Guests

MIWA & VIDEO PERFORMANCE

Incorporation of the body throughout her early work; imagining visually–like taking an egg out; reaching out through time and space like how would it feel touching the moon; surreal work; gestural place specifically with the physical body and the affect that that would have

not a story but a series of impressions that are physical and mental; physical connection to time and space; doesn’t use 3d meaning like no cartoon arms or anything so every physical thing is a little twitchy and off in a way; finding her idiosyncratic ways

group work: relationship between video and physical creating some kind of off mismatched feeling; broken up per scene so we can control perception but the music was live so it wasn’t moment for moment the same each time it was informed by the performer and the video; now it’s more prerecorded with some live music again goes per scene;

working a lot on gaze–the performer can’t be looking at the screen but rather seeing past the mountain in the distance; creating a pretend connection between the media and the performer

JOSH & LIGHTING

lighting is usually following; there’s a way in which he feels his way through and then arrive at the other side knowing how it’s supposed to look; the final product is in the space–everything happens there…you can move the dance you can listen wherever but with lighting its now or never in that space; want to discover it when you get into the space;

it is the feeling of the piece, the particular look, the cue. 2 types of cues: music cues or movement cues; how do you pick which to go off of? off of the music more in regard to tone but the movement more in regards to specifics–usually the music is a very serious grounding force has been added in to what’s occurring so it informs the mood of what’s happening it’s going to be a different feeling over all; making choices–he can’t tell you why but it just feels right, to everyone

costume and lighting: the color matters; the costume can limit the lights and vice versa

lighting and dance; lighting is supposed to inform but not distract from the pieces; lighting helps them watch the dance

ETHEL

Physicality of rhythm is an essential part of music; the weight that you give to one beat versus the lift you give to another beat; creativity is this burning thing that it was it is and danced has resisted being divided and physically taken down like music on a page–to explain what you want is impossible without just doing it;

MARY ELLEN CHILDS

running ideas by the composer and then she placed and wrote the movement; and the choreography came next; or a solo flute piece with lots of movement or at least something to look at; music behind the audience and the movement; sometimes it’s just not the right relationship and you have to walk away; she doesn’t believe in an actual equal relationship because someone has to start it–being the lead or being a follower and neither is less but still working together

Lucinda Childs

“a clear, no-frillsbeauty; sharp intelligence that’s a little unreadable; great underlying structure”

Lucinda Childs was born in 1940 in New York City and wanted to be an actress by the age of six. However as she grew up she realized that acting wasn’t for her and instead went to study dance in an undergraduate program and joined Merce Cunningham’s company after graduating. Her strong desire to act since the beginning is important to remember because much of her later work has theatrical elements, making her modern dance style quite unique.

While classically trained she later desired to branch out and explore dance in another way, thus she joined the newly formed Judson Dance Theater and began choreographing. She explained these contrasting desires in an article from The Guardian when she essentially said that she would continue studying with Cunningham, so a strict, balletic training, while in the afternoons heading to Judson and “carrying around a mattress or something”. This dichotomy has enabled Childs to create a very technically beautiful choreography style with more post-modern twists than one would expect from a classically trained Cunningham student.

Childs has faced financial struggles like many other choreographers and has traveled to Europe and the United States creating and dancing with companies in each. Now to delve into her work.

Einstein on the Beach:

This piece was composed by Philip Glass and began their career together.

Dance:

Glass and Childs wanted to create another piece together just the two of them and worked to create this one. The music came first and was altered as it went along, which is what she and Glass talk about in the following interview clip.

Interview:

min. 14:20

Bibliography:

Boynton, Andrew. “Lucinda Childs in Command.” The New Yorker. The New Yorker, 24 Sept. 2012. Web. 5 Mar. 2015. <http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/lucinda-childs-in-command&gt;.

“Lucinda Childs Dance.” Lucinda Childs Dance. Web. 5 Mar. 2015. <http://www.lucindachilds.com&gt;.

Roy, Sanjoy. “Step-by-step Guide to Dance: Lucinda Childs.” The Guardian. The Guardian, 18 Oct. 2011. Web. 5 Mar. 2015. <http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2011/oct/18/step-guide-dance-lucinda-childs&gt;.

 

 

 

OSU MFA Reflection

Feb. 20, 2015

Last week we went to OSU to see the performance of three different works choreographed by graduate students. They three were very diverse and had elements–choreographic and performance wise–that created three beautiful pieces.

