Visual Storytelling

Today I'd like to share with you a paper that my daughter wrote about her feelings on dance and it's unique language.  Her professor wanted to make sure that she shared her paper with me.  Read on, and you will see why:

Dance: Visual Storytelling                                                                                by Kara Lam

When most people think of language, they typically picture reading, writing, or speaking.  However, when I think of language, I think of dance.  Dancing allows you to tell stories by using motion and emotion rather than words.  It is a language of its own.  I have been immersed in the culture of dance for seventeen years now, so I have had a very long time to adapt to its unique literacy.  Many people do not realize that the dance industry is its own community.  I do not know where I would be today if I had not been a part of its discourse community.  Dance has inadvertently shaped me into the reader and writer I am today.

When I was just three years old, my mother enrolled me in dance lessons because I was very shy.  She wanted me to be exposed to a different type of environment.  For the first month of lessons, I was so painfully shy that I could not adapt to the environment on my own.  Thus, my mother had to actually take the class with me for the entire month.  However, after that month I began to develop a basic understanding of the procedure and structure of a dance class.  Little did I know that I would eventually fall in love with the art form and understand it in ways most people would not even think about.

It wasn’t until junior high that I actually began to comprehend exactly how dance really was its own community.  Before then, I was only taking recreational dance lessons once a week.  While I was part of the dance community, it was more of just a hobby for me.  Because of my age, the routines I performed at my recitals were basically just steps to music.  Then, in the sixth grade, I auditioned for my first competitive dance team.  During my time being a part of a dance team, I was spending more hours practicing.  I was also exposed to new styles of dance during these extra hours of practice.  I soon realized that dance was so much more than just steps to music.  I was astonished when I learned that the way I performed could evoke some type of emotion in my audience.

Because of dance, as a writer I am capable of choosing words that flow together.  I find that transitioning between my ideas comes naturally to me.  As a dancer, you have to understand how to transition between each move to make your performance seem effortless to your audience.  Every step counts in dancing as much as every word counts in writing, and transitions help to make your story flow even when they are only being seen and not written.  In addition to transitioning, dancing has also helped me to pay attention to detail in my writing.  When I dance, my audience is judging every aspect of my performance.  If I have errors in technique or lack of emotion, the audience will pick up on it and not be as involved or interested in the story I am trying to tell.  This has helped me use more detail within my writing because I want my reader to be able to picture what I am writing about.

The literacy I have adapted to from dance has also helped me to become a better reader.  As a reader, I am able to actually have a visual image in my head of how I would picture what is happening in a particular story almost instantly.  This is because I have been so exposed to performing and watching dance.  It has basically trained my brain to interpret everything in a visual manner.  Being able to take my audience on some type of emotional journey during a performance is crucial to a successful performance.  My personal goal when I dance is to leave the audience wanting more.  I am able to apply the same knowledge when I read.  I want to be able to be taken on an emotional journey when I am reading, which will make me want to read more at the end of the story.

Overall, I am a better reader and writer because of being able to be a part of dance as a discourse community.  Being able to physically take part in many stories through dance has helped me be able to understand literacy and actually become more literate.  It has allowed me to approach my reading and writing differently and it has also broadened by knowledge.  Dance is basically just a visual aid for me in my understanding of literacy.  Without it, I cannot imagine what the last seventeen years of my life would have been like.