Unspoken Language: The Universality of the Language of Dance

As humans, we are innately avoidant of the pain, reality and inevitability of death. We tend to avoid our grief by only acknowledging it during the moments it is being experienced. Kids by Liu Kuan-Hsiang brings this harsh reality to life through sharing the significant loss of his mother in a live performance of text, recorded audio, music and dance. Kids was created in Taiwan and has been performed across Asia, Europe and North America. Coupled with an emotive, physical dance piece, Liu shares recorded conversations with his mother throughout her chemotherapy process and eventual death. These conversations are recorded in Mandarin and Taiwanese, with parts of the

Photo: Etang Chen

recordings translated and projected onto the back wall of the theatre. This work simultaneously creates and breaks barriers, influencing a variety of responses to the work. With discussion of the differences in verbal, physical and emotional communication between Asian and Western cultures, I will investigate how the universal methods of communication and understanding unites all of our cultural diversities to recognize that we are all human and share many of the same experiences. 

            Liu Kuan-Hsiang is an independent choreographer from Taiwan. His work explores the complexity of the human body and the ways it can be manipulated to extremes. Liu's choreography is supported by his love of music, with a lot of his work featuring his own compositions. As an emerging artist, Liu's work explores darker themes that push the boundaries of contemporary dance. This includes the topics discussed through his movement style and performances. His work often contrasts extreme flexibility and physicality with a calmer quality including more stillness. Liu’s inspiration comes from his Taiwanese culture and life experiences. His experience with the loss of his parents has resulted in some of his most popular work. After the passing of his father, he created Hero in 2014 and after the passing of his mother, Kids in 2016.

            Liu Kuan-Hsiang’s work explores many different forms of communication. Through pre-recorded conversations, he introduces verbal communication with the audience in Kids. The work opens with Liu Kuan-Hsiang sitting by the front of the stage, instructing the audience to pull out their phones and find a picture of someone they love and take a minute to look at the image. “What if today was their last day? What is your question to someone you love?” Opening with these questions invokes emotions from the audience, not only through verbal avenues but through personalized memories and feelings of the viewer. While Liu mainly speaks in English throughout the piece, there are moments when he chooses to speak Mandarin and Taiwanese instead. Mandarin and Taiwanese can also be heard through the recordings of the conversations Liu has with his mother before her passing, with some of the audio chosen not to be translated into text. With Liu's choice to preserve
parts of his work in his language of origin, additional feelings of intimacy and closeness to his

Photo: Julie Lemberger

ancestry are created. The introduction of these languages creates a barrier between audience members who are not familiar with the languages. However, Kids was not originally intended to be as obscure as it was when presented in cities like Vancouver since it was created and performed in Taiwan before it was toured in other countries. The intentional choice of the languages separating the audience developed as it was presented in different cities across the world. In the original work, translated text on the wall would serve a smaller purpose as it would have been understood by the majority of the audience. An audience member’s experience may be affected by the disconnect created through not understanding the languages presented, changing their overall experience and opinions of the work. For example, those who only understand English were left in the dark in parts of the narrative of the piece, having to rely solely on the visual representation to interpret Liu’s work. As someone who understands Mandarin, I felt as though I had a deeper connection to the piece. However, I am not fluent in Taiwanese, and was left in the dark in that regard. In these instances, I was left to rely on my emotional, non-verbal interpretation of the piece to comprehend the messaging presented by Liu. The mixed methods of communication allows each experience to be personal and dependent on how much the viewer interprets the work as an individual without the clarity of the spoken narrative. Despite audience members being lost in translation at times, the work and narrative that Kuan-Hsiang presented could still be fully understood by any type of audience member through other modes of communication.