1 Silt

The quote serving as the description for this piece essentially talks about how different places leave marks on us as people and create an intense feeling that leaves us marked in new ways forever. Personally I didn’t really get that from the piece. It was a solo, choreographed and performed by the same woman and was a very beautiful performance to watch. There were strips of paper about a foot wide and really long hanging from ceilings and laying on the ground. They were crumpled so it created loud sounds whenever the dancer interacted with them and they also created a very weird, kind of off kilter screen for some videos. Almost the whole time there was footage of rocks or other nature scenes playing on it and I think that really worked. It created a very innovative space that drew in the audience. I honestly do not remember the music. I think it was some ambient, non descriptive set of sounds…all I remember was the sound of the paper which I think made it an even more memorable piece because the choreography was literally creating the sound. She was very intentional whenever she walked on it, or rolled in the paper and when they fell from the ceiling she interacted in a very intentional way which I very much appreciated. I really enjoyed her choreography; it was very fluid and had a really organically beautiful quality to it.

2 Laminated Glass

I really appreciated the idea behind this piece even if I don’t think the choreographer quite got there. This piece was inspired by laminated glass, which is a type of windshield that consists of two layers of glass that create a sense of singularity, thus the dance focuses on duets working as one and individuals simultaneously. Personally, I think six was too many people for this cast. It just looked too over crowded and drew the attention away from the choreography because so many people were trying to do so many different things. I loved the idea though and I felt that there were really great moments throughout the piece. For example when eh two men were standing in opposite corners in squares of light doing similar movements, the audience could really see the way that movements look different on different human bodies which I thought was beautiful and fascinating to watch. Again I don’t really remember the music because for one, the movements I found were pretty distracting and all consuming, and secondly I think it was similar to the first in its use of ambient  sound.

3 Les Fauves

I thought that this piece was the most well put together of all three. Only a trio, the choreographer took inspiration from a small art movement in which artists used bright colors and unconventional boldness to create their own works and identities. I thought that all three of the dancers interacted beautifully while still bringing their own personality and identity into the movement. The use of music with this one was specifically noticeable because the choreographer decided to use a Prince song in the middle of the piece. I think it would be really interesting to talk to the choreographer about her use of that song in that moment because it was so jarring and a really cool experience as an audience member, almost comical. And because the performers were very serious and simply walking exactly to the beat, it created an off kilter, artsy feeling that surprisingly went really well with the piece.

Reading Summary 2.9.15

Mark Morris:

Two of the three readings for this week dealt with choreographer Mark Morris and his choreographic style and some of the criticisms he has received. One of the main critiques is his use of music visualization or “mickey mousing”. In one piece the author discusses his use of an imitation of choral singing, in that he had dancers set up as they would be set up for a choral concert, each corresponding to bass, alto and tenor. While some critics appreciate his use of this technique and compare him to Balanchine, others aren’t as pleased. Morris famously said “People forget that somebody actually choreographed what Mickey Mouse does”. I thought that this quote summed up Morris nicely in that he added a layer of complexity and nuance to a style of technique that during this time was quickly losing popularity. While he did definitely use that technique he also asked the audience to question the simplicity of this technique specifically in Gloria; to question the simplicity of “simply translating the score”. Because he also utilized choreomusical counterpoint to create something else entirely; to completely sever the dance and the music. Following another idea, I really liked the idea of how his dances allow the audience to hear the music without being distracted by the musicality of the dance. But that caused me to wonder if whether or not the music was distracting from the dance. How did he find that balance? Did he find a balance? Maybe he prioritized music too much? By looking at some videos of his choreography I hope to answer those questions for myself.

Making Music:

This section of Making Music for Modern Dance really focused on the idea of an American sound and an American type of dance. For many of the people mentioned within this reading, the dancing was creating this first and the music needed to catch up; the composers needed to be able to match and make an American sound as well. I really appreciated the essays that focused on the relationship between choreographer and composer. I liked a lot of the ideas that the essay written by Woody Gurtherie’s daughter mentioned. Specifically how Sophie choreographed to the record and then when he came in to play it live, it was really difficult for both to adapt. Like usually either the music or the dance is pretty set and the other conforms to it, but to have both of them messing up was a refreshing look on it that I don’t think we’ve seen thus far in the book. In addition I liked the part about how Graham choreographed and the very intentional relationship between the movement and the music, no matter which came first. The music she used forced focus on the gesture which was where she wanted it. I was also intrigued with the idea of a visual rhythm. I feel like I love choreographing to music because it at least gives me some sort of sense of rhythm which apparently Graham was absolutely set against. I think that exploring with the idea of seeing a rhythm without any sound would open so many doors for choreographing that I can’t wait to examine.

