Friday, February 05, 2010
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Dance for Camera
The Bell House had a great screening this weekend of two of our videodances at the Living Water Dance Company's performance at Kivisto Studio in Tulsa. The films screened were She Drew a Picture of a Whale and, the longtime coming, Deeper. Both seemed to be received well by the audience who generously applauded after each dancefilm, as they did for the entire concert. What a great audience!
Thank you to Amy McIntosh, Artist Director of Living Water Dance Company, for the opportunity to show our work. We especially appreciate the premiere for Deeper.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
THE 2009 EXCHANGE Choreography Dance Festival
Well, the first annual EXCHANGE Choreography Festival has come to a close and we couldn't be more thrilled. I know it was small beginnings but everything went so well from start to end. We had some phenomenal teachers who joined us for our inaugural year: Melody Ruffin-Ward from Roger Williams University, Stephanie Miracle from New York, L. Brooke Schlecte from Baylor University and Artistic Director of Out On a Limb Dance Company, Sarah Newton from the Dallas/Ft. Worth area and our very own Tulsans, Amy McIntosh (Oral Roberts University/Living Water Dance Company) and Jessica Vokoun (The University of Tulsa). Joining Melody Ruffin-Ward, L. Brooke Schlecte, and Stephanie Miracle on the adjudication panel was Tulsa's dance legacy, Becky Eagleton. Thank you so much to all the faculty and staff for making our first EXCHANGE a success!
Notable work/performances in the adjudicated concert series included stunning work by Rebecca Borden and Rebekah Hampton, both members of Perpetual Motion Modern Dance Oklahoma out of Oklahoma City. Borden’s, “i does not exist”, revealed Rebecca’s ability as a performer to throw her body to the floor in a blend of violent sensuality that rarely made one feel uncomfortable, but rather amazed and magnetized to her primal physicality.
Several students presented work birthed during Amy McIntosh’s (Living
Water Dance Company) DanceMaking workshop in late June. Students were invited to continue working on their pieces and present as student choreographers during the adjudicated series. All of the students came from Pam Haden’s studio, The Dance Pointe, and exhibited a surprising maturity while performing and in receiving and responding to feedback from the panel.Artistic directors of REDDance, Amanda Jackson and Meredith Cook from Texas Woman’s University presented another notable work, entitled “Shall Too Pass” that questioned the idea of ‘watchers’, as well as, a mysteriously ominous solo by Kayla Jenkins presented in the Sunday adjudicated concert. "Inside by Kayla Jenkins is a profoundly visceral experience. Jenkins use of imagery, groundedness, and costume (as a prop) brought the piece to this visceral space and captured the essence of a deep gnawing place in the soul”, says adjudicator, L. Brooke Schlecte, Artistic Director of Out On a Limb Dance Company.
Schlecte, Eagleton, Ruffin-Ward, and Miracle formed the perfect panel for the festival’s inaugural year. Many participants commented on the warmth and generosity of the adjudicators as they shared from their experience in reflection of the presented work and in their master classes. The Gala Performance was a great way to see some of their work as well. There were performances by the always intriguing Out On a Limb Dance Company as well as local and artistically diverse, Living Water Dance Company. Melody Ruffin-Ward set a solo performed by myself as well as Stephanie Miracle sharing a duet site-specific performance that traveled the ORU campus to various sights.
I’d like to close th
is year’s festival with the following comment from a scholarship recipient: “This weekend has already given me so much inspiration towards my goals as a dance therapist and dance supporter. Please keep in touch and continue to help others grow using your passion and creative intuition in dance.”
is year’s festival with the following comment from a scholarship recipient: “This weekend has already given me so much inspiration towards my goals as a dance therapist and dance supporter. Please keep in touch and continue to help others grow using your passion and creative intuition in dance.”*photos by Maranda Blumenthal
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
OBITUARY | 30.06.2009
German dance legend Pina Bausch dies at 68
Pina Bausch put Wuppertal on the cultural map
Acclaimed German dancer and choreographer Pina Bausch has died at the age of 68. The recipient of numerous awards and prizes, she left her mark as an innovator in the hybrid genre of "Tanztheater," or dance theater.
The director of the Wuppertal Tanztheater said Tuesday that Bausch had passed away unexpectedly earlier that morning. The choreographer had just last week been diagnosed with cancer, but had continued with her work up until her death.
Bausch formed the successful Wuppertal Tanzheater in 1973, turning the Ruhr Valley town into an international dance mecca.
Though Bausch tended to avoid the limelight, she became known to many people outside the dance world with her appearance in Pedro Almodovar's Oscar-winning film "Talk to Her." The film also pays homage to her work.
Bausch's oeuvre explores memories, questions of identity and the difficulty of human understanding. Frequently, she thematizes the difficulty of relations between the sexes. Men and women can flirt tenderly at one moment, then fling each other violently across the room the next.
