DCDanceBlog

I’m home for thanksgiving and relaxing, but wanted to put in this paragraph from an article in the Oct. 23 New Yorker, by Joan Acocella. She’s talking about musicality in modern dance, and how it’s been lost–and yet is still yearned for by audiences. In this case she’s referring to a British choreographer who was trained as an Indian classical dancer and brings that sense of rhythm and music into his modern dance.

“Modern dance arose partly in opposition to ballet, and one of the fripperies of ballet that some early modern dancers were determined to throw off was subservience to music. We tend to locate modern dance’s split with music in the nineteen-sixties, with Judson Dance Theatre, but it began early in the century, and it hasn’t gone away. In every downtown dance venue, on every Saturday night, you can see performers doing just about anything except moving to a beat. But audiences are hungry for musical dancing, and they have found it, usually in other kinds of dance—in ballet, for example. Utterly empty ballets will often be frenetically applauded if they are performed to a rousing beat. A better example is “ethnic” dance. Why is the cheesy Riverdance such a hit? Why does the New York Flamenco Festival sell out? Because their shows are exciting musically. To come back to modern dance, what makes Mark Morris so popular? Why are the works of Ronald K. Brown the main draw of the Alvin Ailey company’s recent repertory? Partly because both men have taken their inspiration from music-bound ethnic forms—African dance in Brown’s case, Balkan dance and flamenco in Morris’s. As populations go on moving from Asia and Africa to Europe and America, this revival of musicality in modern dance will continue.”

john and i went up to nyc about 10 days ago and i meant to write about it. now it’s almost too late but i did want to just mention what we did and saw–besides playing around on the street and wandering and drinking coffee.

we definitely were hoping to see some good dance but it wasn’t necessarily the weekend for something extra special. doug varone had performed the week before at the joyce (would’ve loved to see that!), and i think david dorfman was doing something the next week, and there were a couple other interesting things around that time, but only a few options exactly when we were there. but they were still interesting.

on saturday night we went to st. mark’s church and saw pam tanowitz dance, as part of the danspace project. it was pretty good in its own way, and definitely an ideal illustration of how great nyc is–how you can go see a group you’ve never heard of and it’ll be good in a lot of ways, even if it isn’t the most amazing thing you’ve ever seen. in this case, it was a bit too ascetic for me–modern music, extremely clean lines (ie, not very organic), and very little interaction between the dancers. but the dancers themselves were all really talented, and it was a pretty technical show, which made it fascinating to watch even if i wasn’t enthralled w/ the thing in its entirety. they also sort of took over the space, using not only the floor but also the risers and the back space, which was interesting. at one point the dancers turned on a huge fan in the back and john pointed out to me that there was definitely a chord–w/ harmonies–coming out of the fan. i really liked that idea of them dancing to the fan.

on sunday we went to see american ballet theatre doing 3 contemporary ballet pieces by different choreographers. the first one we actually didn’t see live b/c we were
late–it was called clear, by stanton welch. the second was lar lubovitch’s meadow, which we both loved. really gorgeous. i read somewhere that lubovitch is known for his ability to create serious beauty onstage, and this was a perfect example. the piece had 3 sections, and the first was a group dance that reminded me of an italian rennaissance painting in its colors and composition. the group would swirl around, then re-form in a new spot. and throughout all 3 sections, he had the scrim down, which gave everything a gorgeous, dreamy atmosphere. the second section was equally arresting in a different way; it was a duet between a man and a woman, and the woman was just gorgeous. and they ended in this very striking way, with the two very very slowly promenading in a circle. hard to describe, but great.

the last piece that abt did was by twyla tharp, in the upper room. it’s funny–i just read a review from the village voice from last year that just raved about the piece. and i can imagine that it was amazing in its time. but both john and i were struck with how dated it seemed now. the costumes really seemed to be from the 80’s–as the piece is–and a lot of the movement also seemed somehow old fashioned. lotta asked me if i got the sense that it might’ve been revolutionary in its time, and i could see that it might’ve been, b/c a lot of the actual choreography (when the dancers weren’t jogging in place) was interesting. but too symmetrical, too fast, and in this case, somewhat under-rehearsed. this was, i think, the first twyla tharp piece i’ve seen so i’m not sure what to think. but one thing i will say is that i’m impressed with the themes she takes on. apparently “in the upper room” is a reference to where jesus and his disciples went for the last supper. not that i got that sense at all during the piece! but i know she takes on serious themes often drawn from history or mythology, and i appreciate it. i have a book she wrote about creativity, and in it she quotes goethe, something like, “if you’re not drawing on 2500 years of history in your art, you’re living hand to mouth.” definitely not the way people seem to view art today, but i love it.

lotta’s entry about ed was great and it’s hard to figure out what else to say. or what to say at all, really. i’m still mindblown and can’t believe it’s real. ed was pretty much my favorite teacher, in this region or pretty much anywhere. i loved his warmups, the things he noticed (like how i would always tuck my butt), and especially his choreograghy, which always felt natural with my body. and he always seemed so comfortable in that role as leader and teacher, and it was great to ask questions and hear more about what he was thinking.

i think that’s all i’m going to write right now. but i’m sure his dancers are heartbroken. he was so dedicated to them.

words can’t describe the loss the dc dance community suffers after the passing of ed tyler. so i wont try to put words on it. at least not today or tomorrow or next month. maybe when enough time has past for us to grasp what is missing.

there is one thing though, that i do want to put words on. tonight. and that is that when i happened to read ed’s bio today, on UMD’s website, i thought about that there are a couple of sentences in there, that really reflects his uniqueness. at least a small fragment of it.

i thought i’d post it here.