Choreography-this was written by hand

When approaching the choreography for this song, I immediately felt kind of overwhelmed. The song is only piano but it’s very staccato and repetitive. My initial thought was to have the some sort of movement that corresponds to every piano key; I felt that this would really accurately lead to a music visualization because then it would seem like the piano was coming from me or my movements were controlled by the piano, which either way would be a very clear and synced relationship. That ended up being too difficult which I quickly realized once I started to choreograph. However I couldn’t get that idea of it matching in that sense out of my head so I went about still following the piano keys but in a freer way. In order to make sure that I kept the same feeling, I really focused on the accents within the piece. I think that the piece is kind of surprising because as soon as you think you have the short repetitive phrase down, there’s just one more piano note, or an extra “ping” at the end of the phrase so I really tried to utilize the element of surprise in my movement to evoke the same feeling. This type of music visualization–following the inspiration of the music to choreograph rather than just strictly the notes–was talked about in some of our readings and it really resonated with me. I like that idea of two pieces working together to create something bigger that still flows from the same emotional or inner place.

Anyway, once I did some improv and really started getting somewhere I decided to really use the repetitive pattern and twist it in a way to fit into my choreography. Thus, I added the head turn. This is a very simple and easy movement but I feel that it really fits with the essence of the music. It shows that surprise and almost eagerness that feels present in the piece.

One of the biggest challenges that I found specifically with this music piece was really getting a sense of it. I’ve only been working on it for a while but I still feel surprised and like I’m constantly anticipating the pauses and phrases. To combat this–until I can hopefully kind of memorize the music so as to really master the movement and time it exactly–I’ve been holding off on my movements. Every time I do it the timing is different and I think this creates a cool effect within the piece as well. I don’t know how exactly it’s going to turn out, the audience doesn’t know how it’s going to turn out, the music is still a constant surprise so I think it creates an almost anxious, on the edge of your seat effect.

Feedback & Reflection

+deliberate focus; sense of unbalance incorporated with the rise and fall of music; attention to hands; isolated motion into full movements; remnants of the music within body movements;

-more head turning with maybe different facings; facing so could have seen the fingers in front of me or slow it down so there’s more intention; fingers seemed out of nowhere and out of place, maybe put them in the beginning or make a way to make them make sense–foreshadow or return back to it; too much traveling to the back? longer movements? or quality shift to possible more fluid?–remember we are doing music visualization

Take 2.

Flowing and organic music. It added some breath and fullness to my dancing. More torso and spine movement. Momentarily forgot what came next it was harder to anticipate the movements.

Ohio 5 Reflection

On February 7, 2015 we, the Denison Dance Department, travelled to Kenyon University to attend the second annual Ohio 5 Dance Conference. The idea is to get five different dance departments together with students and faculty and have a constructive and slightly different learning experience that what each of us is having independently at our own universities. Different faculty members taught and we had movement classes and discussions.

 

Our first class was taught by Trisha Bauman and was a somatic, warm up, get in touch with your body type class. We began with walking and then gradually increasing in energy up into more improvisational, free flowing movement. However, we always started and continued to focus on our foot and the relationship to our feet to the floor; how does weight play into that, what does it feel like to go through your foot, can we bring these senses to be more heightened things like that. She had me for a while I think but once I lost it I had a really hard time getting that same type of mindset back. At Denison we’ve done classes like that with a mental image kind of guiding the movements but for me it wasn’t really working this time. Perhaps there were too many people, or I couldn’t aptly visualize what she was needing just o visualize but by the end I was mostly just tired and kind of confused. I just felt that I wasn’t in tune with what she was saying; like we were on different wave lengths.

 

After that class we had lunch and then went into an improvisation class. I’ll admit I was kind of hesitant to take this class–only because I love Solo’s class so much and because I’m not the  most experienced with improv, I really don’t like just jumping off the deep end and going, especially when I’m outside the safe space of our dance building. Anyway, I loved it. It was taught by this woman name Kora and if you’re talking about wave lengths, we were definitely on the same one. We started with small movements with our eyes closed and gradually moved up to more outside, bigger movements. I also felt that this class was super helpful for this choreography one because we were directly relating music to movement. For example, in one exercise, her husband would come and around and give us some sort of beat or sound on the saxophone and whatever way we took that into our bodies, we had to maintain it and keep rolling with it. It was a great exercise in memory but also in trusting your gut and kind of doing whatever it seems like the music wants you to do. It was music visualization in the coolest sense and it actually made it easier to remember what our sound sounded like. I also loved seeing the relationship that developed from the individual sounds, to the individual movements, to the greater movements of the group as a whole as well. It really showed the cohesiveness that can work in a group improv setting if people just kind of agree to go with it.

