Eclecticism V's Fusion

The ‘combining of ingredients’, in other words 'dance elements' that Joshua Monten (cited in Bales & Nettl-Fiol 2008) talks about is something to be considered when teaching 21st century student dancers. He mentions Alvin Ailey's 'Revelations'  with it's distinctive blend of Horton, Graham, Jazz and Ballet techniques and how they all fuse together along with highly charged emotional intensity throughout the dancers performance. 

Although Monten suggests that the blend of each discipline in this work is not eclectic, I am trying to establish how fusion and eclecticism are that much apart. Eclecticism is the practice of obtaining ideas from a broad range of sources and fusion is the process of joining two or more things together to form a single entity. In a way, I feel they are working towards the same outcome. 

Either way, I am interested in how dancers/artists/practitioners are able to recall skills from varied disciplines and techniques. How were those skills learned and what is it people know to enable them to adapt and perform with such strong technical precision and artistry? 


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