“Tyler is a self-taught visual artist who works in various mediums including choreography, performance art, film, art instillation, fashion/costume design, and set design. His experimental mixing of genres and art forms, combine together to explore and show the blind spots in human perspective. These mixed medium collaborations reveal that which is often left unnoticed, exposes the flaws in human existence and sheds light on the subconscious mechanisms that provide for their denial.”

again. there are no words.

I just came out from Infamous, the movie about Trueman Capote (not to be confused with “Capote” from last year) and am so full of inspiration and ideas that I don’t really know where to begin.

This movie is other-worldly. But I’m not going to try to tell you why, because I don’t think I could, but I will tell you that Infamous tells the same story as Capote, but with so many more nuances added.

I’m not sure where the exact connection to this thought below is, but all I could think of after coming out from this movie was that

-it should not matter too much how many people take part of your work –read your book, see your movie, attend your show, listen to your voice. What matter is that your work exists, and that it’s at some point out there.

That’s all.

So, most of us are familiar with MySpace. I have however never created an account of my own, and therefore not discovered until now how many dancers, choreographers and dance companies there are out there on MySpace.

From visiting Daniel Burkholder’s MySpace page I saw, via his list of MySpace friends, the amount of dance related MySpace pages. For example, tons of established US companies like Doug Varone, Elisabeth Streb, Pilobulos and Joffrey Ballet have one (and I’m sure there are a trillion more). But also, DC based artists like Culture Shock DC, Fringe Festival’s Julianne, dancer/choreographer/consultant Ilana Silverstein, dancer Nick Bartoli, Dance Place, artDC.org and Hollybass among many.

It seems like MySpace is a great way to connect to other folks in the field. I remember my brother told me last summer that his musician friend who lives and works in Stockholm ended up with a gig in NYC from being in touch with a US based musician he’d never met before over MySpace. I don’t know if I’m generalizing too heavy now, but sometimes it feels like that the dance scene isn’t very fast to pick up new media always. Therefore is the dance explosion happening on MySpace awesome. Go check.

so it turns out that i’ll have a few hours in the studio by myself this coming saturday when me and amanda usually are rehearsing. amanda will be on a trip, but will be back for next weeks rehearsal, so it’s just a one time thing.

the fact that i’ll have this one rehearsal by myself makes a perfect opportunity to try this thing i’ve been wanting to try for a while. it’s a little experiment.

basically the idea looks like this: to make a piece without editing the movement material throughout the process.

i guess this can be done with or without music. but since i’m interested in using music, i’ll take a piece of music that i know well and go from there. i will spend the four hours creating material to this piece of music and as i go along, as i collect movements, i will have to stay with the movements i create, i can’t take away movements and i can’t add movements in any other place than after the last movement i created.

the reason for this experiment is to see what comes out if i let go of the idea of “composition”, meaning letting go of the idea of using certain structures that either are created beforehand or during the process of creating the movement vocabulary.

i think a piece created on this basis might serve a purpose as a comparasion to a piece made with all the editing and structuring it demanded, i.e. created with a more conventional process (if you can call any process of making choreography conventional).

however, i usually feel that the structures that come out in my pieces -themes, repetition, spatial patterns etc- are there also within the movements. it’s hard to explain in writing but for example the directions of the movements, if i for instance use the diagonal a lot, i tend to use the diagonal in terms of spatial pattern as well. so, i’m curious to see if by only using movements created on the spot and with no chance to conciously create layers of structure on top, will the vocabulary still have a visible structure?

goodness. it’s hard to put words on an artform that is wordless (or i should say in this case wordless, or, maybe it’s always wordless, because even if words are being used -spoken or written and displayed in some way for the audience to read, the movements itself are wordless. but…now i’m starting to think about what wordless really means…ok, i’ll stop here. stop.)

anyway. i don’t know what piece of music to use yet. something that crave to be abused by movements… maybe philip glass. that usually contains enough fluff to fit to do some cool steps to. wow, this is how serious i am. maybe it’s just too late for me to write. i’ll finish this post tomorrow. yes.

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sunday. it didn’t go quite as i thought it would. it was hard to just go step by step. i realised that as i was making a sequence, i was at the same time thinking in terms of larger structures. i wanted to, and fell into, repetition of certain phrases. it was hard to not let myself do so. it was as if i only made certain combinations of steps in order to repeat them. i.e. it was hard to not think in terms of composition and only think about the one step i was doing at the moment and them move on to the next step.

so. i don’t know wheather i will keep the material that i made. not sure if i want to rehearse it to try to understand what it is. and maybe there’s the answer; if you need to practice something, if you need to do it over and over again to know what it is, maybe it’s not interesting to begin with?

i have to say though, a few times i cheated -i stepped away from my material and took a break and used the steps i had made and let myself repeat them and use different qualities and blend them into what ever order i wanted to- and when i did that i found that i had some really interesting movements to work with. it was as if i had a vocabulary in my hand that was not typically me. this made me think that maybe my original idea was not so great as an idea for a whole piece, but more interesting as a tool to develop raw material.

it was very satisfying to take these movements, when i allowed myself to cheat on the rules i had set up, and apply different qualities to them. for example, i repeated a short sequence three times using different intensities (is that a word?), starting with low intensity and ending with high intensity the third time i repeated this short sequence. what happened was that the tempo changed heavily. the first time through the sequencce it was slow, and the last time very fast.

so at the same time as i’m not sure that i want to follow through with the original idea, i’m itching to continue with the raw material, but with all the freedom i want in order to manipulate the movements.