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Kiana Staton
Professor Peterson
English 1101
28 April 2014
The Waltz: A Rhetorical Analysis
Dance is a very unique form of text. It uses many different genres, to convey messages to an
audience. In The Waltz, choreography by Professor Sybil Huskey and authored by Dorothy
Parker, there was one main theme, WHY, thank you so much, Id adore to. The dance was
performed on Friday March 24
th
, 2014, at Robinson Hall on the campus of the University of
North Carolina at Charlotte. The dance included four dancers that also spoke within dancing.
The dance started off as a normal staged performance, the dancers come on stage and start
performing traditional waltz movements to the classical music if Charmaine by Erno Rapee
and Lew Pollack. Then suddenly, the music was dimmed, and one of the dancers spoke. They
would say a line or two as they continued dancing, and then the music picked back up and they
continued dancing. The main theme of this dance was The Waltz. The dancers portrayed
women at a ball that were the last ones picked to dance with men they did not want to dance
with. All of the dancers spoke several times about their different accounts of how terrible the
men that they were dancing with were at dancing. This dance was a satire, and included many
sarcastic nuances. These included some of the dancing and faces of the performers, to the lines
that the dancers spoke. Some of the dances included pretending as if the man stepped on her foot
and traditional waltz steps, and some of the faces were painted on smiles and disgust. The lines
that the dancers spoke came from the text of Dorothy Parker. There were two different types of
texts spoken. Some of the lines were the lines that they would speak rhetorically to the man
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they were dancing with, and others were thought that would run inside of the female dancers
mind.
I believe that this dance was produced to show the realism and hilarity that goes on inside
a females mind when she is picked to dance with someone whom they do not want to. Many of
the dance movements followed the format of the lines spoken. The lines differed, when there
were lines of how the dancer spoke the man, they were polite and cordial. The dance
movements that mimicked these lines were very classical, and steps that could be seen in a
formal ball. When the lines changed to sarcasm, the dancing changed to the dancers stomping,
drowning, and crawl. These dances were made to mimic the true inside feelings of the female
dancer. The Waltz is a very classical and cordial dance; therefore, it is mainly danced in
ballroom settings, and is a dance that has been around for many centuries. This gives the effect
that this dance is timeless, and that these thoughts and dances shared on the stage were reactions
to men throughout the ages.
The author of the original text is Dorothy Parker. She originally wrote the lines of this
dance performance as a poem. I believe that the lines were portrayed on stage, just as she
intended them to be spoken. For example, the classical lines of the poem where the female
dancer is being very cordial, they were in italics. The other lines are in bold print. This shows
the different emphasize on the lines, and this was shown on stage. The choreography, produced
by Professor Sybil Huskey, mimicked these lines. It really helped to emphasize the difference in
lines, and created a more dramatic effect to the phrases. There was elegance when the lines were
polite and crudeness when the lines were bold. This helped dramatize the performance, to really
project this emotion to the audience.
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This performance was done on stage as a dance for many different guests of UNCC.
Because the dance was about the inner thoughts of a woman, it appealed differently to woman,
and indirectly to men. The women of the audience were able to relate to the feelings of the
dancers, because many women have experienced similar situations where they stuck in a sticky
spot, and were forced to participate in social events with men they were not fond of. As for the
men in the audience, this gives them a new view inside of the womens brain that they may not
have known. To the audience, this portrayed a stereotypical sense of responsibility the woman
takes in how she projects herself to others. If the female dancers were to share the true emotions
that they felt within, the male dancer many become offended and think negatively of his
partner. As an audience member myself, the dancing and performance of the four dancers on
stage projected this feeling of double consciousness. Their stage presence, which consisted of
their posture, tone, and movements, really emitted this satirical emotion from the stage.
This performance done by UNCC student dancers was very well portrayed, and
choreographed. By using the words of Dorothy Parker, and the movements of Sybil Huskey, this
performance was a satirical masterpiece. It shows the inner emotions and thoughts of women on
a classical ballroom dance floor. The audience was thoroughly entertained, and amused with the
humor that this dance performance depicted.