Shawn Johnson

1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tooPCeR3IIY
2. Shawn Johnson and a gymnastics/dance choreographer created her floor routine for the 2008 Visa Championships, which were held in Houston, Texas from May 22-24.
3. Gymnastics was a big part of my life since I was young. I was a full-time gymnast for 14 years on a gymnastics team called North Stars Gymnastics. I competed in meets throughout Vermont, New England, and in Washington D.C.. Gymnastics is very artistic in the ways that you move your body in accordance to music, but it's also an art in silence. The body motions of gymnasts are fluent, light and beautiful to watch as well as perform.
4. Shawn Johnson's routine expresses emotion through dance and tumbling passes by the fluidity of her movements and her grace throughout the routine. Her strength and endurance along with her ability to coordinate movements by choreographing her dance and tumbling to align with the music takes incredible talent and can be viewed as an art.
5. I would view gymnastics as emotional art. Watching a gymnast during a meet allows you to see the stress on a person to perform such difficult skills infront of hundreds, thousands, or millions of people such as what Shawn Johnson went through and also be judged on your performance. It's emotional because you can feel the exhaustion, the concentration, and sometimes pain that one feels during the routine. The dance and tumbling is also emotional because it's so beautiful to watch.
6. If ballet and other forms of dance is considered art, then gymnastics is also an art because it is also revolving around body movements and motions that create a look and a feeling. The "ancestor" of this type of art would be ballet because ballet has always been looked upon as being an emotional dance. Gymnastics involves more than just dancing, but it shares common aspects and connects to an emotionalist point of view.

Question for the class: Would you consider the emotionalist theory to be the best representative out of the "Quartet of Traditions"? Do you consider body movements such as gymnastics an art?