Tommy Faulconer: Memoirs of a Geisha Dance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aX2uEETs2Q

The dance linked above comes from the motion picture Memoirs of a Geisha and is the perfect example of world creation through pantomime dance. The dancer takes on the character of a woman walking to find her love through the snow when she is lost and ends up dying in the snow alone. The production adds to the image of the story that is being portrayed, but it is the movement and the passion of the dancer that pulls me in. Through watching such a passionate performances, I can feel the pain of the character and feel the chill setting in along with the panic as the wind blows the umbrella around. My breathing slows and quickens with the rhythm and the movement as I am swept into the dance death where the holy rite of death takes precedence. Death is the last sacred act any person will experience in their life, and the portrayal of it through a passionate dances is one way to confront the audience with the fact of mortality. In this realization, the audience runs into the divine that gives and takes life. It may be the coldest of divine encounters but death and its experience is still one of the most sacred communions of body, spirit, and holy. The dance of the geisha brings the audience into that sacred rite of passage and moves them to look at the dance of their own lives and how they dance around the act of death.