Linsey DuncanDancing life
September 7th 2008 15:58
I'm a viewer removed in both space and time yet the cinematic mastery dissolves my own reality. It's just such a lighthearted and inspired feeling to allow the camera to become my eyes and sweep me up as Cyd Charisse is swept up into Gene Kelly's arms.
But then my hand reaches out and is stopped by glass or a noise outside the screen reawakens me to physical reality and I feel paralysed and disillusioned. My eyes are my own again. detatched from the images on the screen by 2008 space.
They just don't make films quite like that any more, films that are fantasies you can get lost in. Something about the modern approach is too self aware to ever allow me to let go.
the camera dances with the stars and carries me away leaving me buzzing to physically move and with an intense and unsatiable craving to be them. Such as I am suffering from now. An intense desire to be Cyd Charisse that has catapaulted me into harried google searches for dancing schools. But a few dance steps are a clumsy taste of the immersion I long to experience in the grace and effortless cool of a femme fatale. My eyes are mesmerised by the vibrant colour of the costumes and my female gaze regards her physical perfection with a desire to be or be like much different from the male desire to have.
The layers or reality and gaze fascinate me.
From a modern perspective I look at a dancer centred in an era dominated by the male gaze. The camera is obviously from a male perspective as it represents gene kelly's eyes running up her exceedingly long leg. She is most probably choreographed by a male choreographer. yet her presence disallows any of this from objectifying her as she commands that gaze and controls it.
The men always end up at her feet and while a male might seem to steal that power at the end of a scene by magnetising her gaze to a diamond necklace and leading her off screen the diamonds are like a metaphor for her power, the sparkle in her eyes is reflected in them. It is a defiant sparkle. Although the man seems to be in possession of the diamond or the girl he never has any control over the sparkle or the fire of their spirit. The impression that has made is so strong that it transcends her exiting the scene. Her absence is felt keenly, She is searched for by audience and Gene Kelly in scenes to come.
You only feel apeased when she shows up again and though the most beautiful dance seems as Kelly's dream with her in white, the camera framing them from afar and creating the space of imagination for them to command. That she is his dream demonstrates how she has filled his mind and she commands it in the way she commands the stage.
She may be dancing as part of a show or to tell a story but she is never dancing as a puppet. There is always some extra element that transcends story or character, Dancing to express herself for herself.
This that makes me passionately certain that to be able to dance is to have access to a level of existance and self expression that non dancers are denied. They are able to fully inhabit themselves. The music stretching their spirit through everypart of their body so that even decades removed their moment of life recorded on camera can reach out from the screen. It transcends ageing and their death. And it makes me desperate to find some way to inhabit my own life before it has faded never truly used. To no longer be the audience but the dancer.
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