What Dance Teaches Us About Connection, Care, and Compassion | Jingqiu Guan | TEDxDuke

Key Concepts:

• Embodied knowing: Understanding through physical experience and movement.
• Intergenerational dialogue: Communication and understanding between different generations through movement.
• Intercultural dialogue: Communication and understanding between different cultures through movement.
• Movement and memory: The connection between physical actions and the recall of past experiences.
• Corporeal level: Relating to the body.
• Trauma transmutation: Transforming traumatic experiences into positive emotions like love, care, and resilience.

1. Introduction: Movement and Experience

• Gin Chwan, a dancer, choreographer, filmmaker, and Duke University professor, begins by inviting the audience to participate in an experiment: pretending to comb or brush their hair.
• The purpose is to demonstrate how even seemingly insignificant movements are influenced by our experiences and bodily memories.
• Teaching the gesture to another person can provide a glimpse into their experience and teach us something about them.
• Our movement reveals much about our past, culture, and communities.

2. Dance as Embodied Knowing

• Many students view dance as physical exercise and artistic expression, but Chwan argues it's more than that.
• She proposes that dance is an embodied way of knowing ourselves and others.
• Moving with another person can be key to building a more caring and compassionate world.
• She will share three examples to illustrate dance's potential beyond exercise and artistic expression.

3. Intergenerational Dialogue: Dancing with Family

• Dance Film with Father: In 2019, Chwan visited her family in Chandu, China, and created a dance film to explore conflicting values.
• Instead of a formal interview, she proposed a shared dance experience with her father, which was unconventional due to cultural norms of physical reserve.
• A long red ribbon connected them, and their movements created a tangled representation of knowledge transmission and cultural inheritance.
• The dance activated her father's memory, deepened their connection, and built trust, leading to a more open interview.
• Dancing with Son: Chwan also enjoys dancing with her children, responding to their spontaneous movements.
• In her dance film "First Dance," she mimicked her one-year-old son Jaden's eating of noodles, responding to his movement impulses.
• Dancing together allows for intimate intergenerational dialogue, transcending boundaries.

4. Movement, Memory, and Trauma: "The Weight of Sugar"

• Chwan directed a dance film, "The Weight of Sugar," in collaboration with black queer choreographer and activist Bernard Brown.
• The protagonist, Nana, repeatedly falls into a pool of water and rises, embodying the physical and psychological pain and intergenerational trauma carried by black women.
• During filming, Leila's grandmother, observing, began recounting her own experiences with racial discrimination in Los Angeles.
• Leila's weighted motion activated her grandmother's memory, which in turn provided vivid visual reference for Leila's performance.
• In the last take, Leila wept, overwhelmed by emotions. The other dancers, all women of color, rushed to help her.
• This spontaneous emotional moment arose from the mutual activation and interplay between movement and memory.
• Time became still, collapsing past and present, allowing the dancers to hold the memories of trauma together and transmute it into love, care, and resilience.
• Sometimes, stillness and simply sharing space can convey profound movement and bodily dialogue.

5. Intercultural Dialogue: "What is War?"

• Chwan shares an example to dismantle the misconception that one must be a trained dancer to access deep interpersonal connection through movement.
• In a dance residency in Colorado, Japanese artist Ako Otaki and Chinese choreographer Wii created "What is War?"
• The work recounts their memories of the Sino-Japanese War and its impact on their families, challenging the official narrative.
• Aiko walked towards a projected image of a statue of comfort women in Naning (women forced into sex slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II).
• Aiko removed her clothes to display her ultimate humiliation and empathy towards these women.
• Standing in stillness, Aiko's bare back became the projection screen, displaying the statue as if she were carrying the weight of their suffering.
• Wi covered Aiko's exposed back with a robe, showing respect for the Japanese woman's expression of repentance.
• Their simple interaction gestures towards healing and melts down national borders.
• Intercultural dialogue on a corporeal level doesn't always require complex choreography; simple gestures performed with sincerity can open a doorway for engaging with painful histories and allowing dialogues for peace.

6. Conclusion: Embodied Dialogue and a Caring World

• Being in motion with another person offers an alternative way of knowing that requires presence, suspending judgment, and active listening on the level of the body.
• Through dancing together as a mode of embodied dialogue, we share our history and experience while being open to receiving another person on a bodily level.
• Dancing together in the absence of words as abstraction for knowledge and ideas.
• We get to open up imagination and bring our awareness from the level of our mind to the level of our body, from thinking and analyzing to being and experiencing.
• Dance teaches us that a more caring and compassionate world is obtainable, beginning from our interpersonal connection one dance at a time.
• Chwan concludes by suggesting that instead of conversation, we might ask, "Shall we dance together?"

Main Takeaways:

Gin Chwan's presentation emphasizes the power of dance as a means of embodied knowing, intergenerational and intercultural dialogue, and trauma transmutation. Through specific examples, she demonstrates how movement can activate memory, build trust, and foster empathy, ultimately contributing to a more caring and compassionate world. The key is to be present, suspend judgment, and listen actively on a bodily level, recognizing that even simple gestures and stillness can convey profound meaning.