Tag: art

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Styles of Dance

Jazz dance has Fosse, Simonson ( the only two I know of) and I sure many more styles

Modern has Horton, Graham, Limon.

Ballet has Vaganova, Cecchetti, Russian, Danish, English styles, to just name a few.

Yoga has Vipassana, Hatha, Jivamukti, Svaroopa, Ashtanga, Bikram and…

Say Jazz, modern, ballet, or yoga and most people will have some idea of what you are talking about. Might not be exactly what you mean, but in the ballparl

Contact Improvisation, as of know, has one name. Yes, there are regional styles – West Coast, East Coast, European. But as CI is so young compared to the other movement modalities mentioned (how old is Yoga?!?), it has not been around long enough to change and become codified.

Eventually Contact Improvisation will become codified and that is just as good as it is bad. Codification can lead to clarity, but also to ossification. Codification can then also let practitioners of the form reject was has come before and discover new ground within a form. If CI does not expand and grow (some people might see this as becoming something else and the death of the form) it will stagnate.

I look forward to how many styles and flavors of CI there will be in another 38 years.

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Investing in an Improvisation

Language is a powerful tool. And as with all tools, it is empowering and limiting at the same time. After teaching at Dance Ranch Marfa BERLIN and performing as part of the performance marathon at Ponderosa, I have been thinking about the word “invest”.

What does it mean to invest in an improvisation? To invest in material? Other terms for a similar idea are “t0 mine that vein” of material. Again the idea of “going in” is present. The idea of “going in” in relation to an improvisation is telling. Why do we need to go in, to invest in material to create and develop material? It shows an idea that to create and develop material we need to shut out and remove ourselves from outside stimuli. I can’t think of a more limited place in terms of external stimuli than a mine. Why would we want to work/improvise/create from a place of limited awareness and options?

The idea of “investing in material” leads spatial static work. Going in…into a black hole that sucks you in. Somewhat dramatic of an image…

And if the rest of the ensemble is there to take care of the space, the composition while you and partner(s) invest in material, that leads to even further imbalance between the investors and the ensemble. The investors implode and the ensemble waits for them to resurface.

Take the word “invest”. INvest. How about OUTvest? How would we outvest in material during an improvisation?

Why can’t our awarenesses go outwards when we are mining material in an improvisation? Why isn’t the spatial care taking of the ensemble the mother lode to be mined?

Some other nascent thoughts-

using the Four Winds in CI to explore spatial awareness.
mining the space metaphor relating to Cloud City in Star Wars

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3 Types of Movies

There are four types of movies-

1. I’ll watch the preview of it.
2. I’ll watch the movie on a plane.
3. I’ll rent the movie.
4. I’ll actually go to the theater and see it.

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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?

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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.

Good luck!

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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.

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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…

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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.

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Neo Classical

from West Coast Dance Festival ‘s section of definitions


11. Neo Classical: Classical ballet developed to a new classical of abstract lines with

classical technique along the lines originated by George Balanchine or similar masters.

Ø A form of dance with less formal approach to body, arm and foot positions.

Ø Minimal use of props.

Ø Simple costume with no sequins or fancy trims.

Ø Flexibility of body without acrobatic tricks, can include splits & Handstand to the floor.

Ø Music from any era – instrumental or vocal – however classical steps must

Ø Be adhered to.

Ø Ballet pumps or pointe shoes to be worn.

Ø Neo Classical is not:-

Ø Acrobatic tricks.

Ø Rhythmic Gym or Calisthenics.

Ø Slow Modern, Contemporary or Negro Spiritual.