I'm up in Bremerton, WA (near Seattle), this week for the Distinctly Bronze West conference. An annual AGEHR event, there have been 11 DB events on the East Coast in New Bern, NC, south of Raleigh. Last year (2009) was the first one on the West Coast, and was the first one I attended.
It was also the last one directed by Maestro David Davidson, who passed away this past September & who is sorely missed.
This DBW marks the first one directed by Jason Wells, who is so full of energy and vitality that you'd have to be dead to not play your heart out for him. He is not an ambiguous director - he tells you clearly what he wants, not only with descriptive words, but also with his body language.
I am in the front row center, right under Jason's nose. (This prompted my friend Martin Morley to quip, "Poor Jason, blinded by the hair!" LOL!)
We had rehearsal yesterday 2-5pm, then had a 2 hour dinner break, then rehearsed again until 9pm. This morning we were at it again bright and early at 8am. We rehearsed until 10 and now the bass is having their sectional, while we treble-trouble people are on break. Lunch is 12-2 and then we'll have our sectional. We'll all be back together again later this afternoon.
We'll rehearse again all day tomorrow, and Sunday morning, then we'll present a free concert here at the Kitsap Conference Center at 4:15pm. If you're in town, please come on down!
ADDENDUM: Both of the commenters are correct: the concert is not free; we're charging $5 admission. But we're worth it!!
Meanwhile, I have some homework to do. I had to miss all my classes yesterday & have some reading & writing to do for my Dance class, plus have to study for a quiz in eMus, all of which is due Tuesday.
Brian will fly up here tonight & spend the weekend with me. Yay!
DNCE 320
Evolution: the Koresh Dance Company
February 2, 2010
On Friday, January 29, I saw “Evolution,” performed in Temecula by the Koresh Dance Company from Philadelphia. The work, choreographed by Company founder Ronen Koresh, consisted of fourteen unnamed individual segments presented with no pause or intermission.
The lighting for the entire piece was very simple. Most of the work was lit with bluish-white light coming in from each side of the stage. Occasionally, a single spotlight from above would highlight a dancer, and red light was used for one segment. The minimalist lighting, which left most of the stage in shadows, gave the dance the effect of something half-hidden, half-revealed, like we were watching a secret unfold.
The curtain opened to reveal a dark stage, bare except for a line of dancers in the shadows – three men and six women – dressed in pressed black trousers and suit jackets, posed all alike, standing still and leaning slightly forward. The slow stark electronic music began and the primary dancer, bare-chested and dressed in raggedy loincloth shorts, entered from the side of the stage. He half-crawled, half-slithered across the floor, bathed in a harsh white spotlight, ignored by the other dancers. His movements reminded me of the way an amoeba moves across a microscope slide, jutting out one appendage, then another, sometimes this way, sometimes that way, the rest of the body following in a slow progression. Each movement seemed to cause the dancer anguish and pain, as if it was a great struggle to even be alive. Near the end of this dance segment, as the primary dancer continued his difficult journey, each of the other dancers stood straight up and backed away into the dark. The last in line noticed the primary dancer and stepped forward to watch him, an expression of fascinated disgust on his face, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing and didn’t know what to make of it. He stood there for a moment, then also backed away as the lights dimmed.
The next dance segment featured the entire company, the men dressed in the raggedy loincloth shorts, the women in similar shorts, some with tank tops and others with halter tops. The dancers moved to the rhythmic music in ways reminiscent of chimpanzees, squatting, or moving with their knees bent and their arms swinging behind them as they cavorted across the stage. From time to time, individuals and then groups together would do a “face-washing” motion, squinting their eyes shut, slapping their faces with both hands, then blinking as if to clear their eyes of some debris or obstruction.
Suddenly a red spotlight lit one dancer from above. The rest of the company scattered and scrambled offstage, leaving him alone in the light. He stood up a bit straighter, and as he danced, I got the impression that his movements were being controlled by something outside of him, like a stringed marionette. He seemed to be in pain and resisted, almost breaking free a few times, but as the segment went on, his movements grew less disjointed and painful, and more coordinated and flowing. The music built to a crescendo then suddenly stopped. The red light disappeared leaving the dancer standing upright, alone in the silence. He seemed to wonder what had happened to him and know that he would never be the same after his experience.
