November 10, 2004

During his lecture, Max Wyman suggested that dance is the most “piercing affirmation of what it means to be human.” He showed the audience clips from famous ballets and how twitching muscles express emotion.

I liked the men in tights I saw slithering across the stage. Their buttocks were wonderfully outlined. And at that moment I disagreed with Max, even though he was a nice man with white hair and an English accent. I thought, “Fucking, not dance, is the most poignant ‘affirmation of what it means to be human.’” Any discussion about humanity, essence, rhythm, touching bodies, and emotion must also involve sex.

Thus, I wanted Max to show us buttocks grabbed in spasms of life-affirming desire. I wanted him to tell us that dance is like fucking, a catalyst for our imagination. I wanted him to make us dance, bodies naked and free, so we could better understand humanity.

But he never did.