Dance Styles
…interpretive dance…innovative dance…discursive dance…informative dance…illustrative dance…instructive dance…demonstrative dance…explanative dance…interpretative dance…expositive dance…declarative dance…illuminative dance…elucidative dance…
What are you illuminating/innovating/declaring/explaining/elucidating in your dance?
Pop Quiz
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Swiss food!
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All Art is Sampling
To follow up or expand (expound?) upon a recent Tweet – All art is sampling. When it comes down to it all artists take something whether that be a tool, a logic or an aesthetic from another artist. No one has every invented anything out of whole cloth.
Even the first cavefolk to take a burnt stick and scratch a deer into the wall of her/his very humble abode, was referencing something s/he saw somewhere else. Granted the deer was not an artist, but maybe so. I am sure that there is a dead French philosopher who has written about consciousness and and the creation of art. But anyways…
Duchamp was a sampler. Did he invent the urinal and the wall? Titian was a sampler. Did he invent the canvas?
What prompted these thoughts was a conversation I had with a woman after a performance I was in this past Monday at Schwelle7 – living together during – instant composed evening at Schwelle 7. I had given her a card for the dance on film festival I am organizing, On The Wall. After clearing up some confusion about dates and times of the festival, I told her about one of the films I would be presenting, Allemande Redux.
She wondered how I could call this my work. Sampling, she said, is not art. Hip hop and rap I wondered about. Where would those art forms be without sampling? Nobody is successful as an artist using sampling. I was at a loss for words. Still annoyed thinking about it. At the start of the conversation she said that she didn’t like Americans.
Why is it okay to say that you don’t like people from a certain country when it is not okay to say that you don’t like someone because of their religion, skin color, orientation etc.? Guess because those are more personal than what country you came from.
Anyways…everything is sampling unless you create a new aesthetic, a new tool, and a new logic all in one go.
Acocella Must Go
Below is a letter I sent to the NYer’s editor
Dance critic Joan Acocella is behind the times in her knowledge of contemporary dance practice and does a disservice to your readers. Repeatedly, she demonstrates her ignorance of contemporary dance practice- most recently, in her review “Think Pieces: Return of the Judsonites” in the May 24th, 2010 issue of the New Yorker. In it she writes, ” …improvisation, which by definition precludes any group pattern.” This statement is woefully inaccurate and is so subjective as to be useless for the New Yorker audience. Early dance improvisation may have had no easily discernible group patterns for minds wanting to see easily accessible forms such as found in classical ballet. However, as with all artistic practices, knowledge of the genre contributes to one’s understanding of works in that genre. Now, as dance improvisation has evolved and been more rigorously studied and performed, group pattern exists in complex, emergent and artful modes in concert dance improvisation. Granted that improvisational dance can be done poorly but it is not the definition of the genre.
The New Yorker needs more than one critic for dance. The other art forms have multiple critics writing about them in the New Yorker – Anthony Lane and David Denby for film; Alex Ross and Sasha Frere-Jones for music; Kelefa Sanneh and Peter Schjedahl for books – to name a few.
If the New Yorker’s critics for other art forms wrote articles with the same “breadth and depth” as Joan Acocella did, the only books, films, and music your readers could know about would be John Grisham novels, Tom Cruise’s latest star vehicle and whomever the latest teen pop phenomenon is. There is so much dance happening in the United States, and especially in its dance mecca – New York. It is time we hear about more of it and from more current voices.
Bags
Since I have moved to Berlin recently, I bought a bike. A Checker Pig Maru. I dig it. Matte black, minimal graphics, pretty light frame. Enclosed gear system, Nexus by Shimano. So now I have to learn how to wear or what to wear while biking. My Jack Spade messenger bag is okay – small, simple, black, but it keeps sliding forward while I am riding. And it can’t hold as much as my Osprey bag – Stratos 24. I really like that bag. Hugs the torso well and can hold a decent amount of stuff. Problem though is the visuals. For an urban bag it is too busy.
Jack Spade and Osprey need to team up and make urban bags. A dual strap bag, like my Osprey stays on the body so much better than the Spade bag. But the Osprey is too busy ( as I said above) too busy too busy too busy.
Take the shape of the Osprey and have the material of the Spade bag with a long top down flap with Velcro. Have a similar strap system to keep the bag close to the body.
just some simple thoughts…maybe I should look at ortlieb…
Logos
I have been working on a logo for a friend’s company. Not that he asked or anything, but it’s something I enjoy. Find the variables I like, tweak them, re-arrange them. Try to use something besides Futura, my favorite font. Though Gill Sans is growing on me as is Santu(?), I think it is called. But something about licensing came up when I saved the file. Below are a few rough mockups.
The investigation continues…
Walking backwards
I was in the studio today. Walked backwards for about 45 minutes. Thinking about chaos. When we (Lower Left) teach chaos, we tend to focus on chaos of the kinesphere, but rarely on location and vector/pathway. Space Haikus maybe, but never with the words chaos.
Walking backwards for an extended period of time allowed me to get past many crap tapes. It became quite a revelation to realize that I had yet been in a certain corner of the space and that I had not yet walked backwards with a certain section of the wall or a certain window in view yet. Also walking backwards leads to quite a pleasurable sensation in the feet. I experienced a familiar pathway in my feet but reversed. Quite a podiacal(?) enlightenment.
Could be quite a performance – walking backwards.
Walking backwards is a simple tool for finding chaos – chaos of direction, of duration, of location (which will not truly be achieved until we can teleport!). By limiting our options, we increase our awareness and thusly increase our palate. Or is it pallate or pallete?
A sense of ease and sense of chaos are not mutually exclusive. People stuck in habits can feel the swirl of chaos. Once we have an awareness of the chaos and the possibilities within do we achieve a sense of ease.
Training chaos is not to create chaos but to work within it and give us options.
Sub
This current economic crisis is another example of people not paying enough attention to language.
Sub-prime. They were called sub-prime mortgages. Sub-prime. SUB as in less than as in lower, as in not as good.
As in subpar.
As in substandard.
Yes, the prefix “sub” can be used with other words and not necessarily mean less than as in submarine, subway, substitute (though, there ain’t nothing like the real thing, baby! And what is a stitute?).
But pair the word sub with prime…
Below prime, less then prime, under prime…
Would you be surprised if the grade “F” eggs you bought were spoiled and gave you food poisoning?
Would you be surprised if you went to a no star motel and it was a dump?
Would you be surprised if you paid $15.99 for a flat screen TV and it didn’t work?
If so, you have a future in finance and or politics in the US.
Quota
Seems like FB and Twitter have taken all my mojo and I can’t write any posts here. Sorry.
Well, maybe blogger.com could make an iPhone app…hmm…doesn’t sound too hard.