A Belated Thought on Notation

It’s easier to notate dance pieces with movements that have names. In my experience, some ballet and tap terms are easier to write than others because of their name. We discussed music notation versus dance notation in class. Modern musical composers use the same notes as Classical or Baroque or Romantic composers, but they use the notes in different ways, by augmenting chords, creating dissonance with certain intervals, etc. While modern dancers may modify some Classical or Baroque or Romantic dance steps, most of the movements they use are new, not augmented or arpeggiated Classical movements. Does this contribute to the lack of an established, universal dance notation?

Captivating Blog Writing

This year, the Lawrence-Herchenroether Dance Company created a blog entitled "Filtered." Emily recently posted a blog about an impromptu hand dance while she and Tori traveled on a bus from New York City to Philadelphia. I found her movement description creative, informative, and intriguing. I thought you would all enjoy the journey.

http://lhdanceco.blogspot.com/

Jaclyn

Classifying Beautiful Dance

For the past two classes we have gained greater understanding on dance criticism and dance aesthetics. The foundation for our studies looks at understanding the beautiful, and more specifically, what do we consider pleasing? How has our taste and judgment effect our determination as critics of what is considered to be beautiful? For myself, my definition of what is considered to be beautiful, especially in the realm of dance, has evolved throughout my dance education at F&M. As my knowledge expanded, postmodern dance artists, like Trisha Brown, now interest me with their distinctive choice of form and imitation. To elaborate, I remember watching Trisha Brown’s dance work “Walking on the Wall” (1971) in beginning modern dance. Dancers were harnessed to the ceiling at the Whitney Museum of Art, New York and slowly moved their way down from the ceiling along the walls of the museum. Ivar Hagendoorn can summarize the reason one might find this unusual dance work to be intriguing through his article “The Dancing Brain”. Even though the beautiful can often be categorized as the satisfaction of the anticipated, the sublime, an initial disorder of chaos or the unexpected, can receive an even deeper sense of satisfaction than the expected dance work. Dancing down the wall is something wholly different than I had ever seen before, and therefore became rarely beautiful. But this is through my eyes, as a dance student. How might others perceive this dance work that takes place in a wholly unique space? Many of the dance philosophers we study would immediately dismiss this dance due to its minimal amount of expression.

Understanding Dance Aesthetics: Beauty Verses The Sublime

As we have discussed in class there are three understandings of dance aesthetics: 

1)   Dance is the art of imitation

2)   Dance as an art of expression

3)   Dance as an art of form

We further questioned in class, how do aesthetics relate to dance criticism? What really opened my eyes to this question was the philosophy of Immanuel Kant mentioned in Ivar Hagendoorn’s article “The Dancing Brain”. Kant talks about beauty verses the sublime. Beauty can be seen at first glance because there is something in the dance performance that is pleasing to the eye. On the other hand sublime is mentioned as “ It is at this moment that a feeling of pleasure sets in, as the self realizes that it has survived and, by implication, is more powerful that the vast object or event” (Hagendorn, 22).  I am interested to delve into the meaning of sublime further. If a critic experiences the sublime, will the critique of the performance be more poignant? In other words will there be a more keen sense of understanding about the dance performance as a whole? Knowing the three key points of dance aesthetics can make the performance more comprehendible. Upon viewing the “Witch Dance” by choreographer Mary Wigman or a dance by Cunningham’s Company I wondered how an audience member would view both pieces.  I think it can be a little difficult to find the meaning of these pieces offhand but understanding aesthetics can bring further meaning to these performances and to the critic.  

~ Arielle D. Levy

More on Ivar Hagendoorn

Philosopher turned neuroscience researcher turned choreographer Ivar Hagendoorn posts his thoughts, photos, videos, and recent publications on his website/blog:

http://www.ivarhagendoorn.com/

Enjoy!

Note also that there is controversy about the mirror neuron theory of action and imitation. See:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2773693/

Again, enjoy!

Dance and imitation - a current example

Reading about the upcoming Grant St. Dance Company holiday show (this very weekend!) in the Lancaster newspaper, a quote from "Dancing through the humor, hassles and humanity of the holidays" by staff writer Kathleen Daminger caught my eye.

Daminger quotes Grant St. artistic director Kim Jureckson about one dance in the show:

"I wanted to give a nod to Black Friday," she says. "The whole idea of people lining up at crazy hours, the doors opening, people shoving. It's frightening to see that."

