T-An esplanade is a large outdoor place for walking and indeed Taylor’s choreography is pedestrian in the sense that it refuses the formal, prescribed gestures of classical dance while still capturing the exuberant poetry-in-motion of the everyday joys of being out and about in the air.
M- This playful image [ the small girl bouncing—leaping—bounding? over the line of prostrate dancers.] finally forced me out of a losing game in trying to match the relationships between the dancers to the contrapuntal relationship between the two violins and instead see the choreography coalescing so beautifully with the music, rhythmically or “aesthetically” independent and yet intertwining, each made richer and more beautiful in their juxtaposition.
M- By eschewing narrative and formal abstraction for embodied exuberance and the aesthetic of the everyday, it was Taylor’s work that created a space for the subsequent pieces we witnessed.
Dorothy:
T-Modern dance often makes use of symbolic gestures culled from different cultures and time periods and those repetitive motions seem as if they must be trying to tell me something.
M- The earlier three pieces seemed to contrast starkly with the crowd pleasing, culture sampling Nascimento Novo. Calling on different elements of Brasilian heritage, Spanish dance, African dance and featuring the dancers in contemporary street wear inspired costumes, there was a populist feel to this final dance. The performers united across color lines and gender lines to dance together and show an relentlessly upbeat “spirit of dance,” bringing the point home strongly with their gymnastic shout-out to Hoosier pride.
Iris:
T- I noticed that my behavior as a dance spectator was different from when I go to see plays. When watching theatre, I laugh, loudly and often, because I feel that it's appropriate and I want the actors to know I'm enjoying myself. But there was a point in "Esplanade" when one of the dancers went running across the stage on a diagonal, with an enormous smile on her face. I burst out laughing, and immediately covered my mouth, embarrassed. It was okay to make quiet, appreciative noises, during an especially impressive physical feat, but I felt that laughter would in some way ruin the moment.
M- For me, the highlight of the night was "Straight Duet," both for the acrobatics of the two performers and for the inherent storyline that I put over their movements.
Justin:
T- The performances of “Esplanade” and “Nascimento Novo” at IU Dance Theatre’s Celebration Gala evoked this same idea. Throughout, I envisioned the internal challenge for the dancers: “This is my run, yet it is your run. This is my jump, yet it’s yours as well. This is my arm extension, yet it is our [the whole group’s] same extension.”
M- Yet, simultaneously, dance and physical theatre can call the performer’s ownership of the body into question. This notion came to my attention during the performance of Black Watch as the ‘soldiers’ performed the training/disciplining of their individual bodies, their most basic possessions, so as to become a seamlessly working unit – ultimately, their bodies were no longer their own, but belonged to each other and to the state.
M- The individual is erased, as each member works to embody the same steps and to mirror the rest of the group. This was most evident in “Esplanade” as pairs, trios, and the entire group were challenged to crawl, skip, run or leap in unison. Likewise, moments of differentiated movements called body ownership into question, as they were typified by the sharing of weight and absolute trust in another’s physical strength. “It is my head-first leap, but your ‘catch’ that keeps me whole.”
Cody:
T- As we discussed last week with the Reason/Reynolds essay on kinesthetic empathy, our considerations of and emotions felt during a dance performance need not necessarily be dictated or restricted by any prior knowledge of or expertise in the field of dance. However, putting theory into practice, in my case, presented a different outcome. Rather than enjoying the dynamism of the dancers’ bodies, I found myself questioning how these specific movements related to the overall narratives of the dances.
M- When I read poetry or prose that seems to have no narrativity or narrative comprehensibility, for example, I usually surrender myself to a more visceral, experiential reading of the language. But, of course, textuality allows for return and re-readings whereas, following Phelan’s onotology of disappearance, these dance performances are ephemeral, presenting a finite temporality that does not allow for a repeated experience. As such, while watching dance as a non-expert, I would need either to reach this moment of narrative surrender much more quickly by virtue of the performance’s transience or to abandon the quest for narrative interpretation at the onset. And yet, I’m not sure if giving up the quest for narrative is really worth it.
Andrea:
T- The program notes for Rite of Summer tell us that the dance is playing with references to the ballets Rite of Spring and Giselle.
