Critical Distance: An Outsider Inside

In the "Critical Distance" series, Sanjoy Roy, the editor of Springback Magazine, presents four pieces by writers of the magazine which look at various issues that continue to crop up in the world of dance writing. The first instalment was from Sanjoy, the second piece by performer Dom Czapski, the third by dance writer Lena Megyeri, and then this final instalment is from fellow Springback writer and author, Kaliane Bradley, looks at writing about dance as someone not connected to the dance world.

Kaliane Bradley is a writer and editor based in London. Her review bylines have appeared in Springback Magazine, Time Out, The Stage and The Observer. Her debut novel, The Ministry of Time (2024), was a Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller, a finalist for the Hugo Award and longlisted for the Women’s Prize, among other accolades. It will be made into a six-part series by A24 and the BBC.

There is no such thing as a grammatically correct dance piece.

Even as I put the full stop on that sentence, I question its veracity. Who am I to pontificate about the ‘correctness’ of a dance? If I accept – as I think I must – that individual gestures may have mimetic meaning, and a sequence of gestures or movements might work within a relational system to convey an intention, then I am surely accepting a grammar of dance; and if there is a discernible grammar, does it not follow that there is a dance equivalent of an incorrect sentence, e.g.: In this medium, I ain’t know nothing?

My background is in editing. Other people write or translate books, and I work with them on the text to make it more betterer. I know a shapely sentence when I see it; I can spot a deliberate misuse of standard English grammar – for humour, for example – and understand its intentions. I’m sensitive to the demands of character, atmosphere and narrative as they are conveyed, ultimately, by combinations of 26 characters and judicious use of punctuation.

I simply don’t have any equivalent expertise in the world of dance. When I first started out as a dance critic, fumbling my way from a mentorship at The Place in London – part of their Resolution dance festival, which showcases new choreography and encourages new critics – to the pages of the Europe-wide Springback Magazine, I was armed with a lot of enthusiasm and the eyes in my head.

I’d come to the medium because I’d been affected by dance. ‘Affected’ is a good word for it – I’d been profoundly emotionally moved by a dance performance, and those emotions had a corresponding physical effect. The body keeps the score, even though we didn’t ask it to do that. My body was in a state of nervous, baffled excitement after a particular dance performance. Being neither a dancer, nor a musician, nor an artist, I had only one viable outlet for the emotion: I wrote.

Writing about dance as someone with no ties to the dance world is a bit like trying to write in a language on which you only have the most tenuous grasp. Movement-based references to other dance pieces, to older styles, that reacted to older choreographies, would often fly over my head. Things I identified as unusual or confusing would often turn out to be deliberate stylistic quirks. Worse still, because I did have adolescent familiarity with classical ballet, I tried to ‘translate’ the contemporary dance I was seeing – which was limiting and blinkered.

In the end, I had to embrace being a stranger. If I didn’t understand the language of dance, then I had to make my own pidgin. Little by little, I moved towards – not perfect comprehension – nor academic exactness – but a freeing sense of fluent, if grammatically imperfect, communication. And it worked, because, unlike a printed text, the language of dance is in flux, changing from performance to performance, from audience to audience.

So, there is no such thing as a grammatically correct dance piece. But there is a language, and I feel as if I’m still finding much joy in getting betterer at it every time I see a new piece.

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