            How we gesture in our day to day lives is part of how we express our desires and emotions. Is the way we use our hands while speaking to explain ourselves different from how we use our bodies in dancing to express how we feel? Ivar Haagendoorn’s article on “Dance, Language and the Brain”, discusses the gestural origin of language dating back to the 18th century and the idea that “human communication cannot have started with language as a coded system” (Haagendoorn, 225). This suggests that gestures and movement have been a part of the evolution of language, therefore,  interpretation is part of human nature. The physicality in the movement vocabulary performed in Kids was dark and extreme. On the surface, this physical expression can be seen as violent and aggressive but it is a portrayal of a pain that is commonly experienced through an individual’s lifetime. This is most apparent in Liu Kuan-Hsiang’s Kids; specifically in the section of his solo that sent chills

Photo: Etang Chen

through the room as he pushed his bare body to extremes, flipping and landing roughly on the hard surface of the floor. Liu and the two women who danced with him in Kids were unreserved and uninhibited in illustrating the pain and mania that arises in these different stages of grief. The physical intensity of the work forced immediate responses from the audience. This could be felt through the uncomfortable shifting and tension in viewer's body language. The physical display of the themes of grief offer the audience a more abstract and conceptual understanding that invoke a somatic response to be further interpreted.

In “Choreography as a Dialogue”, Barbara Gilford quotes Carolyn Dorfman by saying “how it feels is what matters in an arts experience” (Gilford, 1). The emotional impact of Kids runs deep and is intended to be felt. Mortality is a natural part of life that not many people enjoy openly discussing. Everyone experiences their own grief in unique ways as well as heals from it in different ways. Varied processes of grieving and healing, influenced by belief systems of life and death, may also influence an individual’s experience in this regard. Dance artists are able to convey emotion through movement as a different form of language, similar to how deaf people communicate through sign language. The gestural origin of “sign language for the deaf is about 500 years old” (Haagendoorn, 228). How people are able to communicate with gestures has developed and become part of an aspect of communication that is apparent in our everyday lives. This can be seen in moments as simple as waving to say hello or seeing your friend across the library and gesturing at them to come over to sit with you. However, in dance, the movement vocabulary is interpreted at a deeper level and requires more attention and thought. In an fMRI study on body language and the brain, Christine Tipper states that, “reading body language is more than just a matter of perception”, which doesn’t only recognize “socially relevant visual information, but also [ascribes] meaning to those representations” (Tipper, 2). Through practice, many humans are drawn to finding the deeper meanings of what is seen on the surface to forge more profound connections with the world.

Through the attempt of sheltering each other from the inevitable pain of death, our society should encourage more open communication about death and grievance. The acceptance of death tends to be an individual process that is abruptly forced as it is experienced. There is no way to be fully prepared for death, however, there is an importance in acknowledging imminent death. Kids sheds a light on the cycle of life through the use of alternate forms of communication to convey the emotion Liu felt while processing the death of his mother. It acts as a reminder to not take for granted the time that we share with our loved ones. Liu's work highlights and juxtaposes verbal barriers to a foreign audience about the

Photo: Julie Lemberger

universality of dance as a language. Because of this, regardless of varied cultural experiences and verbal expression, Liu’s work is able to be appreciated at a global scale. With some verbal communication barriers present, a lot of the performance relied on the ability to communicate ideas physically and emotionally through dance. Just like speech, dance “draws on the same cognitive infrastructure as the capacity for language” (Haagendoorn, 232). Dance can be its own movement vocabulary with structures and phrases that are similar to language. Dance is a universal language that can be understood across cultures as it brings us back to our shared, deep-rooted experience of being human.

References

Curtis, Lindsay, and Mirna Zagar. “Liu Kuan-Hsiang and Kids.” 15 Jan. 2019,

     www.thedancecentre.ca/blog/view/2019/01/liu_kuan_hsiang_and_kids. Accessed 2 Mar. 2019.

Gilford, Barbara. "Choreography as a Dialogue." New York Times (1923-Current file), Apr 28

     1991, p. 1. ProQuest. Web. 2 Mar. 2019 .

Hagendoorn, I.G. “Dance, Language and the Brain.” International Journal of Art and

     Technology, 3 (2/3), 2010. 221-234. 

Liu, Kuan Hsiang, director. YouTube. YouTube, YouTube, 12 Apr. 2018,

     www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_bALrrPxuA.

Tipper, Christine M., et al. “Body Language in the Brain: Constructing Meaning from Expressive

     Movement.” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, vol. 9, 2015,

     doi:10.3389/fnhum.2015.00450.

Wells, Charmian. “Strong and Wrong: On Ignorance and Modes of White Spectatorship in Dance

     Criticism.” Movement Research, 30 June 2017, 
     movementresearch.org/publications/critical-correspondence/strong-and-wrong-on-ignorance-and-
     modes-of-white-spectatorship-in-dance-criticism.