Origins and Originality

  

Fin de' Arabesque, Oil on Canvas, 1877, Edgar Degas

  At the start of the semester I remember walking in a couple minutes late to class and hearing Professor Sexson say "There is no such thing as originality". Now, as an Art History major, a photographer, and a former modern dance instructor, I took slight offense to this before he went onto explain that "originality" really means "going back to origins". At first, I didn't buy this notion entirely. In my head I remember spending hours and hours in the dance studio attempting to choreograph dances that had never been seen before. As the choreographer of many different dance routines, I allowed myself to think that I succeeded in experiencing true originality, but upon reflection I realized that was not the case. 

  Whenever I was creating a dance and could not think of where to take the piece, I would look up other contemporary dances on youtube for inspiration. This alone takes the "originality" away from my creations, but with a little more thought and research, I realized that the dances I was creating could be traced back to the mythological beginning of time. 

  The dances that I stumbled upon all used moves that could be traced back to Martha Graham (the mother of modern dance) and her seemingly innovative modern dance company and style. Even though Martha Graham was considered to be an innovator and visionary, she too, had her origins. Martha (like many girls) was most likely taught classical ballet in her youth, which has been preformed since the Italian Renaissance. This got me thinking... The word "renaissance"translates roughly into re-birth which brought up the Greek creation myth concerning the birth of the world. In the beginning (in ilo tempore) the Greek goddess Eurynome danced on the waves of Oceanus to create the world! Before this class I would have never realized just how mythological my daily action of choreographing really was.

  * On an intriguing note: Martha Graham's dance company preformed a three part dance program entitled Myth and Transformation.

Link: One of my dance pieces

Link: Scenes from Martha Graham's Myth and Trans.