"It is about life and about finding a language to describe life," she said. The choreographer, on the whole, usually avoided pinning down or labeling her creations, preferring to let her audiences make up their minds.
In 2007 she was awarded the Kyoto Prize - one of the top prizes in the culture and arts field - in recognition of her work in breaking down the boundaries between dance and theater, and pioneering a new direction for theatrical art. She was the first woman to receive the accolade in the category art and philosophy.
Breaking with convention
Bausch's works leave a vivid visual impression
Bold and visually arresting, her first works were roundly criticized by traditional ballet fans. She became notorious for having her company dance on dirt, on leaves, in ankle-deep water, as well as for bringing them into direct contact with the audience.
But she began to attract attention abroad with her performances at the World Theater Festival in Nancy, France, in 1977. This was the start of a flourishing international career.
The grande dame of modern dance was famed for her collaborative way of working. She would start by directing a barrage of questions at her dancers, who would respond with words, gestures, and improvised dance. "I'm not interested in how people move, but what moves them," she once famously stated.
Bausch was strongly influenced by Kurt Jooss, a pioneer of German expressionist dance, with whom she began studying at the age of 14. He was to have a strong influence over her work. The psychological ballets of Anthony Tudor, whom she encountered during a scholarship at the Juilliard School in New York, also made a marked impression on her.
Although she led her company for over 35 years, she didn't talk of retiring. Upon receiving the Kyoto Prize less than two years ago, the choreographer said she still had "an awful lot of plans."
jg/kjb/dpa
Editor: Michael Lawton
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,4444691,00.html
Sunday, March 22, 2009
The Out of the Loop Fringe Festival was last weekend in Dallas at the WaterTower Theatre. I joined 5 members of Out On a Limb Dance Company for a performance on Sunday evening. I am continually amazed at how their choreography evolves. One of the pieces premiered that night, called A Long Journey Home (photographed). The movement was refreshingly physical and the choreography complicated yet palpable. I was in awe as I watched it from 4 different views through rehearsals, dress runs, and backstage perspectives and I could never get enough.
Naturally, it made me wish I was in this piece, but i doubt my one year old infant son (who's trying to crawl into my lap at this moment) would let me travel for rehearsals any more than I already do.
But more than just being a piece that makes me want to dance it, it is a piece that is delicately smart and generous with kinesthetic detail that begs to be seen more than once. The longer I watch this company, the more I see the performers evolve as well. It is work that breathes and allows the performers to actually BE performers - to bring to the work an individual telling of the story, not just an imitation of the choreography. I so appreciate that as a performer myself.
Kudos, OoLD. More than kudos...bravo.
Rachel Bruce Johnson
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
The following article was posted on the Dance Magazine website.
http://dancemagazine.com/issues/November-2008/DM-Contributor-Clive-Barnes-dies-at-81
DM Contributor Clive Barnes dies at 81
Clive Barnes
Dance Magazine mourns the passing of our great friend and colleague Clive Barnes. His loss to the field of dance will be deeply felt. He brought his formidable knowledge to every review and essay he wrote and was completely dedicated to the world of dance in all its rich variety. Those of us privileged to work with him at Dance Magazine will miss acutely his wit and insight, and his deep knowledge of the field. He became the magazine’s London correspondent in 1955, and began his signature “Attitudes” column (long the magazine’s back page) in 1989. Last year, he wrote a generous and wise essay in that space celebrating the magazine’s 80th birthday, which happily coincided with his own. It recapped the many decades of dance he had chronicled. He filed his final column on Nov. 7. It will be published in the January ’09 issue. With his passing, we have lost a champion of the art of dance, who helped us to realize our mission to the fullest. We extend our deepest sympathies to his wife Valerie Taylor and his entire family.
Have your memories of Clive Barnes posted on our online tribute. Click here or email your thoughts to emacel@dancemagazine.com.
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
Post has begun for the underwater dancefilm, Deeper. It's going well and there are new connections being discovered that can only be uncovered by the visual and kinesthetic fusion that happens in editing. There is still a lot of work to be done but it is coming along. View a draft of the film project at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDiATUnL5Ck
On another note, THE EXCHANGE Choreography Festival is in the planning stages. The first mailout for the festival should go out by mid-December and we are all a buzz about its potential. Hosting this premiere event is Oral Roberts University located in southtown Tulsa. As you guessed by the title, THE EXCHANGE is a choreography festival dedicated exclusively to the creative process. There will be master classes dealing with choreographic and performance process as well as a site-specific workshop with the potential for a performance opportunity during the festival. There will be two adjudicated concerts for artists who wish to receive feedback and critique from our jurors as well as a professional gala on Saturday night featuring Living Water Dance Company, Melody Ruffin-Ward, Brooke Schlecte and Out On a Limb Dance Company, Stephanie Miracle, and Bell House's own, Rachel Bruce Johnson.