Aaron Copland

“So long as the human spirit thrives on this planet, music in some living form will accompany and sustain it and give it expressive meaning.”

Biography

Aaron Copland was born in New York in 1900 and began playing piano and composing music shortly thereafter.By 1920 he had published his first composition called The Cat and the Mouse which was strictly for piano. Throughout this time he continued studying in Paris and eventually returning to New York where his work within orchestras and taught and continued composing.

Copland wanted to create a truly American style of music; he longed to free composers from the ties to Europe influences within their music. So, in his early works for example, he incorporated jazz because it was the first genuinely American major musical movement and by using that he could sever ties with Europe. He also began expanding his vocabulary to include other indigenous sounds and styles, such as Mexican folk music in “El Salón Mexico”.

Not only was he a prominent composer who worked on ballets, movies and other concerts, he was also an author and lecturer on music and the importance of it as an art form. Through this he was an actively engaged member in many musical organizations that still exist today such as the American Composers Alliance and the League of Composers. Furthermore, by 1950, he revealed himself as a brilliant conductor and thus took his own works throughout the world conducting orchestras.

Throughout the remainder of his life, he continued working and eventually donating much of his work and ideas to the Library of Congress and other organizations in order to preserve his work. He composed over thirty one works ranging from orchestral, ballet, film, chamber, solo piano and vocal music.

Important Works

“A Lincoln Portrait” (1942)

This piece was commissioned during WWII “to mirror the magnificent spirit of our country” in music. Therefore Copland was inspired by Abraham Lincoln and used some of his speeches and letters to Congress in order to compose this piece. The composition is entirely his own music but uses Lincoln’s words to further create the image of Lincoln and the great American legacy he left.

“The Heiress” (1949)

“The Heiress” is an American film from 1949 about a young woman who falls in love with an attractive young man who only wants her for her fortune. However he leaves her at the alter and doesn’t return until she is officially rich and she instead takes her revenge. Copland wrote the musical score for this which actually won an Academy Award.

“Appalachian Spring” (1944)

Originally titled “Ballet for Martha”, Copland was commissioned to create a work for Martha Graham that dealt with pioneering American themes. This was a ballet by and performed by Martha Graham with an ensemble. The music and dance complement each other really nicely and in a  whimsical way that reflects the youthful aspiration in the American heartland. This work was well received by many people because of the light and arid sounds of the small orchestra.

Citations

Aaron Copland: About the Composer. (2005, July 11). Retrieved February 17, 2015, from http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/aaron-copland/about-the-composer/475/

Aaron Copland Collection | Collections | Library of Congress. (n.d.). Retrieved February 17, 2015, from http://www.loc.gov/collection/aaron-copland/about-this-collection/

American Composers Orchestra – David Raksin Remembers His Colleagues. (n.d.). Retrieved February 17, 2015, from http://www.americancomposers.org/raksin_copland.htm

Milestones of the Millennium. (n.d.). Retrieved February 17, 2015, from http://www.npr.org/programs/specials/milestones/991027.motm.apspring.html

Taubman, H. (1953, February 1). Copland on Lincoln. Retrieved February 17, 2015, from http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/03/14/specials/copland-onlincoln.html

Notes on Choreography

Reflections of my first choreography project:

A lot of my feedback was in regard to the aspects of my actual performance. I really appreciated the feedback about changing the mood of my performance specifically when the music was added. Before the music I had an attitude of coolness and performance but with the music, which was kind of a dark haunting arhythmic piece, I maintained the same attitude and was told it might have been more interesting to really tap into the music and that kind of creepy, darkness and play with that within my body and performance. Without even realizing it I kind of had a cyclical style to my choreography which was really cool to have pointed out to me. Not only were my movements very circular and arching, but I came back to the same movements in the beginning and end which created a wholesome, complete feeling to my movement that I was completely unaware I had done. That’s something that I’ll definitely try to replicate in my other pieces because it got a lot of positive responses. I was also told I had a very interesting floor pattern which upon reflection I feel could have been more interesting. I liked, as did others I think, that I abruptly turned and ran straight up to the back as opposed to the side to side movement I had been doing up until that point but looking back, I wish I had maybe used some subtler floor plans in the beginning that had a little more variation. Not so much that the running up the back would lose it’s sharpness but to add another layer of interest to the whole piece.