As he left the stage, a man and a woman entered. The man wore the same costume as before, but the woman had added a thin gauze-like unhemmed skirt which flowed with her movements. They danced to a Schubert lieder in what looked like a ballet pas de deux, except that their movements were angular, almost “raw.” Their arms and legs were bent, their toes not pointed, but ankles flexed. Each time the man lifted the woman, she cried out as if in pain. From time to time, they would revert back to the ape-like movements. It was like they were striving to reach a goal they could never quite touch, but they persevered, driven by a force they couldn’t quite understand. The poignancy of this dance – the juxtaposition of the balletic dance with the angular motions, the grasping for something just outside of reach without even really knowing what that thing was or if it was even worth the effort – nearly brought me to tears. This was, by far, my favorite segment in the entire piece.
The work progressed through several more solo, ensemble, and full company segments. In each one, the dancers’ movements seemed to become more refined, the ape-like movements fewer and farther between. The dancers stood more upright and gave the impression of gaining control over their bodies as the dance went on. The costumes changed, too. The men’s shorts changed from rags to velour, the women’s skirts became longer and hemmed, and both sexes added tops to their wardrobe, giving the impression that they were putting on “civilization” as they danced.
Here the professor wrote, "Well put - that is just what I am gathering as I read."
A woman appeared out of the shadows at the back of the stage. She was dressed in the pressed black trousers and suit jacket from the beginning. She stood erect, staring intently at the other dancers. They seemed to feel uncomfortable in her gaze and left the stage as if confused. As she faced down the last of the other dancers, she moved to the front and center of the stage, awash in a white spotlight from directly above. She began to dance in a combination of flowing and robotic movements. She pointed a single finger up toward the ceiling, then with her other hand, splayed her five fingers out to the audience. She repeated this several times throughout the segment, her movements becoming more frantic, more insistent as she danced. It seemed as if she was trying to tell us – the audience – something, trying to communicate some great truth that she had discovered and felt we must know.
Four men dressed in pressed black trousers, with white button-down shirts, hurried onto the stage. From time to time they glanced at their wrists as if checking their watches. They bustled about hither and yon, walking in circles, never seeming to notice the women they had just displaced from the stage. They didn’t even seem to notice each other, much less the audience. They moved very purposefully – and yet all the hustle-bustle seemed to not really mean anything at all. It was as if they were in their own little world, isolated from everything else, and nothing mattered except themselves.
Women entered, dressed in black trousers and suit jackets, dancing with pointed toes and extended arms and legs. One by one, the men left the stage, exchanged their white shirts for black suit jackets and returned. They lifted the women who seemed to sail across the stage like elegant swans on a lake. There were no cries of pain this time. Everybody seemed in perfect control of their bodies and danced with expressions of joy on their faces. From time to time, the angular motions returned, but they weren’t disruptive; they seemed to be natural and joy-filled, fully integrated into the dance. As the piece came to an end, the dancers shed their jackets and trousers, leaving them in a pile in the middle of the stage. They were dressed at the end as they were in the beginning, in raggedy loincloths. Each dancer stood fully erect, looking face-on at the audience as if daring us to continue what they had started.
It was like a declaration that as we humans grow and become more sophisticated, we shouldn’t lose sight of where we came from. The “raw” is nothing to be ashamed of, and indeed will always be a part of us and we should acknowledge and celebrate it rather than try to hide it.
Here the professor wrote, "What a glorious performance this must have been. I am thrilled you could attend. It sounds like you were transported into the piece, as I was in your re-telling. Bravo!"
My grade for this paper: A+.
Here's the YouTube video promo that the KDC put together for this show. The dances are not in the same order in the video that they are in the show, but it does open with the "amoeba" dance I describe, plus the Schubert dance is in there as well as the "5 & 1" dance. (I didn't talk about the other dances in the video, but they were all amazing.) The lighting is a bit different from what I remember, but maybe that theater had different equipment, or they've changed it a bit from when that was recorded. Anyway, here it is. Enjoy!
Jowitt, Deborah. “Beyond Description: Writing Beneath the Surface.” Moving History / Dancing Cultures: A Dance History Reader. Ed. Ann Dills and Ann Cooper Albright. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 2001. 7-11. Print.