Keep a look out for registration details and further festival details at www.bellhousearts.org
On another note, THE EXCHANGE Choreography Festival is in the planning stages. The first mailout for the festival should go out by mid-December and we are all a buzz about its potential. Hosting this premiere event is Oral Roberts University located in southtown Tulsa. As you guessed by the title, THE EXCHANGE is a choreography festival dedicated exclusively to the creative process. There will be master classes dealing with choreographic and performance process as well as a site-specific workshop with the potential for a performance opportunity during the festival. There will be two adjudicated concerts for artists who wish to receive feedback and critique from our jurors as well as a professional gala on Saturday night featuring Living Water Dance Company, Melody Ruffin-Ward, Brooke Schlecte and Out On a Limb Dance Company, Stephanie Miracle, and Bell House's own, Rachel Bruce Johnson.
Keep a look out for registration details and further festival details at www.bellhousearts.org
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
Friday, July 11, 2008
The Bell House is moving into filming on DEEP in two weeks and everything seems to be coming together. DEEP focuses on one woman’s experience of baptism. As she’s plunged into the baptismal tank, she enters an underwater world of death and renewal. As she struggles to come to a spiritual understanding of who she is and what her purpose might be in the real world, images of her life overpower her and bring her to the edge of complete surrender only to find that in letting go, she can now live more fully.
Performing her own choreography, Katy Eurich finds it challenging to navigate the difference between choreographing for a live work and choreographing for camera. "You see the movie in your head and you think the possibilities are endless, but then you realize that, while the film/video medium is vast, it does have limits, the main one being financial. When you don’t have the luxury of deep pockets, the reality of what you can do influences your artistic process. For example, with no money for a hi-end camera crew, the product output may be treated to create intention between the type of film necessary to use and the look and feel of the final dancefilm." Having no choice sometimes opens up more choices than you thought you had and forces you to go places artistically that you wouldn’t have explored if you hadn’t had to consider them in the first place.
All that said, DEEP, is an exciting step for The Bell House in that we are moving into territory that is new and untapped. The dancefilm medium is pervasive but few of have their hands in both meaningful messages and artistic excellence. It is a direction we find ourselves pleased to be headed.
We’ve wrapped filming on Paper Cuts, a dancefilm choreographed by Linda Caldwell and directed by Rachel Bruce Johnson. In Paper Cuts, a world of shredded paper surrounds the dancer as she cuts through the space with joy and wonder. Her ecstasy turns to greed as she consumes, destroys, and leaves her delible footprint on the delicate paper world. After her gluttony is fulfilled she finds herself in a static, torn space destroyed by her activity. Her sorrow cuts through her final gestures.
Now that we’re in post, I realize how special this medium really is. There are so many magical moments in Sarah Newton’s performance of the role and together with Keith Fleming’s original sound score of manipulated paper sounds is truly a provocative experience. Paper Cuts has already been submitted to several film festivals even as we wrap up. It will be exciting to see how it is perceived and what kind of thoughts is provokes about consumption and the consequences of greed.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
EXCITING NEWS!
We have launched a new arts collaborative along with a new website for dance. It's called THE BELL HOUSE and you can find the link at www.bellhousearts.org. We are currently working on getting a 501(3)C for THE BELL HOUSE and are looking forward to reenforcing all the new projects we've got for the future as well as those already in the mix. Visit the website to learn more about this dance/art collaborative.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Friday, November 9, 2007
Dance Recital Review: Dance Fusion
By Justin Smith
I wept. Let me just say from the outset that when confronted with immense beauty I have been known to leak a few. But I certainly wasn’t prepared for what I encountered Friday night at Dance Fusion, held at the John Anthony Theater at the Spring Creek Campus of Collin College.
The moment in question was the second to last number, performed by Muscle Memory Dance Theatre out of Dallas. The name of the piece was Under the Yellow Sky, choreographed by Lesley Snelson-Figueroa. As the lights came up, there were two swings hanging from the fifty foot ceiling and four dancers appeared wearing black and white. From there it gets a bit hazy. I know there were three sections in the piece, demarcated by first purple, then orange, and finally black as the backdrop colors. The whole piece in its entirety is hard to describe, but what I can say is that if you were to film the piece with a high speed camera, every millisecond when render a stage picture so breathtaking that it would leave you in total awe. Somewhere in the middle, I became overwhelmed by the music, the motion, and the colors that I felt Divine Transcendence touch my shoulder. What can I say? You should go see this show.
Muscle Memory jumps to new heights.
Dance Fusion is a show the features the local talents of the Collin Dance Ensemble, Elledanceworks Dance Company, Muscle Memory Dance Theatre, and the not local Janice Garrett and Dancers from San Francisco. The show was opened and closed by the Janice Garret and Dancers performing Brink (Excerpt) and Archimedes’ Revenge, respectively. I remember the first was like watching water whip around the stage as the dancers undulated up and down and in and out of sight from the audience. It was extremely flowy and did not have the course angles or hardness one usually finds with modern dance. The Janice Garrett Dancers also performed another piece just before intermission, Fast Brass, which was truly amazing to see. The piece was extremely fast and the dancers accented the music by fast shaking hands and faces. When they would walk, it seemed a bit comical as the dancers would strut around on stage with stiff arms swinging at their sides, looking like an old Keystone Cops film.
