Dance Performance Review Crowd-Sourcing (19.2 - Whitney)

**Apologies for the slight tardiness of this post.

TRUE: I’m attempting to cull quotes from my peers that construct “true” in terms of brutal honest. The moments within these reviews that seemed to unexpectedly reveal an honest statement about the reviewer that maybe otherwise wouldn’t have been revealed. Things about ourselves that we discovered or were forced to discover because of the experience of the dance performance.

Kelly: “Perhaps there is this joy I find in bodies that celebrate how ugly/disturbing they can become rather than pleasing to the eye.”

Jess: “Every time I see feats of physical prowess and athletic ability, I feel a kinesthetic response that I place somewhere in the area of longing.”

Cody: “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.”

Iris: “…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.”

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.”

MEANINGFUL: The quotes I’m pulling here focus less on the reviewer and more on unexpected and thought-provoking elements of the dance performance that emerged from the reviews. The “meaningful” works on a deeper level of analysis than the surface of the dance performance itself allowed for – the not-so-obvious trajectories of feeling and analysis that it prompted, thinking beyond dance as simply the movement of bodies in space.

Courtney: “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.”

Courtney: “Perhaps one of the few viewers excluded from this reconfiguration of “I could do that myself” is the entirely immobile one…”

Justin: “…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.”

Sara: “There is no beauty much less propriety in the tumble on the mattress without first witnessing the beauty in the walk for the bus.”

Course blog #19, 2:0 [Sara] Escaping Narrativity

Meaningful

“If in some other dimension what people thought about, remembered, or compared the performance to (if they're even paying attention to the performance) were somehow visible or the way in which it was present took up some kind of visible space, what all would we see?” (Ming)

“Perhaps one of the few viewers excluded from this reconfiguration of “I could do that myself” is the entirely immobile one…” (Courtney)

“There was again the sense of playfulness exhibited in what might have been a game of tag. I was struck by the image of one of the male dancers running across the stage, taking long strides with his chest thrust out, smiling broadly; watching him, I felt the joy of unencumbered movement, of running freely through the warm grass in an open park.” (Derek)

“Every time I see feats of physical prowess and athletic ability, I feel a kinesthetic response that I place somewhere in the area of longing. … When performers land on their feet or bodies in a forceful way, my bones feel like I've stuck a fork in a toaster. When they stretch their limbs to the limit, I feel the ache in my own muscles. When they leap, my heart leaps with them.” (Jess)

“I’ve tried to get it, but I just can’t. … How can I review something that I feel I don’t understand? Or do I understand it, just not respond to it? What don’t I understand? 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/gir?” (Kelly)

“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.” (Whitney)
 

True

“The IU Dance Theatre 85^th anniversary celebration gala was held November 4 and featured four pieces: Esplanade, Rite of Summer, Straight Duet, and Nascimento Novo.” (Derek)

“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. The final two movements, featuring ecstatic leaps and flirtation, were each shaded by this indelible image of suffering.” (Jennifer)

“Never having seen live modern dance before, I was unsure of what to expect from Sunday’s Gala. Actually, sitting in the cavernous, ribbed auditorium, I rather expected plankton to emerge when the curtain lifted (this perhaps reflects on my self-awareness as a consuming observer). The pink, orange, and tan costumes and initial sprightliness of Paul Taylor’s “Esplanade” didn’t undermine this expectation.” (Jennifer)

“The Rousseau figure’s eventual triumph – her rejection of the brides – was evident in the contrast between her previously jerky, seizing movement and her graceful, dismissive exit stage left, leaving the brides to twitch on the floor.” (Jennifer)

“Women convulsing on the floor, epileptic mayhem and then the constant tacit play of the symbolic red petals.” (Dorothy)

“The patterns of movement imitation between the shadow brides and the young virgin felt eerie and dystopic. The dancers displayed extraordinary control over their bodies through muscle isolations and staccato movements that countered a narrative of complete absence of control. There were several other, collective moments of grotesque movement that worked against the general gracefulness of these women’s bodies. At one point, the dancers crawled along the ground on their elbows en masse – dragging both their temporarily paralyzed bodies and their white dresses over the black floor, a moment that actually prompted a grimace.” (Whitney)

“Set to Bach’s Violin Concerto in E Major, the dance 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. 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.” (Courtney)
 

Both
“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.” (Andrea)

“The first dance titularly situates its dancers within a phantasmatic space (the esplanade). The second dance is intertextually based off of two different ballets (The Rite of Spring and Giselle), both of which have well-known narrative trajectories. The third dance also situtates the staged movements within a specific space (the bedroom), using a maitress as indicative of such locality. While none of the latter definitively demarcates these performaces as finite, comprehensible narratives, each dance possessed markers of narrativity, of diegetic progression, of conflict(s), etc. that pulled me into this game of narrative interpretation. …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.” (Cody)

“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. … 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,’’” (Justin)

“The presence of the functionaries divided the audience into insiders and outsiders, those who attended the gala for celebratory purposes and those who simply came to view a performance. 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. After that point, their incredibly enthusiastic hoots and applause made me wonder if I had missed something. Was their appreciation, like mine, given for the beauty of choreography and the astounding skill of the performers, or were these dances somehow transcendent in a way I was unequipped to realize?” (Jenna)

Blog Post 19, Part II (Justin) - Only the Meaningful

In selecting quotes for this blog post, I started a Word doc split into three categories: "True," "Meaningful," and "Both." However, I soon discovered that all of my quotes were falling under "Meaningful" - I could not bring myself to trust in the label "True." Thus, I present to you the following list of MEANINGFUL quotes!


