Another Way to Watch the World Cup

I don’t actually care who wins the World Cup, but I do call myself a fan. Even though I know little about soccer, I love the complex and ardent interplay of bodies. I am a choreographer by trade, and the game, with its rules about proximity, time, and motion, plays out for me as a theatrical spectacle.

Here is what I see. Soccer is a taut group dance with a quick tempo on a green, rectangular stage. The players are arcane creatures, their four appendages reimagined; they activate their head and chest in tandem with their legs, a kind of armless reptile. The arms dangle without specific gesture, unnecessary, even illegal. The upper body spirals and rotates, dives and bows. Virtuosity plays out in the feet: sometimes strong and long, like during a goal kick; sometimes tiny and precise, like during a string of step overs. And all of this happens in concert with the other dancers. Duets and trios of bodies form and disperse in heightened tempos and tense pauses; they bend and arch in response to the possibility that the ball—that precious protagonist—will become theirs for a moment.

Both dance and soccer are composed, essentially, of bodies moving through time and space. But the distance between soccer and dance lies in their differing intentions. Soccer focuses on goals and the combat necessary to score them; its aesthetics are shaped by this. In choreography, aesthetics are honed and shaped over time by the artist; they are the work itself, a game without a goal.

Still, enraptured soccer fans remind me of a notion from dance: kinesthetic sympathy. When we watch someone leap across the stage, our own body leaps inside; when we watch a soccer player jump for a header, the up-and-down-ness of the motion is mirrored in us. World Cup stadiums and local bars around the globe are filled with this internal mimicry right now. We, the fans, mirror the physical dynamics of the game; in our body, the game is played out. Like the players, we surge and ebb. As intent as we are on seeing our team win, the game itself is what we’re here for; its dance happens inside us regardless of the result.

[Read: The secret of how we move]

And we happily join the spectacle of feelings: joy, rage, grief. Our yells and chants and slapping of hands accompany the dance. Here, we allow our emotions free rein. No one asks us to calm down, to keep it together. It is the players who are the adults in the room; they are at work, deep in a bubble of concentration.

Sometimes, there is an odd coda to all of this. In the case of an unresolvable tie, time slows down, and we stay for the penalty shoot-out that unravels the deadlock: a duet between the diva penalty taker and the maestro goalkeeper. It becomes something for the fans to endure—a crisis. It makes the game an experience of fortitude, loyalty, and survival for the audience.

When the match ends, the final act is played out by the fans. Last week, walking home from the theater in Lyon, France, I heard a crowd of young people singing. As I turned the corner, I saw a group of Morocco supporters in beautiful, spontaneous motion, with flags that were really just bits of red cloth. They lifted their arms high and jumped at certain moments of the song in raggedy-perfect unison, and the lights from their phones illuminated the red flags in the dark sky. It was a beautiful choreography. Morocco had beaten Canada and was through to the next round of competition. For the moment, these fans were winning. And they were expressing joy the way people always have: through dance.