Both Elledanceworks and Collin Dance Ensemble were very good also. Elledanceworks' piece, Wavering Reflections, had three ladies in what looked to be something like white pajamas and each one was holding a long wooden stick. With the sticks the dancers looked to be about ten feet tall as they would never stand up straight while the sticks were standing straight. Either the dancers were swaying at an angle or the poles were at an angle and it produced a very strange effect. The Collin Dance ensemble performed three pieces, and it was obvious that there strength lay in classical training. The second piece they performed was called Conspirare, and it was a mixture of classical and modern dance. When given the opportunity to rely on their apparent ballet training, they really shined.
You can catch Dance Fusion again Saturday the 10th at 2:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. I say you should drop everything and go see this show. Who doesn’t desperately need a little more beauty in their life?
Dance Recital Review: Dance Fusion
By Justin Smith
I wept. Let me just say from the outset that when confronted with immense beauty I have been known to leak a few. But I certainly wasn’t prepared for what I encountered Friday night at Dance Fusion, held at the John Anthony Theater at the Spring Creek Campus of Collin College.
The moment in question was the second to last number, performed by Muscle Memory Dance Theatre out of Dallas. The name of the piece was Under the Yellow Sky, choreographed by Lesley Snelson-Figueroa. As the lights came up, there were two swings hanging from the fifty foot ceiling and four dancers appeared wearing black and white. From there it gets a bit hazy. I know there were three sections in the piece, demarcated by first purple, then orange, and finally black as the backdrop colors. The whole piece in its entirety is hard to describe, but what I can say is that if you were to film the piece with a high speed camera, every millisecond when render a stage picture so breathtaking that it would leave you in total awe. Somewhere in the middle, I became overwhelmed by the music, the motion, and the colors that I felt Divine Transcendence touch my shoulder. What can I say? You should go see this show.
Muscle Memory jumps to new heights.
Dance Fusion is a show the features the local talents of the Collin Dance Ensemble, Elledanceworks Dance Company, Muscle Memory Dance Theatre, and the not local Janice Garrett and Dancers from San Francisco. The show was opened and closed by the Janice Garret and Dancers performing Brink (Excerpt) and Archimedes’ Revenge, respectively. I remember the first was like watching water whip around the stage as the dancers undulated up and down and in and out of sight from the audience. It was extremely flowy and did not have the course angles or hardness one usually finds with modern dance. The Janice Garrett Dancers also performed another piece just before intermission, Fast Brass, which was truly amazing to see. The piece was extremely fast and the dancers accented the music by fast shaking hands and faces. When they would walk, it seemed a bit comical as the dancers would strut around on stage with stiff arms swinging at their sides, looking like an old Keystone Cops film.
Both Elledanceworks and Collin Dance Ensemble were very good also. Elledanceworks' piece, Wavering Reflections, had three ladies in what looked to be something like white pajamas and each one was holding a long wooden stick. With the sticks the dancers looked to be about ten feet tall as they would never stand up straight while the sticks were standing straight. Either the dancers were swaying at an angle or the poles were at an angle and it produced a very strange effect. The Collin Dance ensemble performed three pieces, and it was obvious that there strength lay in classical training. The second piece they performed was called Conspirare, and it was a mixture of classical and modern dance. When given the opportunity to rely on their apparent ballet training, they really shined.
You can catch Dance Fusion again Saturday the 10th at 2:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. I say you should drop everything and go see this show. Who doesn’t desperately need a little more beauty in their life?
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Just finished a summer dance intensive in Houston. The aesthetic of the student showings and the faculty concerts seems to stay true to the 'look' of dance in this region. There was a lot of linear shapes and a tremendous amount of whipping. Lots of vocabulary in a short amount of time. Don't get me wrong, the dancing was lovely; however, I do feel a bit out of place aesthetically. That could be exciting, though.
It was a good week of meeting new people and getting to know older friends. Although I am having some difficulty processing the changes in my body now that I'm pregnant, it was so good to have more energy this month. It couldn't have come at a more perfect time, I just finished my first trimester and classes start this week at ORU. We just had the second round of auditions and everything looks good. We're going to have a great start for the program - about 30 students.
Excellent.
Monday, August 13, 2007
A confession.
I've enjoyed developing my skills in dance photography; however, I find I get stuck technically by my disinterest in the technical. Considering myself a dancer first and a photographer second, I find myself more interested in the composition of photos and the intrigue of 'finding' movement through either choreographing the shot or cropping it in a way that enhances movement. The focus of my photography work nestling here causes my technical skills to suffer and I find that I rely more and more on photoshop and other post-production software to create the 'magic' I love.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Dance Photography: I'm attempting to fuse my work in photography with my work in dance, choreography, I mean. There are just too many hats and too many irons in the fire. These are new thoughts, so no brilliant epephanies as yet, but I'm sure they will come.
