Shall we dance?

With some reluctance I accepted the assignment of projecting into the future a description of dance, an art form that exists only in the moment. I acknowledge that any future projection demands a skillful compromise between wishful thinking and the recognition of exigencies beyond our control. Art is made for and by people. Dance art has always existed uneasily in the realm between entertainment and contemplation. Future vision streaks off to a vanishing point that mercilessly denies any resolution to this age-old dilemma.

The dance world of the future will be motivated by familiar forces, but there will be significant changes. Traditionally, gay people have been attracted to dance and theater because, like most arts, it offered opportunities to create personae and explore fantasies forbidden in the world they were born into. In the future the world of dance will not seem such a promised land, simply because there will be a much wider set of career choices available to gays in which they can feel safe in being openly themselves. This reality begs a more intriguing distinction between our time and the future, calling into question the near extinction of our most precious muse, our alienation. The gay imagination of the future will be less the product of a "hot seat" of repression, resentment, and transformed self-loathing.

In the future the efforts of artists, art educators, and lobbyists will pay off, and coupled with the increasingly virtual world and the relative isolation brought on by a computer culture, real-life performances will enjoy mass support similar to that afforded sports today. As always, physical prowess will be highly regarded. For some time now race and gender conventions in dance and theater have been eroded. In the future we will see more gender-blind casting in dance and theater. Androgyny and the poetic and physical richness it offers will be much prized.

Having said the above, I would assert, perhaps contradictorily, that the values we associate with the most experimental dance of today (for instance, abstraction, preoccupation with form, subtlety, probing questioning of the body as an instrument) will still exert an undeniable influence in all fields of dance. Like the loss of our alienation, these values will further mute the distinction between gay and nongay sensibilities.

Because dance is a body-centered art, sex as a metaphor takes pride of place in much choreography, and so, with the reality of homosexuality taking its rightful place as yet another choice available to the human psyche, how performers touch will be more important than who does the touching.

In the future, when strategic battles both legal and societal are won, the struggle for validation will cease being the glue that creates our contemporary consensus as homosexuals. The gay community will experience a profound crisis when we are no longer the universally recognized pariahs or outlaws but have become in fact nothing more than plain folks living just another lifestyle variation. Gay dancers, actors, choreographers, and directors will be left with the same questions mature artists have always grappled with: What is true, and how is it most beautifully expressed? What is the relationship of the creator to what is created? How does one cultivate a personal vision and make a living?

AIDS will pass, but tragedy, loss, pain, and death will not. In the 21st century the thirst for authentic examples of life's poetry to offset its horror will remain. Gay and lesbian artists, free of guilt and shame, will be called on to do their part in the profound ritual of encouragement that all good dance must be.

Jones is a dancer and choreographer. Last Night on Earth, his book of memoirs, was published in 1995.