19.2 - Culled Responses (Derek)

(I thought the due date/time was today at midnight. My apologies for the late post. - Derek)

I pulled passages that I thought were interesting and fit into the three categories of true, meaningful, or both. I've organized them that way here.

True

Courtney (on Esplanade) – 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.

Andrea – 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.

Cody – the dances presented themselves as possessing a large degree of narrativity.  The first and fourth dances were broken into scenes.  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. 

Meaningful

Jennifer – 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. 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.

Courtney (on Esplanade) – 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.

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. Though I've taken some modern dance classes (and loved them), I have never been very athletic. 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.

Kelly – 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.

Whitney (on Rite of Summer) – this piece laid out a narrative more effectively than the others. 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.

Dorothy – The running, however, brings up a question that had reoccurring strains throughout each piece. What is dance? If running is dance, than is it dance to walk, is it dance to sit up and look chagrined (as in Straight Duet)? To paraphrase John Blacking, I think dance in these modern contexts can be defined as “humanly organized movement,” and feel most engaged by the movements that are not necessarily traditional in the canon of pre-modern Western dance.

BOTH

Whitney (on Rite of Summer) – 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.

Justin – 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.”

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. 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.

Sara – 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. 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. At first, I was unable to see the expansion or repetition of a dance idea that might coalesce with the music, but in continuing to watch, I began to pick out the lovely return time and again of the solo women—I’m thinking the first, dynamic entrance by the lone female figure, and the delightful image of the small girl bouncing—leaping—bounding? over the line of prostrate dancers.

19.2 (Jenna)

Sara:

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.

Blog Post 19.2 (Andrea)

On narrative: I am much more susceptible to pieces with a strong narrative structure (Iris). 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 (Jennifer). “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). I wonder what my reaction to these dances would have been if these performances did not present themselves as being charged with narrative/narrativity?  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 (Cody).

On visceral reactions to 'grotesqueness': 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 . . . Perhaps there is this joy I find in bodies that celebrate how ugly/disturbing they can become rather than pleasing to the eye (Kelly). The patterns of movement imitation between the shadow brides and the young virgin felt eerie and dystopic . . . 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).

And to 'joy': The dancers engaged in domino tag, touch-falling and rising, leaping into the air, and I could not help smiling in pleasure at the joy they exhibited (Derek). 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 (Andrea). 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 (Jess). 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 (Justin).

On beauty in everyday movement: 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 (Sara). What is dance? If running is dance, than is it dance to walk, is it dance to sit up and look chagrined (as in Straight Duet)? To paraphrase John Blacking, I think dance in these modern contexts can be defined as “humanly organized movement,” and feel most engaged by the movements that are not necessarily traditional in the canon of pre-modern Western dance (Dorothy). 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 . . . In this piece dance is about the many different ways a body can move and interact with other bodies more than it is about a each particular dancer’s virtuosity (Courtney).

Dance review (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). Throughout our discussions about dance, I've been thinking about the role that narrative plays in my understanding and appreciation of art, and whether meaning can exist without it. I’d like to use those questions to frame my review of the Gala, in which Rite of Summer and Straight Duet relied on some kind of direct narrative and Esplanade and Nascimento Novo did not.

The program notes for Rite of Summer tell us that the dance is playing with references to the ballets Rite of Spring and Giselle. Even without these notes, though, I read the dance as a narrative because of the props, costumes, and interactions between dancers. The twitching movements of the dancers and their facial expressions indicated a struggle between opposing forces. Much of the pleasure or enjoyment of watching was about puzzling out the story and the characters. The narrative in Straight Duet was much more obvious, and the pleasure in the dance came more from seeing impressive athletic feats and simultaneously seeing the parts of the story that they conveyed.

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. I’m not sure that I can completely remove narrative from my understanding and appreciation of dance, but the chief enjoyment I took from Esplanade and Nascimento came from a different, more obscure, source.

Prompt: Course blog 17 (Foster and Reason and Reynolds)

Group C: What is the argument and methodology of these two articles? What counts as evidence for these authors? How do we fit "empathy" into our pantheon of terms (trance, theatricality, enchantment, transport, alienation, stuplime, etc.)?

Group A: The sublime and the stuplime assume a particular subjectivity, a particular receptive agent. For Kant, the reasoning agent, at a careful remove from the infinite, transcends the vastness through a recognition of it. Ngai describes a subject opened up, through boredom and shock, to "an indeterminate affective state that lacks the punctuating 'point' of an individuated emotion" (284).   Do these essays on dance challenge or complicate either of the imagined subjectivities or perceiving agents imagined by Ngai or Kant? 

Group D:  What do we do with dance? How should it be included in discourse around performance, reception, etc? How does it frustrate our critical aims and how might it usefully enrich our thinking on performance?