Derek Hough’s Choreography for Amy Purdy — during 2014 Dancing with the Stars (31 March) — Illustrates what Other-Centered Genius Can Do in Art

© 2014 Peter Free

 

01 April 2014

 

 

Citation — to the pertinent video clip

 

Amy Purdy & Derek Hough Move Us To Tears with Contemporary Dance on 'DWTS' - Watch Now!, JustJared Jr. (31 March 2014) (with embedded video clip from Dancing with the Stars)

 

 

Derek Hough’s other-centered genius shows in his choreographic effort with Amy Purdy

 

Derek Hough is only 28.  But he has evolved into a master of dance choreography.  Which this season he puts to double amputee Amy Purdy’s service on Dancing with the Stars.

 

 

I write this to emphasize a point that all four Dancing with the Stars judges missed

 

Amy Purdy’s moving tribute to her father — for donating her his kidney and supporting her through the illness that claimed both her legs — would not have been possible without Hough’s immense talent for expressing emotion, within the confines of his partner’s limits of physical ability.

 

In watching Hough’s dance design performance this season, I have noticed that his choreography always leaves him close enough to Ms. Purdy to physically support her grace in those movements that her lack of leg and foot sensation would not otherwise let her confidently accomplish.

 

Derek Hough’s ability to come up with these flows of beauty, without simultaneously putting himself at their artistic center, is astonishingly gifted.

 

 

The moral? — Where seasons ago I saw a talented and cocky kid, I now see one of America’s other-centered gifts to dance

 

Derek Hough is about exquisitely expressed soul.  I have no higher compliment.