Jowitt’s thesis is that when writing about dance, the writer should include enough description of what is actually happening – that is, the movements of the dancers, the scenery, lighting, etc. – to support the chosen criticism. She cautions, however, “Criticism can’t provide a print analogue for dance. Why should it?” In other words, include enough description so the reader knows what you’re referring to, but don’t try to describe every little detail, as that would detract from the expressive qualities of the dance. Some writers (such as Roger Copeland) don’t like descriptive writing and say, as Jowitt paraphrases, that it is “too intuitive, too close to the work, or demand too little brain power to count as intellectual.” Jowitt claims that descriptive writing can be useful for many types of criticism, and provides many examples to support her thesis.
Sklar, Deidre. “Five Premises for a Culturally Sensitive Approach to Dance.” Moving History / Dancing Cultures: A Dance History Reader. Ed. Ann Dills and Ann Cooper Albright. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 2001. 30-33. Print.
In this piece, Sklar puts forth five premises designed “to encourage an examination and widening of the frames through which we look at and conceptualize dance and movement.” These premises revolve around the idea that movement is culturally-specific – that the way a person from one culture moves will be different from the way a person from a different culture moves, or, even if the movement is the same, it will mean something entirely different – and that culture should be not just taken into account, but considered centrally when studying movement. Sklar goes further and claims that the movement itself may not be evidentiary of the concepts embodied by that movement on the surface, and that certain cultural knowledge can only be known via movement. Sklar writes of being “uncomfortable” with the “currently popular semiotic metaphor” that “overvalues the visual while ignoring the kinesthetic,” which seems to directly counter the point of the Jowitt article (that one must include a description of the dance when writing about it). Through the use of “empathic kinesthetic perception,” a combination of imitation and empathy which ignores the visual effects of movement and concentrates on the kinesthetic sense and the emotions the movement triggers in the dancer, and conversations with the dancers and other members of that culture (an attempt to guard against projection), Sklar has studied dance in various cultures. The article closes with the admonition that “we must do more than look at movement when we write about dance.”
At this point, my professor wrote: "dance criticism vs. dance ethnology"
Keali’inohomoku, Joann. “An Anthropologist Looks at Ballet as a Form of Ethnic Dance.” Moving History / Dancing Cultures: A Dance History Reader. Ed. Ann Dills and Ann Cooper Albright. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 2001. 33-43. Print.
Published in 1970, Keali’inohomoku writes that this article “is an attempt to bridge [the] communication gap” between anthropologists (who think of ballet as a form of ethnic dance) and dance scholars (who find that idea unacceptable). Keali’inohomoku’s thesis seems to be that dance scholars make distinctions between Western and non-Western dance that are not recognized by anthropologists, and that this shows the dance scholars’ ethnocentrism, a desire to separate “us” from “them.” Thus, “ethnic dance” becomes a placeholder for “non-Western,” and is conflated with “primitive,” which implies “inferior.” Anthropologists, on the other hand, use “ethnic dance” to “convey the idea that all forms of dance reflect the cultural traditions within which they developed,” an idea that the Sklar article seems to agree with (in fact, the Sklar article cites this Keali’inohomoku article). Keali’inohomoku lists several ways in which ballet contains cultural-specific details and is thus, an “ethnic dance” in the anthropological sense. Since these details are obvious to anyone who looks, Keali’inohomoku asks, “Why do we seem to need to believe that ballet has somehow become acultural? Why are we afraid to call it an ethnic form?” Keali’inohomoku closes the article with the affirmation that it’s ok to use the term “ethnic dance” as long as it is not derisive, but collective – that is, “a dance of a particular ethnic group,” which includes both Western and non-Western groups.
Keali'inohomoku, Joann W. "Angst Over Ethnic Dance." Cross Cultural Dance Resources Newsletter 10 (1990): 2-10. Print.
