Hi Class!!!
Here we are with our own blogger.com site. With this first assignment, what I ask of you is that you watch the required videos, do whatever additional research you might be interested in doing, and choose to comment if something strikes your interest. Also, feel free to pose questions to one another. But always be respectful of other's thoughts and opinions. Conflicting opinions is great, but only if we honor everyone's aesthetic.
So, lets get started:
We talked last week about what is going on in contemporary dance now. Of course, contemporary dance continues to grow. Where once there were the original four, now are countless choreographers making all kinds of work and asking different questions. Though the post-modern techniques of release and contact improvisation have thrived over the last 50 years, some of the core philosophies of that originating post-modernist era have been overlooked by next generations. Now, international choreographers are picking up on these core philosophies and making work that starts to surpass the work started by American artists. That is not to say that these experimental philosophies aren't happening here in the US, but with budget cuts to funding in the arts in the late 80's, producers and theaters wanted to present work that people were familiar with. Work that would be safe and make them money. That is why Alvin Ailey is so well known and yet such an old dance company. His most popular work was made in the mid-1950s. What does that say about progress in the arts in America?
So, the artist that I am highlighting in this post is Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and her company Rosas from Brussels. I have given you two videos. One appears as a link and is an interview with her (5 min) and the other which is a previous post is a short dance excerpt (5 min). It is a recent piece of hers called The Song. She is one of the leading choreographers of our time and her work travels all over the world. These are trained dancers and this is set choreography. Many of you brought up questions about trained vs. untrained, set vs. improvised, and everyday movements vs. "dance". I think this piece demonstrates the line between all of these things well. Let me know what your thoughts are.
http://bcove.me/7nclvk3b
Also - the link to her website: www.rosas.be
Enjoy,
Alicia
I think it is really interesting to have this piece not accompanied by music and I love the idea that you can actually hear movement in addition to seeing it. I've never seen anything like that before, and I think that concept could lead to a lot of new possibilities in the future.
ReplyDelete-Jenna Klein
I actually really enjoyed this piece. The lack of music really caused me to concentrate on the movements themselves, instead of being caught up in the music. However, at the same time, I don't think this piece was completely unmusical. As the dancer said in the interview, they started out thinking The Song would be set to music, but eventually it was stripped away. The dance has its own sort of internal soundtrack, as evidenced by the two male dancers who move with amazing synchronicity. The footsteps created by the woman only serve to accentuate certain movements, much as a drum beat or cymbal crash would in music. In this day and age I think we often fall into a "more is better" mentality. But The Song is a very stripped down, back-to-basics sort of dance. It's a refreshing take on the relationship of dance and music. Instead of movement being reliant on music, this piece almost has you wondering what kind of music should be created for this dance.
ReplyDelete--Megan Ouyang
Watching the interview of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, I feel that there's something about her that shows how much compassion she has for dance. It is inspiring to me. I often hear scientists have compassion on their researches. Yet, now I see a great dancer figure/composer is as much inspiring as scientists.
ReplyDeleteI learned from these two videos are dance is movement, and dance is music. I think the first movement after walking was repeated in The Song; the only difference is that the dancer took off his shoes in the second time of the movement. Then, there were more dramatic movements followed by another dancer.
It is an interesting dance piece. From the title, I am guessing that the dance is describing a song. It has the begining of the song and the dramatic part of the song, then, the ending of the song. However, to be honest, I can not come up to any concept what it is meant to be; yet, it does show that how dance can be presented without music in the background.
Lilia Scafaru
ReplyDeleteI thought it was so interesting the fact that the male dancer didn't seem like he was putting much effort in his dance. In all the dance forms, we see so much strive to make the movements perfect, beautiful. But this dance showed the beauty of dancing without depending on music or depending on making the movements just right. Also I thought it was very interesting that he took of his shoes, and that is when I trully saw the music in his movements. It shows that our bodies have their own music; they do not need special shoes or clothes to express its melody.