MING – “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.”

JENNIFER – “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.”

COURTNEY - "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."

COURTNEY (in relation to “Esplanade”) – “In this piece dance is about the many different ways a body can move and interact with other bodies more than it is about each particular dancer’s virtuosity.”

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.”

SARA – “I was particularly struck by the irreverence of the movement in contrast to the motivic structure of Johann Sebastian Bach's Concerto in D minor for Two Violins.”

Blog 19.1 Gala Review (Jenna)

My initial response to the dance event is mixed. I greatly enjoyed the moments of actual performance, but was quickly irritated by some of the managerial conventions of the form. The intervals between dances were inconsistent in length and in lighting, which boggled my mind. Why, after one dance, should we have what seemed to be an interminable intermission in full light (which, I could imagine, might signal the conclusion of the entire event) and after another a incredibly quick one in half light (which might suggest that the two pieces on either end of the break were actually from the same piece.) I suspect that my confusion about the intervals stems from my unfamiliarity with performances of dance. There may be legitimate reasons, probably involving the dancers’ need for rest, for bizarre interval patterns, but I could not understand their logistics.

Additionally, as this was a celebratory program for the 85^th anniversary of the dance program, it was understandable that various functionaries had been designated certain speeches before some of the dances. However, their appearance and length of speech was similarly inconsistent and provoked a comparable level of irritation. The presence of the functionaries divided the audience into insiders and outsiders, those who attended the gala for celebratory purposes and those who simply came to view a performance. 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. After that point, their incredibly enthusiastic hoots and applause made me wonder if I had missed something. Was their appreciation, like mine, given for the beauty of choreography and the astounding skill of the performers, or were these dances somehow transcendent in a way I was unequipped to realize? Might these have been merely adequate performances that were overly celebrated by the audience for nostalgic and sentimental purposes, or had I missed the introduction of the next dance star of the western world? While I thoroughly enjoyed all four of the dances performed that evening (Esplanade!!), I left the auditorium questioning my response and therefore did not fill out a survey.

Course Blog #19 (Justin): Using the Bodymind

In dance and physical theatre, a spectator is often reminded that the body is the only guaranteed tool of a performer – costumes, props, and set pieces may inform the performance, but only the living body is inseparable from the individual artist. 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. 

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.” 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.”

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. He states, “Working toward mastery of embodied forms, when combined with the ability to fix and focus both the gaze and the mind, frees the practitioner from ‘consciousness about,’ allowing the person instead to enter into a state of ‘concentratedness’” (194). Is the ‘bodymind’ a performance muscle that can be trained by the scholar as well? If so, one can achieve ‘concentratedness’ through willed practice: frequent conscious performance spectatorship where marrying external stimuli and internal focus becomes habit.

Zarrilli, Phillip. “What Does it Mean to ‘Become the Character?’: Power, Presence, and Transcendence in Asian In-Body Disciplines of Practice.” Means of Performance: Intercultural Studies of Theatre and Ritual. Eds. Richard Schechner and Willa Appel. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990.

Prompt 19: The Crowd-Sourced Review

This promises to be a noble experiment.

On Sunday, we will all be attending the dance department performance at the IU Auditorium (the event is unticketed and admission is free, so you should be able to just walk in).

By Monday at midnight, please post a 300 word 'review' of the production. I use scare quotes here because the formal requirements of a review are in flux in our digital age and I am happy to encourage that volatility. Write what you consider to be a substantive engagement with the production that ranges across these three categories: the true/factual, the meaningful, and the subjective (note: they are not necessarily discrete).

By Wednesday at noon, please cull from the full slate of reviews on the blog those claims that seem to you most true and meaningful. Cut and paste them into a separate blog post (you can call it Blog 19 Part 2 or something of that sort). You don't have to offer commentary here, but you should indicate which quotations seemed true to you and which seemed meaningful (or both).

Note: Worth thinking about as you write: Jennifer's critique of the reductiveness of Conquergood's usage of map/text. Can't texts/maps ever let us float free from the hegemony of text as (fixed/fixing) record or documentation? Isn't writing sometimes a zone or a conduit of multivocal open-endedness? Jennifer's fictional example would seem to say yes, notwithstanding writing's powerful inscriptive/prescriptive force. Try working out what this might look like in relation to Sunday's performance.

See you there.

NB: We will post a prompt for your election day ethnography on Monday.