Making deliberate choices with all of these elements 

3 dimensionality

Floor plan–where and when you move in space

Breathing

Focus

Wholeness

Dynamics & quality

Range of movement

Patterns/repetition

Complexity–ornamentation: what happens if I add a weird hand here

Internal rhythm

Stillness

Juxtaposition

Expression

Location

Song Choices

The Dance

I loved the drums behind this song. It’s a constantly moving beat which I find very influential to me as a choreographer. In addition I know the lyrics may be distracting but for me, because the lyrics are so fast and just kind of strung together it almost sounds more like another instrument. I don’t think people would be tempted to focus on the lyrics because they are almost indistinguishable.

Lyrics has to be done with clarity about what you’re doing and why.

Have to be able to compete and match the climax of the music.

Paul Taylor’s American Dreamer great example of the balance.

Caminando

This song is almost all lyrics in Spanish about South America’s march to freedom and while I know that is a heavy message to portray through a dance I love the challenge of it. And with the quiet drum beat underneath it I feel like there are lots of possibilities for choreography.

Safe & Sound 

I chose the instrumental version of this song because I liked the extra layer of distinct string instruments playing at the same time. There seems to be a bunch of layers within the music here so I’d have many different options. I was also thinking this for group choreography would be beautiful as well because I could assign each dancer to one of the string rhythms..like how one of the choreographers we’ve studied did with the full orchestra and her dancers.

Long Way Home 

I would use this song for my trio. It’s very repetitive and has a nostalgic feel so I would love to add in lots of retrogrades and all the dancers as the song continues. Not only does the music add in rhythms and phrases but the voices add harmonies as well so if I followed that pattern with the dancers I think it would create a very wholesome feeling between the music and the dance.

this was written by hand

I would like to choreograph to this because it is a simple piano with kind of a surprising feel I think. There are a few random notes that you don’t expect to be there so it adds a level of intrigue that I think would be really challenging but ultimately insanely beautiful.

Reading Summary 1.26.15

See the Music, Hear the Dance

This article by Valerie Gladstone looks at the choreography process of three different professional choreographers and how they interpret music. The first one says that “The choreography can’t reiterate the sound” (Gladstone) which really spoke to me because as a chroreographer I am currently struggling with how explicitly my movements should match my sound. Another choreographer described how matching movements to the lyrics is repetitive as well so she purposefully does the opposite for example, she choreographed a fight to a love song (Gladstone). All of the choreographers mentioned how there needs to be a relatioonship between the movement and the music regardless of what specific type of relationship. For example, there can often be a tense relation between the two; the way I interpreted that was kind of like a give and take relationship. Sometimes we just need to let the music stand on its own and other times the dance needs to take the focus. I thought a good example of this was when the hip hop choreographer used classical music. In it she found a deeper sense of rhythm that through her movements could illustrate this to the audience who otherwise may not have heard or realized this underlying driving force.

 

Making Music for Modern Dance p. 39-77

This collection of essays focuses on the big question of which should come first, the music or the movement? Throughout the numerous essays written by choreographers and composers, we see that it really is a tense, giving and taking, dramatic, difficult, complicated, frustrating process to match the music to the movement or the movement to the music. Many of the first essays focus on Louis Horst and his work within this relationship. He firmly believed that music was the motivating force behind the choreography, but then they were both created simultaneously together and now finally (during his time anyway) dance could be created without music.

This question wasn’t really even applicable to him because he so firmly believed that the music was part of the dance and vice versa; it wasn’t either or or before and after it they accompanied each other. The following quote really made me pause: Music to Horst was important because it was used “to discipline the very plastic instrument of the dancer”. To me this really sums up his ideals. There was a relationship between the two and they were on equal footing. The dance was part of the orchestra just like an instrument. And it could be used to tame the movements when it needed to be like a perfect symbiotic relationship.

Other essays continued to answer this question and muse out loud the possibilities of all of the answers. I also really liked this quote about the final product: this process creates “an organic unit which was neither pure choreography nor pure music, nor their sum, but a fusion into something else for which we have no name”. To me this really felt like a summary of what each essay was really getting at. It is not a simple answer or dichotomy when it comes to music and dance. Bu rather a fusion, a mixing, a compromise maybe of two distinct art forms coming together to create something more.