Morally speaking/ Sexualisation in dance

     Do we lay out our own morals, or are our morals shaped mainly by the time and current society in which we live in? In order for us all to co-exist and work together I believe we all have to live under similar morals. But who decides those and which ones are right? 

    As art and dance tend to influence the society in which we live, I believe we have the power to lay out those morals, or put them in the face of our audience to lay out the truth. For everything that has the means to tell a story, the body cannot lie. 

If your movement is a natural response to how you feel and think, then you get a true communication between the dancer and audience, and that can be really really powerful.

 This quote by Janet Karin Oam on the podcast "Scidance" speaks wonders to me and I think sums up what I am striving for most, in not only my dance, but in life itself. 

In the first Module-1 Skype session on Monday we spoke about issues that arose in dance that also widened to issues within society. Such as knowing the difference of race and heritage, the impact of social media, and also something that personally affected me: the sexualisation within dance. An example which came up was that one teacher had experienced 7-8 year olds wanting to dance to very sexualised music and copy the dancing style in music videos. They also had Instagrams and TikToks where they uploaded their content for the world. This teacher was very disturbed. It seems to be the new norm that all the biggest pop stars and influencers have a lot of sexualised content, often semi-nude and have endless "selfies" perceiving them as obsessive narcissists. We all seem to have come to accept that that is normal, as mainly those with sexualised posts are followed by millions, which suggests that if you want to become an influencer on social media you have a better chance by posting sexualised content. It's not new to say that in any case "sex sells". So is social media to blame for creating and giving access to this endless content? Should there be age restrictions? Should there be post restrictions? What is it doing to our mental health? Or should we just be accepting and embracing this new era? 

As dance is so aesthetic, on stage our costume is usually tight fitting or very minimal, enabling you to see the best, most aesthetic line of the body. From my own experience, working in a ballet company I often have to wear underwear on stage. I have found myself feeling all kinds of contradicting opinions on this. From "I don't want my body to offer sexual entertainment" to feeling empowered because "I am a woman and I want to liberate that". Is it possible to feel both sides at the same time? Dwelling on this question can be dangerous, and leads back to my previous post on knowing exactly what you want to say with your body in order to feel more confident. It's clear that wearing underwear on stage makes me feel more vulnerable. With the given social media content and accessibility, should I now be fully accepting that wearing very little clothes and posting about it is considered entirely normal and accepted? 

Last Friday night I had my first show back on stage after 6 months, it was a new role and guess what: I had to wear underwear! To someone who gets stage fright and considering the lack of practice I've been having from handling my nerves on stage, I was expecting to feel quite nervous, but honestly I enjoyed it so much. I stepped inside the character and I took on a role I hadn't experienced before. I think that helped with not feeling in any way vulnerable. I assumed my character's sexuality and let it carry me through the movements with ease and self-assurance. I decided to post a picture of me in my "sexy costume" to document it on my Instagram diary, fully understanding that I could in fact be promoting sexualisation in dance. What I realised is that we have the right to post whatever we like, but for the sake of our mental health every time we post something we should ask ourselves: for what real reason are we posting it? To gain attention? Is it the right kind of attention we want? Do we base our happiness and affirmation on this post? Do we realise that any "strange fish" can see this picture and use it in any way they want? Are we sure that we want to be perceived only from the things that we post, for the people that don't get to see us on a regular basis? Knowing fully all of this you cannot be shadowed by the misfortune or stigma coming from objectifying yourself. What age we can really take this responsibility on, of course depends on the person, but one thing for sure is they are older than 7 or 8...

So that's a lot of questions unanswered. I'll be honest, my answers depend on the day. In both extremes there can be danger, there are very thin lines and I’m not even sure those lines exist. I’d be happy to hear from you and your thoughts.