“Inventive in the best sense of the word. With out self-consciousness or an effort to be bold just for the sake of being bold.”
--Jamake Highwater, Author, Dance Rituals of Experience
With regards to the dance of today, traditional approaches and interpretations are of little or no value. New art is not found in old aesthetic characteristics, but in the action of the modern artist. The truly contemporary dance of tomorrow does not have a single focus, but encompasses the many facets of technique, kinetic and visual expression available to the artist.
History separated the once unified worlds of dance and theatre into two different artforms. In these worlds dance lost its intentional, transformative power and theatre became locked within the narrative text of the playwright and psychological acting techniques, losing its kinetic expressive soul.
The aesthetic world of JOE strives to reunite dance and theatre into a flexible expressive artform. In this world, the traditions of the modern dance pioneers are coupled with the narratives and intentional aspects of theatre and then mixed with a contemporary postmodern sensibility rooted in digital rich technology to create an artform that truly does what art does best: Expresses the human condition and reminds us what it is to be fully and profoundly human.
For dance to survive in this new century, we cannot solely think of dance as pretty bodies doing pretty things. We must embrace the fact that we all move and use movement as a means of communicating human existence and expression.
The philosophical principals of Joe's Universe embrace this new form of Theatre/Dance and celebrate the potential of its theatrical, kinetic and fully universal expression.
