On Top of the World

                One of my favorite classes last year was Japanese Theater, which covered, obviously, forms of Japanese theater. But it also led us down diverse paths of thought to consider what can be related to the study of theater. Societal customs, taboo love, the movement of money, the trajectory of history—how all of these fit together and weave an undercurrent for stories like Dojoji and Kurozuka.

                I wrote a paper for this class on reading different styles of movement, which I recently dug up again. After discussing the different meanings attached to styles of dance in Japan, I wrote:

“This idea still holds true today, even in much of modern American society. In a way, American society, like other societies around the world, has fetishized certain qualities of movement—giving the movement more significance than it holds in itself. A prominent example can be found in the practice of women walking in high heels. In an interview situation for a high-paid corporate job, a well-dressed woman walking gracefully in high heels will immediately make a better impression than another woman wearing loafers or sneakers. Although wearing sneakers does not signify anything about the second woman’s job capabilities, the interviewer will subconsciously infer information about the second woman from her footwear. The first woman will come across a certain way simply because of her movement, and the accoutrement she has chosen to accentuate that movement. High heels carry certain connotations—desirability, confidence, wealth—and being able to navigate them automatically conveys a clear message to an interviewer, even though the movement does not reveal information that is directly linked to the first woman’s job qualifications. Like the Japanese prostitute or the merchant’s daughter, the woman in high heels has internalized the idea that a certain movement will carry a particular impression along with it.

Thus, we can see that the idea of bodily knowledge is not limited to the dancer’s or mover’s own experience. Rather, we can think of every decision regarding movement—what shoes we wear, what dances we choose to study—as a conscious performative act, since all decisions about movement are linked to a particular set of impressions in our viewer’s mind. Movement is action, and actions make up life. Thus viewers often extrapolate a meaning from movement that is then applied to an understanding of an individual’s life, whether that extrapolation is correct or not.”

I don’t know why I suddenly thought of this paper. Maybe it was because I was waiting in line for a coffee and saw a rare sight on the UChicago campus: a young woman wearing a chic raspberry trench over a black dress with a pair of sky-high, absolutely beautiful heels. I immediately, and perhaps shallowly, admired her a little more and couldn’t help wondering where she was going, or where she had come from. It’s particularly relevant to me because I’m still confined to this clunky medical boot, and though I longingly peruse the espadrille section of Nine West, I know it will be a while before I feel perfectly, confidently myself again.