Beauty and Virtuosity

This week’s theme for my composition class is beauty and virtuosity. We’re not finitely defining these by any means — that attempt would be both naive and in vain. Instead we discuss the different possibilities of what can be seen as beauty, what can make something virtuosic. We discussed the beauty of dance as revealing human capacity and, as Jesse said, thus showing hope for our potential. I could not agree more. We can make dances about healing the sick, providing for the poor — they may or may not have an effect on people. These are worthy endeavors. But we don’t have to save the world in one fell swoop. Virtuosity in dance can prove that the potential in our bodies is endless, that the potential of our minds is endless, that we just need to keep exploring. It can light a fire under us as viewers, or it can merely expand our minds a bit, an expansion which builds and motivates in itself.

 

A few beautiful things from the past week:

The view from my daily lunch spot outside Baldwin. Tiff and I tend to fall asleep sprawled underneath this beautiful sky

A birthday surprise from Caitlin Very lovely artwork, I must say.

 

Hiphop combo from Lashaun’s class

 

Celebratory bowling dance. We like dance in all forms.

the world in which we undressed together

yesterday was my turn at what some consider the yearly celebration of the day they were born. for me, it is a day that triggers a million different thoughts and emotions — all of which overwhelm me and none of which I can sort out or recognize. This day has never been so heavy for me. It brings up memories of my mother. It reminds me that somewhere out there in the woman from whose womb I arrived, that somewhere out there are 5 other people half like me…3 others who know her and have her constant love and care…2 others who wonder, like me, who she is. how she thinks. what she does. it confuses me why I react so strongly when I’m not consciously lining out these thoughts on paper as some sort of list of reasons to be sad or contemplative. but I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me. whether they are conscious thoughts or not, they are there and I can’t escape the truths of my existence. These are the things that make me who I am, and the things they cause me to feel distant from everyone I know and love. It’s noone’s fault, it just is.

And so I enter into my next choreographic exploration. A duet. Two distant characters. I challenged myself at the beginning of this festival to begin with a title, then to create movement. I did not think a theme or narrative would intrude so strongly into the two, but it did. We began working in my composition class on a project to address an “urgent theme.” This was suppose to be “the dance that would speak to and change the world.” Of course, we laughed while saying that, knowing how ambitious and naive an attempt that would be. Jesse asked us to bring in images of such a theme which we felt drawn to address. My image was of an adorable little girl with dark brown bouncing ringlets and oversized glasses. Her father held her over the produce scale at the grocery store, bananas in her hands. Her smile was bigger than her face. I thought of how many children there are in the world who don’t have the opportunity to smile at bananas. Who don’t have the support of two arms.
I then began a debate with myself — of how I can be so concerned with the children in the world who have no stable family, be so concerned with the need for parents to adopt, when I myself was a neglect of those children. It scares me, but I don’t deny that sometimes I think surrogacy is selfish. I don’t want to criticize my parents’ choice to go this route, because I know their wishes were genuine and loving. To have such a strong maternal and paternal calling is admirable and a blessing. I can’t resolve my debate, but I can dig deeper into that which brought me into the world. Sorry Jesse, I’m avoiding the assignment. This may not be an urgent theme for the world, but it’s a step for me towards getting to that urgent theme.

The images of surrogacy for me are pressing, and they are the pictures from which I can now shape the movement. I’m not very far along in the process, but I’m already fully immersed. For the moment I’m exploring one character, one dancer. I’m curious to see her as a soloist before the duet comes into play, as that is only fitting for this process and situation. I don’t know this other character. She is only assumptions, and she can only be viewed for me from the perspective of the first dancer.

Listen to: Loscil – Cotom

A dance of flavors…

My sad attempt to relate this posting to dance… though the mussels we consumed this fair night were dancing in their shells prior to being boiled in those same shells. Ah, there’s that Biblical connection between dancing and death again (see: Psalm 30).
Just wanted to post a few photos of a necessary aspect of the American Dance Festival: rest, that is. We made a lovely feast of mussels in a red sauce with italian bread and a good ol’ corona (or two).

Photos to prove:

The Finished Product, Picnic-style

the eating process

when the little buggers were still alive and biting (literally, my fingernails)

the plate

Sequencing

This morning I took class from Kate Jewett, the rehearsal director for Shen Wei Dance Arts. The class was 2 hours of sweat-dripping, spine-sequencing, joint-bouncing, center-shifting bliss. She explained and demonstrated the concepts of Shen Wei’s movement in a way that was so clear and manageable, despite the incredible level of difficulty. 

We began with breathing techniques (by the way, I was already drenched at the end of these). In Re- (Part I), there is this shuffling backward movement the dancers do through the confetti mandala on the floor. Their feet make a very distinct, parallel pathway, and they sink backwards from their cores, effortlessly, curving along the floor. The type of breathing involved in this simple movement starts at the base of the pelvis and travels up the back of the spine. The fingertips engage before the upper arms, leading the arms in breath upwards. 30%. 40%. 50%. All the way to 80% at which point the fingertips led toward the sky, the feet were pulled onto relevé, and in exhaling down the spine, the pelvis shifted backwards and took the body on a light descent backwards. This breathing took more lung capacity than I quite had, but it was calming and expansive.

From there we moved into some walking exercises, considering a sort of magnetic relation to our neighbors, bouncing off of or being drawn to one another’s energy, using the most efficient response to their proximity and being.

