"Never give a sword to a man who can't dance" Confucius
"Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf." Rabindranath Tagore
"There's just something about dance. It's like a primal thing in all of us." Patrick Swayze
Friedrich Nietzsche, the 19C philosopher, said he would only believe in a God who could dance. (How could anyone question his faith?!) And we have to agree with Dirty Dancing legend Swayze when he describes it as a 'primal thing'. The earliest instance of dance in art is from 15,000 BC in a cave in Addaura, Sicily, where drawings of a ritual dance were found. In the 19th Century, ballet dancers and stars of music halls and the bordellos were the muses of Edward Degas, Henri Matisse and Toulouse Lautrec. The modern equivalent are lap dancers, burlesque artistes and Tango and Flamenco queens - all popular subjects in the London Art community.
Charles Willmott pays homage to the sexuality of striptease divas Vienna Le Rouge and Dita Von Teese, painting them adoringly on velvet canvas with hand-torn edges. Peter Truran and Richard Young capture the passion, magnetism and flow of Tango (see 'Emocion 2', 'Touch 2', 'Un Momento Intenso del Flamenco' and 'Tranquil Preparation'), while Steven Lynch takes it onto the streets in his brilliant 'Street Tango'. Ballet and classical dance has not lost its fascination (see 'Swan Maidens' by Richard Young and Trisha Lambi's 'Rhapsody'). But our top picks this week are 'A Dance to the Music of Time', a celebration of physical jerks by Len Hollman, and Gabriel Bodnariu's striking 'Crossing 6.' | |
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