Phantom Communication

Garrett Lambur

Upon watching Phantom of the Opera I developed a new appreciation of dance as a use of communication. This may be expected within my generation, who has grown up with dance as a representation of sex. You go to a club today and the majority of dancing seems to be grinding, itself a likeness of sex. Of course there is that small percentage of people not grinding up on each other. I am not attempting to say that dance other than grinding is dead in our generation, in fact a good dancer can get a lot of attention, say someone who can do Michael Jackson’s Thriller. But the majority of it has moved beyond any communication except sex. Perhaps this is linked to our generation’s obsession with sex and getting laid. However, within Phantom of the Opera, I saw for the first time in, well possibly forever, the ability to communicate anything other than sexual desire. True, there were the scenes with the communication of sexual desire but there was so much more.

This was the first ever ballet that I have attended and combined with the popularization of Andrew Lyoyd Webber’s version I have to confess I expected more vocalization, in fact I expected some singing. My first reaction followed the lines of, what, I have to figure out what is going on without any singing or speaking. True, everything would be in a foreign tongue but I was expecting subtitles too. As the production went on my opinion began to grow in a fonder sense. I could understand what was happening, the jealousy of the two competing dancers for the lead or the anger of the Phantom, albeit he was aided by an awesome sinister laugh. The emotions were conveyed effectively through nothing more than dancing. Were the music removed from the show I am positive that understanding the emotions in the dancing would still be relatively easy. It made me realize how influential gestures and body language are in daily conversation because the majority of motions that easily translated from dance to vocalization are accompanied with similar motions in conversation.

Although I never saw myself agreeing with Van Der Leeuw regarding the ability of dance to communicate after seeing the ballet my opinion has greatly changed. Upon further thought there is substantially more support for the effectiveness of dance as a communication tool. Take for example the fact I am American and saw Phantom in the Czech Republic and understood the story with only a few bits misunderstood. Now I will not go as far as to say that any person of any culture on this planet could comprehend the story after seeing the ballet but I believe that a majority of them could. If you doubt this then think about how much emphasis you place upon a person’s facial expression when conversing with them or upon their body language, where do they place their hands, how do they hold themselves, then relate this back to dance. Dance is an extension of these facial expressions or body language without the verbal communication.

Now this does not mean that I will not make a fool of myself in the future and attempt to do a random ballet move while exclaiming “Chlia!,” a nonexistent ballet term. But I wonder where popular dance began such a change to the sexual communication that is has today, perhaps, Dirty Dancing?