In that piece, video footage shows people shoving and stepping over each other, while dancers come on stage doing the same thing.

"It's art imitating life," she says.

Read more: http://articles.lancasteronline.com/local/4/311302#ixzz15Aap8Vtn

Is There A Way?

During our discussion with Jack Anderson, he said something that really struck me. He said that our role as critics and writers is to, "describe non-verbal art in verbal terms." While he was just emphasizing the same theme we have touched on many times, his terms finally made it click in my head just how difficult it is to capture the ephemerality of dance and how universal the question of doing so is.

While he was talking about the importance of evocation and evaluation in critiques he also touched on the ephemeral nature of dance in such a subtle way as to bring a question to my head the instant he said the above quote. In his transition he said that there needs to be more than just description in a critique, there needs to be some assessment or evaluation. You need to say something about it. At this time he off-handly mentioned that there were plenty of other mediums for dance description such notations and the like.

The question that came to my head is such: Is there any medium that is ideal for capturing, in a permanent way, dance? Certainly we have video and photography but even those lack the emotion and feel of seeing the performance live. Even more so, can writing ever capture dance on a page? Notations can capture the steps but they really lack a sense of quality and emotion. Critiques can offer description and assessment but they don't give any indication of exact steps or, sometimes, style of dance. Poems may capture the artistic nature and literary descriptions the emotional and thematic elements but, is there any way to capture the whole dance?

It is clearly important to preserve dance - both in description and critique - but can we ever ideally do it? While this may not have been the theme of his talk, Jack Anderson seemed all too aware of the question of how to capture dance for the future, for the masses, and for the artists.

Draw the Line

Earlier in the semester we studied different choreographers' philosophies of dance. Their philosophy affects the way their dancers present, their choreography, and their piece as a whole. We respect that dancers have different philosophies and outlooks, yet we still critique dances. A new technique or style cannot develop without dancers making changes. How can a critic approach something in a style they have never experienced? Is it fair to "critique" a dance based off of a different philosophy than your own?
To (almost) quote Lynn from a previous class, "You sit next to Joe Schmo at a ballet, and he's never seen a ballet before. That doesn't mean his opinion about it matters less; it just means his opinion is less informed." Of course Joe is not a dance critic, but what is the definition of educated enough or informed enough for one to give a critique? Where do we draw the line between a philosophy and an opinion?

Dance & Media (Dancing Dissertations)

Dancing Dissertations Article

Be sure to watch the videos!

Lisa Kraus’s Reconstruction of “Line Up”

In this reconstruction of Trisha Brown’s “Line Up” by Lisa Kraus, eight dancers must learn one sequence of distinct, angular movements and be prepared to reverse the sequence when called upon. The dancers require tremendous focus and an excellent knowledge of each movement, in order to perform the choreography both backwards and forwards. At this point in the rehearsals, all of the dancers are acting as “callers”. The caller calls out the name of a specific dancer and tells her to reverse her movements. Each dancer is performing the same movements but in different directions. Each performance will be different, with different dancers being called on to reverse their movements at random. I am curious to see how the caller will create rhythms and patterns with the choreography while orienting each dancer during the actual performances this winter.

Trisha Brown based her movement on certain rules that she created. Generally, each movement is completed and then the dancer moves on to the next movement. She would experiment with her dancers creativity by giving them instructions, such as telling them to “line up” and building her choreography off of their responses. Trisha Brown would start with one movement and keep on moving in the direction that she felt was most logical. Branch and spill are two examples of variations in the movement  that can be called out to one dancers.Trisha Brown’s movements emphasize a dancer’s line as they gracefully and weightlessly float across the stage.  

The Complexities of Reconstruction

As I observed Line Up’s rehearsal this weekend I quickly learned how complicated the process of a reconstruction is. In the hour I was there the eight dancers watched a video recording of Line Up stopping every few seconds to recreate the movements they were watching. Each dancer had a person in the film to watch and pay attention to their movement. They then would go through the movements bit by bit until the section exactly followed the video.

While watching this, Lisa Kraus came over to talk to us about how difficult it can be to breathe new life into very strict choreography. This made me wonder why is it that a reconstruction is harder to connect with than a new dance? Is it because the dance was made for other dancers who move in different ways? Is it because it was made for a different time? Why isn’t it the same as learning any other choreography?