Manning the Florida Polls [Lusk] Blog Post 20

Manning The Polls

Election seasons are always very exciting. Whether you are enjoying the combat happening between your friends on Facebook, or waiting in line for several hours to cast your vote, it is nearly impossible to avoid the experience all together. And, it seems to me, the experience has divided itself into two parts. One part being the social media experience, and the second part being the voting experience.

It seems that during election season, all the ugly and hostile friends rise on Facebook and take their rightful place at the head of table of jerks. And I mean that in the best possible way. I think it’s awesome that we have a free platform in which to express our opinions, even if we do it in a disrespectful and uneducated way. I myself, felt the need to un-friend a handful of old friends as well as some family members (I had a cousin who says that ‘a vote for Obama is like a vote for terrorism’… where do you even begin with that?) So I do believe that this social media experience is a crucial part of it… but I’m not sure how you would ‘jar’ it up and put it in a museum. Especially since most of the drama on Facebook comes from close personal ties being loosened when you find out your friends political beliefs, so I’m not sure how you would do this in a exhibition.

So I wanted to think of another experience. Voting. The actually act of voting is a great experience. But the voting can be pretty boring… unless you are in Florida.

I propose that an exhibit is put up, very similarly to the Living Photos we saw in Indianapolis. But we bring alive an image of people waiting to vote in Florida. There were many problems with Florida’s voting system this year and people woke up as early as One O’clock in the morning to vote! How amazing would it be to be able to talk to these people! The dedication they must have! The commitment to the candidates they are voting for!

Not only that, but we would be able to get an unbiased opinion from them all, since it is a voting poll, we’ll have a great mix of people to talk to. People who strongly believe in one candidate or another, voters who don’t really care (which is important, although apathy is frustrating.)

So in this exhibit we would have 6 different kinds of characters waiting in line.

1.     The Obama supporter (older): This person believes in Obama completely. Believes that his economic issues and social liberty issues are all on the right track and will be able to debate anyone who says anything different.

2.     The Romney supporter (older): This person is behind Romney through and through and has debated many times with their friends that we must rebuild the economy first, then we can do social rights.

3.     The Obama supporter (younger): The enthusiasm that the younger generation brought to the Obama campaign will be represented in this. This character, like myself, won’t have much of a grasp on Obama’s financial issues, but knows that he believes in equality and that, this character believes, is first and foremost in the issues.

4.     The Romney supporter (younger): This character is basically the same thing as the Obama supporter (younger). Sort of a one-issue voter. Now, I’m not saying that all young people are one-issue voters, but the one-issue voters are being represented by the younger characters.

5.     Polling Advisor: This is the character that runs the polls. The other characters will complain to him about how long they’ve been waiting, ask why the machines are down, etc. He’ll be a completely neutral character and the only opinions on politics he’ll have is the importance of voting.

6.     The crazy canvassers: At a least ditch attempt, there’ll be a person with a sign begging you to vote for their candidate. Now, this can switch through out the day. Maybe one day it’s a Romney supporter, the next it’s an Obama pusher. And maybe even someone for the libertarian candidate. But the pressure from the outside world will be represented in this person.

There are absolutely a million more characters we could (and probably should) add to this to fairly represent the voting experience in a nutshell, but I’m hoping that these main ones will gives us a broad basic wash.

To tie the social media aspect into all of this, I propose that after visiting the living photo of the voting line, viewers can go into another room that has facts and post a Status on a fake media website. There’ll be several computers strewn about and anybody can make a status. Also, anybody can comment on them. So hopefully we’ll bring alive the stress from putting your opinions on a social media site and having them mocked or encouraged by friends and total strangers.

I know this is an obvious way to envelope the voting experience, but sometimes the obvious is the best. What better way to understand the experience than try and get to the heart of it. And, after having talked to my friends and family in Florida, it seems that the stress of voting there is something that can really magnify and focus the experience.

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 Notes- 11/8/12

Ellen: Indianapolis trip- we should leave probably around 9, you can park in the IUPUI lot if you have a pass, or there’s free parking in the Historical Society parking lot. I’ll upload an info package to Oncourse including directions. We’ll explore separately and then head over to the Advanced Visualization Lab, then go back to the museum and look at the archive, then preview an exhibit in progress. Grab something before you leave for IUPUI, there won’t be a lunch break.

Blog 19 Pt. 2 Dorothy

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.

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 (Iris)

True:
Dorothy:  Women convulsing on the floor, epileptic mayhem and then the constant tacit play of the symbolic red petals.
Jenna:  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
.
Meaningful:
Dorothy: 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.
Whitney:  As a starting point, this piece seemed to fit uncomfortably in the evening’s program and perhaps some of my initial attraction to it comes from its misfit status. Additionally, some strongly negative responses from my peers to this piece have shaped my thoughts for this review around the question of why I had such a positive reaction to it.

Both:
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.
Andrea: At their best moments, these dances conveyed a kind of exuberance in movement that I somehow experienced with them.
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.

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)

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.

19.2 (Courtney)

True :

As clearly the top-billed dancer up there, Lalah Hazelwood perhaps drew people who came to see her in something. (Ming)

For example, the opening was joyous: happy bodies frolicking across and around the stage in what appeared to be an updated quadrille. (Jennifer)

Both dancers wore plain white sports underwear, and the only prop was a queen size mattress. (Derek)

Meaningful:

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 (Kelly)

I preferred this piece because of the (in)tense relationship between the narrative and the dance itself. Looking past the slightly over-the-top costuming (glittery white, calf-length dresses) and props (red rose petals), this piece laid out a narrative more effectively than the others. (Whitney)

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)

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.  This sort of reaction, I feel, prevented me from experiencing the kinesthetic empathy that Reason/Reynolds explored in their essay. (Cody)

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. (Justin)

IU Dance Gala: Part 2 (Cody)

"The true," whatever that means...

The first piece, Esplanade, began with physical forms that reminded me of 17th or 18th century court dancing, and the musical accompaniment, Bach, certainly helped to set that stage. With this sort of formal context in place, the reoccurring transgressive breaks, a single dancer running around a formal tableau, the physically wrenching shudders of a dancer on the floor, etc., were striking. (Dorothy)

Paul Taylor claims that his inspiration for writing Esplanade came from watching a young girl run to catch a bus on a beautiful day. According to the dramaturgical notes archived by the Paul Taylor Dance Company, much like his contemporaries in the visual art world such as Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg were using found objects to create art, Taylor was using “found movements” and quotidian gesture to re-create American dance. (Sara)

The meaningful

Overall, while the message was glaring at times and the presentation perhaps a bit too overt, ["Rite of Summer"] 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. (Whitney)

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 ["Esplanade"] 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)

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)

 

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).