This question is prompted by the following exchange from another thread.
Is there really a difference between having heart and doing choreography really well? Between drawing in the audience and merely performing the program that you practiced? Is “emotional involvement” something that the audience supplies out of its imagination, rather than anything the skater does?
In Sophie’s Choice the actress Meryl Streep did not actually have to choose between her two children – she just had to act like she did. Does Streep have "heart" or merely technique?
Skaters show true emotion when they land that triple Lutz, just like a pole vaulter is jubilant when he clears the bar. On the other hand, making passionate faces and acting out characters usually does not move figure skating audiences. So what does?
"Heart", while a wonderfully earthy word, is so frequently used and in so many disparate ways in everyday life that I find it hard to say something meaningfully precise with it in the context of performance.
Firstly, a performance is a performance, not be be confused (as you allude in your example of the goddess Streep's Solomonic dilemma) with an equivalent situation in "real" life. Although most people understand this, from time to time there are viewers whose comments seem to demonstrate something less than complete clarity on this point. For the performers, too, even zealously "Method" ones, a line is recognized (if they know what's good for them
).
The implication to be drawn is that there is no such thing as real-life "sincerity" in an artistic performance to be earnestly searched for by the audience; praising a performance for "not being acting", is almost a contradiction in terms. Art being an act of communication, what, then, is the performer trying to convey? IMO, the artist is utilizing his/her imagination, experience and empathy to
represent, in the particular language of the discipline, the fundamental characteristics, the topography, of the emotions or ideas that are the themes of the program. The performer is demonstrating her
understanding and self-awareness of the emotional theme, not the putative emotion itself. This is "expressiveness", which I prefer to "heart" as a more aesthetically precise way of defining what we're talking about.
Similarly, on the receiving end, if the performer's representation is successful, then the viewer will be able to feel an emotion, which is the product of the viewer's own imagination, experience, and empathy working on the affective topography that the performer lays out. To the extent that we feel that this topography is not representative of the intended theme, we say that the performance is only partially successful, or failed.
I'm of the view that, broadly speaking, the human psychological constitution is innate and hardwired and therefore there is critical overlap among individuals (which is what allows any form of communication among humans to be possible in the first place). In conjunction with the idea that the "grammar and vocabulary" of an artistic discipline is a learned facility, the basis for commonality in emotional response to a program is established.
Of course, there will be differences of opinions. Given the practically infinite nuance available in artistic language to represent a map of an emotion, and the variation in traits of imagination/experience/empathy among individuals. My speculation, though, is that there is enough basic psychological commonality among audiences that the concept of an expressively good performance vs. a not-so-good performance is meaningful, although in some cases it may take time for its qualities to be appreciated and recognized. That being said, I will venture that, where there are stark differences from the overall audience "geist", in many cases this can be attributable to factors other than the utilization of aesthetic faculties in good faith (e.g. unexamined prejudice, pre-existing loyalties or bias, lack of understanding of the "language" employed, etc).
The reason that I'm such a huge fan of Yuna (aside from her crystalline jumps and skating skills) is that her best performances (especially since 2009) more vividly demonstrate the necessary artistic understanding and self-awareness than any ladies skater today, IMHO. This is why even a stick-figure animation of one of her performances is so recognizable in terms of her individual style of movement. Glenn Gould, perhaps my favorite pianist (and a Canadian to boot, for all the Northern homers out there
), once said that the point of playing music is to elucidate difference, and the difference from the world. I would point to Yuna's ATSS Meditation de Thais, her Olympic Gershwin and Bond, and her Worlds Danse Macabre, as Exhibits A, B, C and D, respectively, in making my case.
Breathes there a man with soul so dead who never to himself has said...whoa!
Oh man, that was a lip trembler!