Like most of my life, I just simply have too many ideas and want too many things. It's time to sift.
I suspect it would be good for me to weed out the projects that are not producing just yet and filter more energy into those that are a little more fruitful. The idea being that the projects with renewed focus would florish from the attention and energy and the rest would die.
Well, maybe not die. Either die or hybernate until the time where sufficient energy and resources could make them great too.
As my friend Bill Wade, artistic director of Inlet Dance Theatre in Cleveland, OH says, sometimes it's necessary to stop the bleeding.
Thanks, Bill. I think the time is now.
Like most of my life, I just simply have too many ideas and want too many things. It's time to sift.
I suspect it would be good for me to weed out the projects that are not producing just yet and filter more energy into those that are a little more fruitful. The idea being that the projects with renewed focus would florish from the attention and energy and the rest would die.
Well, maybe not die. Either die or hybernate until the time where sufficient energy and resources could make them great too.
As my friend Bill Wade, artistic director of Inlet Dance Theatre in Cleveland, OH says, sometimes it's necessary to stop the bleeding.
Thanks, Bill. I think the time is now.
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Footnote . Auckland, NZ . Herald Theatre
It was a really challenging space, the Herald Theatre. The rack on the seating was impossible to get a good perspective that was unobtrusive to the dancers and there were no wings even though they pretended that there were. The dancers are proficient, the choreography is excellent to average albeit inconsistently so, and the performance lacking. It's clear that Footnote is a young dance company; a "choreolab" comprised of six core dancers of capable technical ability and beautiful physique. Choreographers from the area are invited to make work on the company for performances on a touring circuit. What Footnote does have is funding.
Supported by the local foundational institutions and private donors throughout their touring territory, it comes as no surprise to me that this young company have the financial backing to put on such mediocre performances. It is not uncommon in the States to have many companies of varying artistic capabilities funded by local arts advocates. One such company is settled in the heart of my hometown. The company employs technically able performers with amazing bodies and on-stage charisma, but the range of their individual artistry leaves me wanting at the end of countless performances that seem to blend into one another as time goes by. Once I've seen then, I wonder if that's all I'll ever get. There is generally no range of sophistication being performed onstage. Where is the artist within the technician? And yet, audiences flock to support them and they are well funded with astounding social, prestigious, and financial backing.
Companies like this have their good sides too. Perhaps some audiences will never see dance in any other form; therefore, the fact that the company has attracted them to see dance however fundamental advocates the art form on some level. The only distress I feel is in how unchanging the administrative arts are in these matters. A companies structure and methods are rarely ever examined if a “formula” for success has been attained, hailed with an expounding “Eureka!”, no doubt. I struggle to understand how some artists with limited vision can be racking in the financial support and others, with more artistic depth and clarity perhaps, are never given the acknowledgement they deserve, let alone a check to make significant work.
That’s the key, isn’t it? Who is deciding what significant dance work looks like?
Clearly no one asked me. Hopefully when I have my own flailing dance company that will no doubt elude funding as well as prestige, I can tackle some of these questions and actually find solutions to them, however unconventional. For it seems that unconventionality is the way I must access the work albeit poorer rather than financially (politically perhaps) enabled.
It was a really challenging space, the Herald Theatre. The rack on the seating was impossible to get a good perspective that was unobtrusive to the dancers and there were no wings even though they pretended that there were. The dancers are proficient, the choreography is excellent to average albeit inconsistently so, and the performance lacking. It's clear that Footnote is a young dance company; a "choreolab" comprised of six core dancers of capable technical ability and beautiful physique. Choreographers from the area are invited to make work on the company for performances on a touring circuit. What Footnote does have is funding.
Supported by the local foundational institutions and private donors throughout their touring territory, it comes as no surprise to me that this young company have the financial backing to put on such mediocre performances. It is not uncommon in the States to have many companies of varying artistic capabilities funded by local arts advocates. One such company is settled in the heart of my hometown. The company employs technically able performers with amazing bodies and on-stage charisma, but the range of their individual artistry leaves me wanting at the end of countless performances that seem to blend into one another as time goes by. Once I've seen then, I wonder if that's all I'll ever get. There is generally no range of sophistication being performed onstage. Where is the artist within the technician? And yet, audiences flock to support them and they are well funded with astounding social, prestigious, and financial backing.
Companies like this have their good sides too. Perhaps some audiences will never see dance in any other form; therefore, the fact that the company has attracted them to see dance however fundamental advocates the art form on some level. The only distress I feel is in how unchanging the administrative arts are in these matters. A companies structure and methods are rarely ever examined if a “formula” for success has been attained, hailed with an expounding “Eureka!”, no doubt. I struggle to understand how some artists with limited vision can be racking in the financial support and others, with more artistic depth and clarity perhaps, are never given the acknowledgement they deserve, let alone a check to make significant work.