We worked a good bit on the sort of bouncing that is utilized in Shen Wei’s “Rite of Spring,” a piece I saw at ADF two years ago. It involves a sense of rebound, and finding a rest in the joints that leans and connects, but does not fully sink. It was interesting to see this jolting movement within a repertory that I think of so much as being constantly fluid and sequential.

A floor exercise took a good 30 or 45 minutes and a whole lot of stamina. I will post a video excerpt of it once I upload from my camera. Leg swings emphasizing heaviness,placing the weight forward in between to not strain the back or abs, and sequencing through the back and arms. The combination worked with gravity and momentum, reaching and extending.

We did a few quicker exercises for movement in the limbs, emphasizing feet like hands and circular motions — figure eights of the hands and arms, flat inverted feet rond de jambe-ing along the floor. 

Our final exercise was one in full spine movement and initiation, beginning small, side-to-side motions dragging the spine and then arm along, extending out and out. We then moved into floor transitioning and more center-shifting. Also a combination of which I have a video. The undulation through the spine was both satisfying and therapeutic. To feel the roll through the natural curves of the spine reminded me of my body’s anatomy and how it requires me to nurture it. I was also able to use knowledge gained so far in Jesse Zaritt’s class about rotation and sequencing — it’s nice to be able to use this base of knowledge within varying class experiences.

Class grade: A+

First thoughts

As I embark on a year outside academic structures and organization, I reach for something to reel in my thoughts and efforts. Here I will verbalize my inner conversations. Talk about my projects. Clear out my head and begin to explore what it means to create dance as an artist in the “real world.” 

I am spending the summer at the American Dance Festival. Classes have just begun and I’ve already experienced a full mix of apprehension, ecstasy, confusion, excitement and anger. I debate dance as an art form for myself. I debate the necessity of art itself. If there is one thing I have learned in the end months of college and the approaching “career” life, it is that I can’t live alone. We can’t live alone. The world demands this necessary community — to function and to find outlet for both joy and suffering. And so I question how dance brings people together — when it is so inaccessible to many. I question what impact dance can have to relieve suffering. Whether that is or is not its purpose. Whether I could be better using my energy to contribute to this community. Perhaps it is because I have suffered in a way I did not expect that I seek to help others deal with their own suffering, and perhaps that is why I question my role in the dance community — seeking to find how I can do just this through dance making, or if I can. In light of these questions and challenges, I continue my compositional research, doing movement, watching movement, creating performances, watching performances, bringing together audiences, watching audiences. Seeing how all respond. Seeing how I respond.

I invite your feedback, your thoughts, your questions. Whatever ideas you may have, I ask that you share as part of this community of people all searching for something different and something the same. 

—

Performance Reflections 

Last night we viewed two performances. The first, a site-specific premiere by Mark Dendy and various community and ADF performers. The work found its home at the sparkling new Durham Center of Performing Arts. This monument to the arts is a geometric alignment of simple green trees folding red-carpeted stairways, and quiet corners into which Mr. Dendy tucked his creeping, robotic dancers. Their movement itself was athletic, directed and in a full state of automation. Lines of dancers executed the same movements simultaneously, drone-like. The architecture of it, however, made this droning sense beautiful. The DPAC was alive. The concrete moved. The stair rails circled. Strange formal guests wandered the lobby with rectangular mirrors with only eye holes, handing out pink champagne and clinging to the red carpet  like tree frogs. 

I was truly impressed and proud of my art form. ADF really might be the home of an art form.

The event of the night, however, was Shen Wei Dance Arts, a company I’ve seen perform a number of times, and which I grow to love more and more with each viewing. This set brought together his past two works entitled Re- (Part 1) and Re- (Part 2) with a world premiere of Re- (Part 3), the “re” representing a sense of renewal and rejuvenation, a new coming. I enjoyed all three of the works, and think the way the dancers move effortlessly, sequencing and circling their bodies so fully and with such speed is breathtaking. I found myself focusing in Parts 1 and 3 however on the overall painting-like image Shen Wei created. The constant rotation and flow created this moving portrait, colors blurring, drops of paint jumping from the canvas. Part 2 began with this same sense of unity among the dancers, no one dancer drawing solid individual attention as a separate being. Yet when one dancer came out, body painted in white, topless wearing only sleek shorts, my body began to melt. There was something incredibly honest in the contortion and relaxation of this body. she lie mermaid-like on her side in a pale white spotlight. Her head draped limply backwards, her left elbow supporting her, but jutting into her side, shoulder forced into her neck. There was this captivated abandon, involuntary. Sweat coated her bare chest — an image that struck me in particular as genuine. Had she been perfectly dry, I may have seen a completely statue-esque body, instead I saw a malleable, emotional body, driven to pose and lie lifeless. It was for me a mixture of beauty and proof of the human effort — a depiction of constant attempts to use our bodies for good, resulting in fatigue and disappointment — but oddly enough, I was not brought down by this image, but in a sense I was proud and in awe of this human effort and raw human beauty.

Combining the two, here is a site-specific performance by Shen Wei Dancers in reaction to an installation art piece by Ernesto Neto:

Shen Wei Dance Arts at ‘Anthropodino’

Posted to New York Magazine by jgreen on June 03, 2009

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