This article is a look back, 20 years later, over some of the same issues addressed by the previous article. Keali’inohomoku notes that EuroAmerican dancers are becoming more inclusive and credits this largely to the Information Age in which people all over the world are becoming more aware of other cultures. However, in this growing awareness and inclusiveness, the term “ethnic” is still seen as polarizing, as signifying “Otherness” and implying inferiority. As a result, movements are afoot to replace the word with suitable “euphemism” (as described by Keali’inohomoku), such as “world,” “multicultural,” “culturally diverse,” or “international,” etc. Keali’inohomoku maintains that each of these words has its own problems, and are either confusing or polarizing (or both). She writes, “The point is that the label of ethnic dance is contaminated [by negative connotations] and is unlikely to be purged [of those connotations].” How then should we label dance (or other means of expression)? Keali’inohomoku asserts that there is no need for a single over-arching label: “Bharatanatyam is Bharatanatyam; a Flamenco dancer is a Flamenco dancer. A dance is a dance and a dancer is a dancer.” In other words, let each dancer (regardless of ethnicity of the dance, dancer, or audience) describe themselves in whatever way they are comfortable doing.
My grade for this journal: "Excellent."
***
I'm not sure how to create a hanging indent in Blogger so I can do the proper MLA thing for the article titles, etc. If anybody knows, please let me know!
Just a quick update about how my classes are going:
Dance: We had 4 short scholarly papers to read. (We will be doing a lot of reading in this class, actually.) Our assignment was to write a paragraph synopsis on each article. Mine came to 3 full pages, but most everybody else's was only a half page! Did I write too much, or did they not write enough? I guess I'll find out Thursday.
UPDATE, SUN FEB 14, 2010: I asked the prof about this because it was entirely possible that I was over-doing it. (I know you're all shocked by this!) She replied that she does indeed want at least one paragraph about each of the readings. At the next class meeting, she went over this with the entire class, so it's now Official.
The class is an hour of lecture, then an hour of lab. For our lecture, we discussed 2 of the articles. I tried to give the other students a chance to speak up, but they were either too shy or had nothing to say. Those who did say things just touched the surface of things rather than delving into deeper critical analysis. I got the sense that the prof was a bit frustrated at the level and amount of discussion - at the end she said, "I do expect you *all* to participate in these discussions." I mean, come on! This is an Upper Division class; presumably, these students have all fulfilled their Lower Division requirements and so have had at least one class in Critical Analysis. I've decided not to let anybody stand in the way of my education, so from here on out, I'm going to say what I'm thinking and explore various modes of criticism, until the prof sees fit to tell me to be quiet. :-)
Maybe I'll even post my weekly reading/practice journals here....
UPDATE, SUN FEB 14, 2010:I have decided that I will post my journals and other writings here, but only after I've gotten them back, graded, from the professor. I put a link over in the right-hand nav panel so they can be quickly found.
Computer Music: So far, so good. I have very little experience with MIDI or synthesis, so I didn't really know what to expect in this class. We've been working with a piece of software called Reason and have been using virtual drum machines, mixers, delays, reverbs, and now Loop Effects to do our labs. The labs are pretty strict with *what* must be done with the equipment, but we have complete freedom to use whatever sounds we want (from the sound banks that come with the software). I'm looking forward to seeing what we do next!
GEO: GEO = General Education Oral Communication. All the other students just call it "jee-oh," so I figured I would, too. The prof is really good - you can tell she really cares about the students and how they do in class. She's supplementing the textbook with real-life examples as well as giving us all kinds of step-by-step advice and not just throwing us to the wolves, as in, "Here, go make a speech!"
I have to give a 2-3 minute How-To speech on Feb 18. My topic is: "How to save your cell phone (or other electronic device) after it's been dropped in water." Last night, she went around the room asking each student what their topic was to be & when I said mine, one of the other students exclaimed, "I could have used that information last week!" LOL.
Vocal Ensemble: Class was cancelled by the prof this week due to personal reasons. Meanwhile, I ordered a bunch of music for choir & bells from SheetMusicPlus.com so I'm hoping it will arrive soon & that some of them will be suitable for us to do!
Now, I've gotta go read 2 chapters in my GEO textbook (I bought the Kindle edition which was only $25, as opposed to $70 for the "e-Book" or $120 for the hardcover. I don't have a Kindle, but am using Amazon's free "Kindle for PC" software.) and take a quiz on it, then I've got to write a 3-4 page paper on a dance concert I went to on Friday night.