That’s the key, isn’t it? Who is deciding what significant dance work looks like?
Clearly no one asked me. Hopefully when I have my own flailing dance company that will no doubt elude funding as well as prestige, I can tackle some of these questions and actually find solutions to them, however unconventional. For it seems that unconventionality is the way I must access the work albeit poorer rather than financially (politically perhaps) enabled.
Thursday, June 15, 2006
Choreographic Process
I think it is interesting the way artists think about and articulate their work. With the ever-increasing difficulty in describing "modern" & "post-modern" dance, I'm becoming less and less interested in carbon copy aesthetics and more interested in the depth of work it takes to come to significant dance work. I know, I know, "significant" is up for debate, but whatever it is, I consider it the "stuff" that perpetuates the field rather than the "stuff" that sedates it. Upon request for a lecture I was giving in a Dance Studies course a few weeks ago, one of my own professors, Sarah Gamblin, wrote about her process is creating her work entitled Terrible Angels.
Sarah Gamblin: Terrible Angels
"All I knew before the process began is that I wanted to work in a way that is similar to Bebe Miller's process, which is doing lab/workshops using improvisation and reflection to locate and create a world collaboratively with dancers. I also wanted to work with detailed, complex movement. We began the weekend of Katrina and I was listening to Cocorosie, which has a mournful, strange, hyper feminine and subversive feeling, this made me think of NO and it's cultural history, it's national bad girl status; death, femininity, sexuality, poetry, failure. These images just kept swirling around and I did not try to make narrative sense of any of it, nor did I try to distill anything into one coherent metaphor.
We worked with improvisations that I have been working on for a while. One is called, "docking and permission" or sometimes "pause and undo" or also "pause and permit". Basically you work on feeling your kinesthetic impulses without acting on them. You pause in stillness for a long time and then allow, permit an impulse to move you, but only until you pause again. You try not to let the movement carry you too far, try not to fall back on kinesthetic habits but instead pause and observe what you would do if you could, and then allow the impulse to emerge out of the blackness of not knowing; inviting surprise, incoherence so as to find mystery. This is an improv mode, not a way of setting material. It is a sensibility, always trying to subvert itself.After that we set material from this improv mode but through opposite means- by just repeating movements with a partner, without counting, analysing, singing, editing or correcting, until the movement became learned.
I am an improviser and I tend to privilege presence and the freshness of a moment over formal coherence. The choreographer in me is still trying to figure out how best to dialogue with this part. The improviser in me likes things that unwind, rather than wind-up, as classical aesthetics tend to privilege. I would like to learn how to make this improviser’s sensibility more meaningful to audiences. The feedback at ACDFA taught me how irritating departures from classical formal development can be for viewers. Incomprehension, mild contempt and dismissal seemed to dominate the responses from the adjudicators. In my process I had been trying to create an authentic universe lived in as if for the first time, I did use my own sensibility for form to make coherent this universe but my sense of form is not classical. What is development? Do we just know it when we see it? When someone says, you need to develop that, what is it we are supposed to do? I can see now that it is a matter of asking questions, dealing with feedback. There is no prescription for development, just a process that eventually teaches everyone; choreographer, dancers, audience, what development means in that world being created.
Also collaborated with a wonderful electro-acoustic musician named Dave Gedosh whose ultra strange music completely subverted my privilege of being strange. What I like was how over the top wierd the whole thing became, what I don't like is how jittery and uncomfortable and ultimately inaccessible the world became, witout any pay-off. I think the music was almost too intense for my work, which perhaps did not slap back enough, formally speaking, the musical wierdness.Hope this helps, let me know if you have any other questions.
I also collaborated with a wonderful electro-acoustic musician named Dave Gedosh whose ultra strange music completely subverted my privilege of being strange. What I like was how over the top weird the whole thing became, what I don't like is how jittery and uncomfortable and ultimately inaccessible the world became, without any pay-off. I think the music was almost too intense for my work, which perhaps did not slap back enough, formally speaking, and the musical weirdness.
I think it is interesting the way artists think about and articulate their work. With the ever-increasing difficulty in describing "modern" & "post-modern" dance, I'm becoming less and less interested in carbon copy aesthetics and more interested in the depth of work it takes to come to significant dance work. I know, I know, "significant" is up for debate, but whatever it is, I consider it the "stuff" that perpetuates the field rather than the "stuff" that sedates it. Upon request for a lecture I was giving in a Dance Studies course a few weeks ago, one of my own professors, Sarah Gamblin, wrote about her process is creating her work entitled Terrible Angels.
