Dance, subtlety and expressiveness

I often wonder why I love physical theatre and dance quite as much as I do. I never really had any exposure to professional dance as a child and yet I quite often find myself drawn to it over traditional theatrical performances. Perhaps it's the unspoken nature of dance that allows the viewer to flex their emotional response or interpretation of the piece more easily in line with their own personal biography?

Acting or rather performance utilising verbal communication provides the audience a wider array of reasons to dismiss something; "that character seemed too aggressive, i didn't like her accent, it sounded too false" etc etc. Physical performance or movement on the other hand doesn't suffer this barrier. It is certainly true that some viewers may still dismiss it precisely for this reason..."it lacked a narrative, i couldn't engage with the characters" etc. etc. However for me I find the absense of verbal communication which seems so prevalent in our modern media landscape that little bit more compelling. It forces me to concentrate and notice details with my eyes rather than with my ears which I sometimes worry have become too adept at stripping out the 'noise' from the 'substance'...perhaps so much so that they take short cuts, they overcompensate and in so doing I unconsciously prevent myself from taking in or processing sufficient aural information. My ocular sensitivity on the other hand feels underdeveloped.

I'm not really sure where this post is going....I think I started off wanting to make a point about the power of storytelling through physical narrative rather that over reliance upon verbal descriptions. A belief I feel that is increasingly under threat by eager clients looking to complement the emotive product benefit messaging (which in their minds means the pictures/design) with the rational product benefit messaging (the VO or copy) in equal measure. Of course it's a view motivated by observing increasing competition in their given market place. The problem however (in my mind at least) is that contrary to popular client belief, in a climate of saturated messaging consumers need less rational substantiation as to why they should select a new toothpaste or whatever and more simple emotional reasons to care at all in the first place.

You can tell people that your vodka is the best in the world until you are blue in the face, but until you've given them a reason to give a shit in the first place they're probably not going to pay you the slightest bit of attention. In storytelling less is definately more....and when you absolutely positively have to put in more, let it be more physical feeling than brainy statements.

So I think these two ads do a lovely job of what I'm talking about. The first piggy backs of that fantastically talented dance troupe Pilobolus:



and the second is the new Skoda Fabia spot - Full of lovely stuff: