October 20, 2003
motion in martial arts films
Article: Violent dances in martial arts films
Ultimately, any understanding of physical movement requires some understanding of the culture and context from which the movement itself derives. To read movement as dance requires the additional step of first and foremost recognizing these movements as "intentionally rhythmic, culturally patterned sequences with value in and of themselves." And acceptance of kinesthetic theories requires a further level of intellectual understanding, which recognizes concepts of beauty and revulsion as multiple and individualistic. Perhaps here my discussion of cultural aesthetics through movement should end. Any definition or theory of aesthetics, especially in regard to forms as ephemeral as human movement, must have at its core much which is purely and unabashedly subjective. If memory, and therefore comprehension, is unique in some way to each individual body, then any appreciation for beauty or revulsion for abnormality truly exists only in the eye — or body — of the beholder.