Sarah Gamblin: Terrible Angels
"All I knew before the process began is that I wanted to work in a way that is similar to Bebe Miller's process, which is doing lab/workshops using improvisation and reflection to locate and create a world collaboratively with dancers. I also wanted to work with detailed, complex movement. We began the weekend of Katrina and I was listening to Cocorosie, which has a mournful, strange, hyper feminine and subversive feeling, this made me think of NO and it's cultural history, it's national bad girl status; death, femininity, sexuality, poetry, failure. These images just kept swirling around and I did not try to make narrative sense of any of it, nor did I try to distill anything into one coherent metaphor.
We worked with improvisations that I have been working on for a while. One is called, "docking and permission" or sometimes "pause and undo" or also "pause and permit". Basically you work on feeling your kinesthetic impulses without acting on them. You pause in stillness for a long time and then allow, permit an impulse to move you, but only until you pause again. You try not to let the movement carry you too far, try not to fall back on kinesthetic habits but instead pause and observe what you would do if you could, and then allow the impulse to emerge out of the blackness of not knowing; inviting surprise, incoherence so as to find mystery. This is an improv mode, not a way of setting material. It is a sensibility, always trying to subvert itself.After that we set material from this improv mode but through opposite means- by just repeating movements with a partner, without counting, analysing, singing, editing or correcting, until the movement became learned.
I am an improviser and I tend to privilege presence and the freshness of a moment over formal coherence. The choreographer in me is still trying to figure out how best to dialogue with this part. The improviser in me likes things that unwind, rather than wind-up, as classical aesthetics tend to privilege. I would like to learn how to make this improviser’s sensibility more meaningful to audiences. The feedback at ACDFA taught me how irritating departures from classical formal development can be for viewers. Incomprehension, mild contempt and dismissal seemed to dominate the responses from the adjudicators. In my process I had been trying to create an authentic universe lived in as if for the first time, I did use my own sensibility for form to make coherent this universe but my sense of form is not classical. What is development? Do we just know it when we see it? When someone says, you need to develop that, what is it we are supposed to do? I can see now that it is a matter of asking questions, dealing with feedback. There is no prescription for development, just a process that eventually teaches everyone; choreographer, dancers, audience, what development means in that world being created.
Also collaborated with a wonderful electro-acoustic musician named Dave Gedosh whose ultra strange music completely subverted my privilege of being strange. What I like was how over the top wierd the whole thing became, what I don't like is how jittery and uncomfortable and ultimately inaccessible the world became, witout any pay-off. I think the music was almost too intense for my work, which perhaps did not slap back enough, formally speaking, the musical wierdness.Hope this helps, let me know if you have any other questions.
I also collaborated with a wonderful electro-acoustic musician named Dave Gedosh whose ultra strange music completely subverted my privilege of being strange. What I like was how over the top weird the whole thing became, what I don't like is how jittery and uncomfortable and ultimately inaccessible the world became, without any pay-off. I think the music was almost too intense for my work, which perhaps did not slap back enough, formally speaking, and the musical weirdness.
Sunday, June 11, 2006
I'm becoming increasing nervous about finishing up my graduate work. There seems to be too many ideas that don't connect to one another to be deemed my personal 'body of work'. I'm going to have to work on that. I don't want my choreographic work to suffer simply because I'm forced into putting more attention on my professional paper. It's become a challenge to relate all the components that I will be presenting in my final presentation at the end of year 3. The last 2 dance works I've choreographed were, in my mind, successful for various reasons but I don't feel I have a good video representation of the work in order to make a professional-looking demo reel. How do I rectify that? By doing the video work myself? Hiring someone? That may have to happen. It's frustrating to realize that, like everything else in my life, I am required to do everything myself if I want it done right. For someone who values collaborative processes and feels that relationships are the most valuable asset emerging from dance work, it irritates me that I am constantly stuck doing work over again because it was not done well the first time. This is a self-indulgent rant, mind you, and I'm sure I will get over it by tomorrow. I'm just frustrated.
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
Introduction to My Work
My name is Rachel Bruce. I am a graduate student at Texas Woman’s University in Denton, Texas. I’ve worked as a video producer, photographer, and web and print product designer for the last 7 years as well as a professional performer and choreographer in several small grassroots dance companies in Oklahoma, Texas, and Washington DC and am currently the publicity coordinator for Texas Woman’s University’s Department of Dance. I am in the third year of a 3-year program to earn a Master of Fine Arts in Performance and Choreography at TWU.
I have learned most of what I know out of necessity to carve out a place for myself in dance. I don’t stand out in auditions but I’m a good performer. I have talent for choreography because I absorb ideas and can organize them kinaesthetically first before ever understanding them abstractly or logically. I worked in a corporate job straight out of college as an administrative assistant because I had to eat. It was a position in a creative division of a military contracting firm made up of graphic designers, video producers and communication specialist. I also danced for a company, rehearsing in the evenings and on weekends.
