Is it dance or is mime?

Today I see a lot of dance performances that make me question whether they should even be considered dance. Don't get me wrong, I love some of these shows and think a lot of them are absolutely brilliant. No matter the form it is the show will still be considered under the umbrella of art. The problem I have is that some of the history of dance might become muddied by the lack of definitions. I'm also worried that mime performances will start taking over dance performances.

Some may argue that it shouldn't matter what category we place these performances. Art is art and you don't want to suffocate a piece of art by compartmentalizing it to a category. I ultimately agree with this but the world doesn't work this way.

Art will always be considered culture no matter if it's mime or dance. We have people arguing over genres of music, food and other cultural things. Letting categories flow freely can make it very difficult to teach the history of things later on in the future. It helps us identify patterns in the art-form and see why it was developed in the first place. Knowing genres will also allow us to help people find similar works of art.

I'm not sure when it happened bu I would like to know when mime performances started to be considered dance performances. The definition of mime states that it is an artistic form of telling a story through body movements without the use of speech. Just from that definition it sounds very much like what a dance performance would entail. Certainly it is an artistic performance.

The thing is dance has a very specific aspect that has always differentiated itself from mime. Dance is movement rhythmic to music. I think it would be totally acceptable to tell a story through dance and still be considered dance as long as it rhythmically makes sense to the music. There are ways of stretching the concept of moving rhythmically to music but the rhythmic connection could still be explained. True it could possibly restrict artists because they needed to connect movements to fit with the music.

This would be similar to saying you're supposed to blow into the trombone to make music rather than smashing it over rocks to make music. Yes you might be doing something artistic but the essence of what you are doing does not relate to what the art of playing trombone entails.

There are a number of "dance" projects that don't even fit to the music that plays during the performance or don't even have music at all. How are we to agree that these performances should be categorized under the umbrella of dance when the movement is neither rhythmic nor connected to music?

There is no shame in being considered a mime, although maybe there's less money involved in it. Unfortunately, some of these performances can be considered under the umbrella of dance when submitted for grant money and other subsidies. A dance grant going to a mime production might not be the best thing. A mime performance doesn't necessarily need music thus making the monetary request sometimes lower than a dance number. This might make it harder for actual dance performances to apply as their request might cost a lot more.

I have nothing against mime performances but it will make it harder to understand culture and history in the future of these art forms. There are great mime performances and if they start categorizing themselves as mime performances perhaps more money will come in grants to grow mime culture. Mime performances may become even more prevalent as well because groups may be more inclined to grant them subsidies as they are requesting less money.

In the end, I hope people on dance panels will look into these things and grant projects for actual dance performances rather than mime. It's difficult to tell sometimes. I can't even tell sometimes. The definition of the two should be defined so that we can understand these art forms in the greater context and bring in two sources of revenue for these artists.