The Problem with Popularity

By Emmaly Wiederholt

I saw a show recently where a well-known and respected choreographer with great dancers created an evening of contemporary dance. I would not have known what the piece was about had I not read the title, and was bewildered by its buzzing reception. I felt I had seen the same piece in varying permutations a million times before. I found myself wondering: what role does popularity, or the desire to be liked, play in dance, or more largely in art?

We are living in a culture that tells us that success is paramount to being liked. How many “friends” or “followers” like your page or status on whichever social media site? To be outgoing and gregarious is to be healthy and to be shy and reticent is to be socially awkward. Success is a sold out show or a blog post with hundreds of comments. Count the myriad ways that the number of people who like what you do indicates the success of your endeavor.

I worry that more often than not artists don’t ask themselves what they really need to say but instead ask what it is their audience wants to hear or see. They then replicate what has been successful for another artist or even themselves previously. Of necessity, we are social creatures that are influenced by the people around us. But I’m talking about something much more insidious than mere influence. If I create what you want to see, or if I say what you want to hear, then art essentially boils down to politeness. I have to believe there is some underlying reason why people go through the trouble of making art that goes beyond politeness or the desire to be liked.

For me, people truly make art (write, paint, choreograph, sculpt, compose, etc.) when they have something to say. Art is necessary expression. Technique is the skill set enabling a person in that expression. If a person has something they need to say, then popularity can have no place in art, for an artist cannot be worried about the reception of their work, only with the intention guiding it. Yes, we need people to support art, to see it, to fund it, but that cannot be the driving motivation. People liking one’s art is merely a fickle by-product.

How many stories are there of artists who weren’t truly appreciated during their lifetime and only acquired acclaim well after their death? What loss the world would have if so many of our canonical masters had catered their work in order to be more likeable at the time. So please, the next time you delve into a new project, don’t consider the work’s reception before it’s even begun. Say what you have to say and let the pieces fall where they may.

6 Responses to “The Problem with Popularity”

  1. Spiff.

    I like the point you make about artists receiving recognition long after their work has been made. The universal brilliance inside of us as artists sometimes moves much more rapidly than what our worldly brothers and sisters can always manage. We spin erratically into the cosmos, and no stratosphere can stop us!!

  2. Jim Tobin

    The SF Ethnic festival is 5 weekends every year in June. One of it’s driving forces is popularity. Are you going to suggest stopping it or cut down on it’s funding because of that?

    Last year a young female choreographer designed her dance for her father dieing of cancer…you can be she sure she wanted to please him with the design. Are you suggesting cut that out too?

    Finally, if someone wants to design a dance for popularity, who are any of us, to say that that artist is not doing what they what? Now that’s something I loved anyone to explain to me.

    You guys need to think out of the box on this argument.

  3. Jim Tobin

    Of all the major problems with the local SF dance scene, and they have a few, “artists creating work so it can be popular” is not one of them. Not by a long shot. If it were – I’d say “we should be so lucky.”

    As far as seeing “same piece in varying permutations” I would share this: All the moves a body can make have just about be done before in dance. So what we want to teach others, show and share with others, is that by infusing one’s personality, beliefs, background, everything – into their dance creations – that is how we make our work original – or at least something you don’t see all that often..

    This weekend at Dance Mission Theater we saw 2 different dance companies both use a segment of choreography I call D-Column (dancer’s column) – something we see every year, and by more than one company. And both these dance co’s D-Columns were completely different from one another and unique in some way.

    One company Kelly Kemp’s “number9” had her young ladies lined up in a column, staggered, in a way it looked like a line at the DMV – even their faces had that look.. I’ve never seen that in a D-Column. And she opened her dance with that D-Column, only the 2nd time I’ve ever seen that in like 5 or 6 years at least. And I see a lot of dance, more then most.

    Kristin Damrow’s company “Venture Dance Project” had a D-Column where the young ladies all lay on their bellies & then each one exited the column, one at a time, crawling away. Again, both of them were original at best, rare at worst. Not too shabby.

    The D-Column, btw, is one of our greatest dance examples where we can teach someone how you can take a common segment of choreography and make it original or unusal, and make it yours. In the end, that‘s a lot of what dance is.

    We also want some artists, in all our fields, to address popularity. We don’t want everyone to be a Van Gogh, who is one of the best examples of not working for popularity. So much so he never sold a painting in his lifetime, except one, and even that was probably a rigged purchase set up by his brother, Theo, a art gallery owner.

    Art fesitvals are another example. There’s a reason why the incredible creative Burning Man arts Festival doesn’t last 365 days a year. It’s a blimp. Needs to stay in that way. At the same time, we need such festivals as local glass making, like the annual one in Palo Alto, which is more about popularity as it is about original art. Without popular artists (or fart festivals) there are no Van Goghs and vice versa. We need them all. One cannot exist without the other.

    As for popularity and likes in social media and so forth: I say this: at BayAreaDanceWatch we want to expand the dialogue of dance. We don’t care about how many likes we get. But we’ll use those likes, those social web sites, those “comments” being made at blog posts, whatever, to expand the audience of dance.

    Why bother? One reason, there are way too many people who live and or work in San Francisco who have no idea of the extent and caliber of their own local dance scene. Every time I describe the local dance scene to someone in S.F. who doesn‘t attend dance – the response is always the same. “Geezzz I didn’t even know that.” And that’s a major problem.

    And finally, there’s too much angst in the SF dance community. Of all the things that make up dance, celebration is one of them. Try and let dance bring you some happiness. If it doesn’t fine. But don’t rain on other people and artists.

  4. bluepagespecial

    This has nothing to do with what you may want to hear, but I liked this because I think you are right: artists (in any genre) should just go for it!

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