On the first day of Springback Academy, my fellow Springbacker Amit Noy said something along the lines of dance writing being about ‘finding words to talk about a form that resists them’. It stayed with me. Movement resists language. It lives in the body, in time, in air, in friction and weight and sweat and silence. It evades permanence. And yet, we – writers – persist in trying to pin it down and make it mean something. We live in language. We need it. But what does it mean to write about something that lives elsewhere? Something that vanishes even as we try to capture it?
Later, Springback Magazine editor Sanjoy Roy added a further layer. He reminded us that we shouldn’t rely too heavily on programme notes – a piece of advice I’m not sure whether I agree with – those narratives that tell us what we’re supposed to think we’re seeing. Instead, we should witness. Attend. Notice what is. The materiality of bodies. The texture of space. The rhythms across a room. The shifts in atmosphere that change everything. Sanjoy emphasised that writing about dance is not about translating intent, but about testifying to experience. Not the ‘why’ but the what. Not the idea, but the residue it leaves behind.
And so, I find myself circling questions I cannot resolve:
- How can writers become connectors between objects and readers, between the seen and the said?
- How do we loosen our grip on authorship and allow ourselves to be mediums, rather than interpreters?
- How do we write the thing before language climbs on top of it?
- We talk so often of embodiment, of presence – words that are shiny and good-for-funding. But what do they mean in flesh? In practice?
- Do we use words to feel we’ve done something? To manage the discomfort of having experienced something real and messy and inexplicable?
- Is language our safety net? Do we write to feel in control?
Even with no answers to these questions, I continue to return to the page.
Because I am a writer. Or I want to be. Or I perform being one. And perhaps I enjoy the performance of writing as much as the writing itself.
The truth is, as writers, we always arrive late. The dance has already happened. What’s left is an aftermath: a mood, a shape, a blur, a trace. I try to find words not to contain dance, but to stay with what lingers. If I’m lucky something else emerges too. A kind of friction.
Perhaps that’s all I can offer: A space to witness. A space to dwell in the residue. A space for questions with no answers. And maybe I insist so much on words because I want to believe in what they can hold.
And sometimes – God help me – I believe them.