I filled Baryshnikov over a New York dinner table: I was so star-struck I could hardly pronounce. Lastly I asked him: Did you ever gratify Fred Astaire? He smiled. He said: Yes, once, at a dinner. I was very star-struck, I hardly addrest. But I watched his hands all the time, they were like a lesson in themselves so elegant!

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