M- In the non-narrative dances, I noticed myself responding more physically to the performance. Through most of Esplanade and Nascimento, my enjoyment came from the physicality of the dancers as they moved and the joy that they seemed to have in their own movement. They were often smiling as they ran or jumped or spun onstage, and I felt my face become more lifted as well, raising my eyebrows and lips slightly. I kept finding that my leg muscles, especially my calves, were slightly flexed as I watched, and when the music had a strong beat, I tapped my toes in my shoes. At their best moments, these dances conveyed a kind of exuberance in movement that I somehow experienced with them.
Whitney:
M- I had such a positive reaction to it. Sure, during the first piece of the evening, “Esplanade” I noticed my feet bouncing to the music. Similarly, I found the final piece, “Nascimento Novo” palpably energetic to watch. But “Rite of Summer” was the only piece that really prompted a deep and disturbing physical response. My ultimate conclusion is that I preferred this piece because of the (in)tense relationship between the narrative and the dance itself.
M- Overall, while the message was glaring at times and the presentation perhaps a bit too overt, this performance had a strong narrative arc that seemed to work both in conversation with and against the movements of the dancers. The varying levels of tension between the narrative and the dance ultimately produced a hauntingly beautiful performance that seemed out of place with the energy of the other three pieces.
Kelly:
T-I’m not a dance person. I’m often the last to dance at parties and it is often after several drinks. I, also, don’t respond to dance very well. I’ve been to dance concerts and friend’s ballets and I’ve tried to get it, but I just can’t.
M-These are the questions that I was having throughout the concert: Is there a narrative? Why are the girls in dresses and the boys in pants? Why is that one girl in pants? Why are the pairings only boy/girl I was hung up on what the dance was NOT rather than what it was.
Jess:
T- When I see dance, there is a part of me that yearns to do what they do, because to me, dance is almost more important to the performer than the observer.
M- In addition to my body's visceral response, I noticed that I kept trying to piece together a narrative, even in the absence of one. That may be one of the reasons why I prefer ballet to modern dance; I appreciate classical ballets like Swan Lake and The Firebird because they have these fables woven into the dance.
Derek:
T- IU Dance Theatre 85th anniversary celebration gala was held November 4 and featured four pieces: Esplanade, Rite of Summer, Straight Duet, and Nascimento Novo.
T- Both dancers wore plain white sports underwear, and the only prop was a queen size mattress.
Courtney:
T- Set to Bach’s Violin Concerto in E Major, the dance [Esplanade] sets up its contrasts from the very beginning. Against this most classical of classical music, the dancers walk in patterned movements around the stage, pairing and unpairing in turn
M- These informal movements urge the question “Is walking dance?” and hint at what Reason and Reynolds call the “clichéd response to modern art, ‘I could do that myself’” (“Kinesthesia, Empathy, and Related Pleasures,” 59). Decentering the significance of the dancers’ skills and physical virtuosity, Taylor choreographs a dance that is about movement itself and the beauty of “everyday” movements.
Jennifer:
T- I was particularly affected by the juxtaposition of joy and
misery throughout the evening’s performances.
M- I tried not to impose a narrative on the piece, but
the use of a prop (a flower-girl’s basket of petals) and symbolic costuming
appealed too much to the latent lit scholar in me; I ended up reading Evans’
work as one in which the performers wracked their bodies against a
female-enforced patriarchy. The titular reference to a rite was evident in the
shortened wedding dresses of the bride figures. Their gestural attempts
to coerce and impose conformity on the female dancer in the simpler
dress were
intentionally redundant/stuplimitous: a big, circular gesture
reminiscent of stirring a vat followed by a flattened, raised hand as though they were looking in vanity mirrors.
Ming:
M- Actually, one of the most lasting awarenesses I think I'll have from
this course, as a spectator, is that of ghosting. I hadn't before
thought of what goes into the business of being an “experienced”
viewer before reading Sofer and Reason and Reynolds—and how being
an experienced viewer necessitates/presupposes ghosting. If performances "mean" more to experienced viewers, “meaning”
necessitates narrative; the narrative here (and perhaps anywhere) is
a series of ghosts—though whether it's a person, a dance move, a
musical score, or something else is a question of the mind of the
viewer.
M- I thought of the various lenses that could be used during tonight's performance: as clearly the top-billed dancer up there, Lalah Hazelwood perhaps drew people who came to see her in something. They might compare her performance tonight with seeing her in other things, perhaps at other ages—other Lalahs from other times, littler Lalahs from other years. For those people, various other Lalahs come into the “room”--the space of the mind of the viewer.
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