Everything I learned at my corporate job that I had a vested interest in (barring the interest I had in keeping my job) was geared toward supporting the dance company. When we needed a poster to promote our shows, I found a co-worker who craved a creative outlet to volunteer. When we needed marketing, I paid attention to relevant ideas while at work. When we needed a program, I took a class under professional development (paid for by the company) that helped me learn a layout program in order to support the dance company. I got very good at seeing opportunities and making relevant connections to support the dance work I wanted to be doing.
Artistic Statement
I am an artist interested in making relational connections. From the movement in and from our bodies connecting to the movement in and from person to person, these are the movements that form relationships; relationships amongst people, ideas and movement. I am interested in asymmetry as a means of skewing conventionality and perspective. I am interested in developing movement quality as the voice of specific work.
Choreographic Process
I mainly enter the work through emotion and movement quality. Most of the time I am situated somewhere in between controlling and guiding the concept and am concerned with the accomplishing goals and nurturing the dancers rather than making master works. I’ve learned a lot from this approach.
Here are some examples of my work and the process I engaged in to create them:
White After Labor Day
Worked from a piece of music that inspired me. I had a vision of the kind of humor that the music inspired and it was a challenge to develop it. I worked with dancers with a wide range of skill sets so it was sometimes a challenge to generate the type of movement quality I thought the piece needed. I gave set movement phrases and tailor them to the dancers as well as asking them to create movement phrases based on what I had already given them. I thought that by doing this, I would receive feedback on what motifs were the strongest as well as the ones that the cast was kinaesthetically relating to.
dive
“dive” is a multi-media piece using video footage and the flat it was being projected on as another performer. I developed the movement and the structure first with a first draft of the video footage. I realized that I had too many metaphors in the video footage and should distil it down to one. I chose one metaphor – diving/floating – based on the movement vocabulary that had been developed. I originally called this piece “living in the blindspot” because I wanted it to be about making the choice to live wide-awake to not be indifferent. The movement vocabulary was virtuosic and kinetically chaotic while the video performer was floating in a pool not engaging with her environment in the typical way. I realized that the ‘blindspot’ was negativity so I spray-painted negative words like ‘no’, ‘not’, ‘never’ on the flat that the video was going to be projected on. I’d been taking water aerobics for 2 months in the pool where we did the filming and I happen to notice a sign that said ‘No Diving’ on the wall. I saw a connection – the missing piece of my context that would bring my concept alive. I re-worked the footage, re-shot a few segments and made some minor structural changes to support the context including a dive at the end of the video, which proved an effective ending.
Don’t…Away
This is a solo art/dance collaboration project. I listened to the same music that the visual artist was listening to, spent time studying the paintings which were large-scale on sailboat sails and incorporated inspiration from quotes she sent me that were relevant to the concept. I had a kinaesthetic entrance into the piece but not a visual one and that impeded my intuition to some extent. I filmed a 45-minute improvisation based on the movement ideas I was working with that I felt referenced the concept and edited the sequences as they made sense to me visually. Then I put it back in my body for further kinaesthetic reflection. I was editing and moving, editing and moving until, in the interest of time, I abandoned the editing software and finished making my decisions via movement. I never reached a satisfactory ending but had to perform it. After the art reception, my professor confirmed that she too didn’t think it was finished.
distorted clarity
This was a piece that my colleague and friend, Brooke Schlecte, choreographed through concept and improvisation. We were researching dance as grotesque form and had been saturating ourselves with reading about grotesque form and watching hours of video clips cataloguing relevant samples for our history presentation. We talked a few times about concept and what the other was thinking about. Brooke wanted to put two ideas together: eating disorders and writing on her skin with a marker as an addictive activity. I wanted to use contortion and emoting as a movement qualities. As we talked, we began to see how our ideas could fit together. I had some movement motifs and further ideas but had only improvised some in my living room. She had some motifs and a skeletal structure but that was it. We watched each others movement and reflected on each others ideas. We both began to see some possibilities that we then tried and videotaped. We saw more possibilities and made some changes and repeated the cycle 3 times before we were finished. We both felt we had a complete movement and concept idea that resounded with our intention to create a dance in grotesque form for our history presentation.
we all fall down
This is a 4-minute dance film that was part of a larger 24-minute film. I took a concept from a choreographer about ‘adults at play’ and asked a dancer to improvise swinging, hanging and playing on a monkey bar (with no storyboard). I got inspired by what she was doing and filmed the pebble section and the run away, then asked her to roll down the hill. At the end of the last take, while still filming I saw her knees and feet in the frame and asked her to walk back up the hill. She did and then laid down (which I didn’t ask her to do). Like I said this was part of a larger film and we finished the day having gotten, what I thought, was sufficient footage to make a sketch of something. After seeing the footage, I realized that there was a complete idea there and 3 hours of editing later, we all fall down was finished.
Summary
Critical thinking – pose a problem and set out to solve it. Be reflective and have reasons for every choice you make. It’s okay to not always be able to articulate your reasons for your choices, but pay attention and work toward it.
Engagement is an (re)action: engage with the work on as many levels and from as many perspectives as you can.
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