TRUE
Ming
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.
Jess
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. It's such a joyous, ecstatic thing, to be moving the body in
these increasingly difficult, yet emotionally explosive patterns, and
absolute passion showed in every one of the performers' bodies
Whitney
Through movement, music, costuming, and a small blurb in the program,
there was a very clear (almost too clear) story being conveyed for the
audience...The patterns of movement imitation between the shadow brides
and the young virgin felt eerie and dystopic.
Cody
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. Perhaps this reaction is merely symptomatic
of myself being pedantically cerebral and not being in tuned with my
emotions.
Justin
We have been discussing kinesthetic empathy and the connection between critical and emotional intellects as they relate to spectators. How can a viewer’s thoughts and feelings be attended to simultaneously? The answer may lie in the dancers’
ability to simultaneously perform their own physical movements yet have
an external focus that allows for a faultless connection to another or
group. Such simultaneous attention to external stimuli and internal
response may be attributed to use of what critics have termed the
‘bodymind,’ a tool that Phillip Zarrilli has discussed concerning the
purposeful training of actors
MEANINGFUL
Courtney
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)
Jennifer
I was particularly affected by the juxtaposition of joy and
misery throughout the evening’s performances. For example, the opening was
joyous: happy bodies frolicking across and around the stage in what appeared to
be an updated quadrille. The second movement was a sudden change – an
exploration of destructive isolation. The dancers reached, but their inability
to actually touch each other was painful to watch. The dancers emphasized
their shoulder blades and collapsed their cores, dragging themselves to center
stage where they revolved in a starving, circling herd.
Derek
The final song had some English lyrics, “gathering
together”, and featured rhythmic clapping by the dancers, which made me want to
clap along with them. [bold added]
Kelley
There were definite moments when I
felt the dancers celebrated their bodies and lengthened their legs and balanced
and yes, it was beautiful. But the moments I loved were the moments, like in
the first dance, when the dancers came on crawling on all fours in a grotesque
way, an evil way.
Andrea
There were two types of dance performances at the Gala last
Sunday—those that were based in a narrative and those that were not (or were
less so).
Iris
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
Sara
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. There is no beauty much less propriety in
the tumble on the mattress without first witnessing the beauty in the walk for
the bus.
Jenna
After
the exercise of recognizing the dance alums and current students of dance in
the audience, I clearly felt my position in the audience as one of interloper.
Even though the audience was of such a significant size that I doubt all of the
people gathered there were associated with the dance program, so many of the
viewers immediately surrounding my seat stood for recognition when prompted
that I felt lost in the sea of expert dance spectators.
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