Tag Archives: Alvin Ailey

Fall for Dance was great

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I enjoyed watching the dancing in Fall for Dance at New York City Center.

The first performance was terrific because all the dancers’ movements corresponded with another and everyone took their turns dancing. During the dance all of them came very close to one another without making any contact, which impressed me. However, the music was bland because it sounded like the same key being played on an organ with a little bit of others occasionally coming in and simple the sequence just repeated. The ballet performances that followed were not very interesting to me other than their manipulation of gravity. The dancers were ready to fall when their partners stopped them just in time. That is not for me. I would probably fall over. Later, two dancers were quite funny when they danced because the man physically showed impulses to come closer to his partner. In the end a person that looked like he worked for City Center stood in front of the curtain, and did some funny dance moves for the audience. I thought he was just fooling around, but later it seems that it was all part of the dance. I found this to be a very unique trick on the audience. After the dance built up in intensity, the dancers took people from the audience onto the stage and dance with them full of energy. It was very entertaining to watch trained, lively dancers dance with unprepared audience members. I wish I could have been chosen to dance with them.

I was so happy we went to this performance.

Fall For Dance

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I have been waiting to write this post because I absolutely love dance and believe that it is one of the greatest forms of expression of emotions. It is one of my passions! I apologize because this will probably be a lengthy blog post.

I am ever thankful to Professor Drabik for giving Nabila and me Orchestra seats because they were absolutely wonderful. Because we were so close to the stage, we could experience the action happening on the stage. We could feel the dancers’ energy and the emotions that they portrayed with their performance. It was absolutely wonderful! I genuinely wish that our entire class could have had such incredible seats and I am sure that this way we all would have enjoyed the dancing even more.

I found a very interesting review from The New York Times about Fall for Dance by Alastair Macaulay (ironically). However, I do not necessarily agree with the author.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/13/arts/lucinda-childs-and-alvin-ailey-troupe-at-fall-for-dance.html

Lucinda Childs’s “Concerto” did not impress the author of the article at all and I many spectators disliked this piece as well. In contrast, I really enjoyed this dance because it reminds me of Merce Cunningham, a pioneer of contemporary dance. In the very precise dance sequence, the dancers had upright posture and there were moments of stillness. The dancers wore black attire in order to emphasize the movements of the body. Moreover, the females’ hair was pulled back to make it seem as if there was no difference between the male and female dancers. This further emphasized the bodies of the dancers. Overall, I believe that this was an inspiring performance due to its minimalism. It was a wonderful introduction to the other performances.

Dresden’s Semperoper Ballet did not interest the New York Times’ journalist as well. “Nueu Suite” was actually my favorite performance this evening. Macaulay described it as being “inexpressive,” though this performance was everything but inexpressive. The modern ballet was amazing with all the jumps, footwork and lunges. The performers were wonderful. In addition, I thought that each performance portrayed a different mood and feeling. The first performance had a romantic aura, the dancers in red were passionate, and the dancers in purple seemed to be bickering through their dance and movements. The final performance drew a connection between old-school ballet and contemporary dance. This was certainly an astounding performance that I really enjoyed. I believe that the New York Times’ journalist overlooked this performance.

Sebastien Ramirez and Hanji Wang were fantastic as well. I admire how Ramirez and Wang made their performance seem very casual and natural. They awe-struck the entire audience with their very modern, “circusy” (as Alastair Macaulay calls it) performance.

Ailvin Ailey’s Dance crew made an impressive statement as well. This performance was a favorite this night. The performance combined humor, dance and strong messages. In my opinion, the dancers were making a political and a social statement in two of the performances. In the performance involving the audience, apparently one of the women is an American ballerina that will present her performance later this week and others may have been professional dancers as well. I admired this performance; yet, I believe that perhaps the choreographer tried to combine too many things into one performance.

Finally, I just want to mention that I noticed that all the dancers that danced this evening had a fundamental ballet education. I find this very interesting because contemporary dance tends to distance itself from ballet in order to emphasize other movements.

Anyway, what do you guys think about this article? What you agree/disagree with?

Thank You Professor Drabik for taking us to see this wonderful performance!

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City Center is beautiful!

 

Angelika

Experiences with dance at The New York City Center

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Lucinda Childs Dance Company : CONCERTO

Professor Drabik, I apologize for my abrupt, extreme, unqualified statement that the music accompanying the first dance was horrible. I took the time to listen to a recording of a 1980 performance of Mr. Górecki’s concerto today. I admire the overwhelming volume of the orchestra and the ceaseless fugue on the harpsichord. There’s passion expressed in this music, and it is expressed well. I also discovered what I heartily, passionately disliked about how the dance group handled this passionate piece of music. It sounded like they took a snippet of it and choppily and glaringly looped it. Was it intentional, a workaround for an unexpected failure, or simply a lack of attention to the music? I suspect it was intentional, but then why?

Here’s a demonstration of the choppy looping they did:

I hope you now understand why I was disgusted with the music–not because of the musical content, but rather because of how it was arranged / excerpted.

Semperoper Ballett Dresden : NEUE SUITE

I saw in this performance a progression from classical to modern dance. I can see the emphasis it placed on physical interaction by the sinuous movement of the first dancers.

Sébastien Ramirez & Honji Wang : AP15

This is the dance that I have no reservations about. Everything flowed naturally–the music was smooth and the pair of dancers were fluid. I haven’t seen many forms of dance before; all the performances I saw yesterday are new to me. This dance, however, caught my attention more than all of the others before it because of the complexity and the precise execution of the choreography. It was great.

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater : MINUS 16

“The illusion of beauty
The fine line between madness and sanity
The coexistence of fatigue and elegance”

Is the nonconformist insane or sane?
I noticed that as the anthem wore on and the nonconformist kept falling over, the music developed more and more of a minor chord in its undertones. I think that symbolizes some kind of degeneration. So, which group is mad, the conformists to a degenerating system or the nonconformist? Or, is this a false dichotomy–in which case both groups could be insane to different extents?

I’m really interested in delving into the political undertones of this performance. It was completely hidden from my eyes while I watched the scene unfold. How clever!

Fall for Dance at New York City Center

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When I first saw the syllabus, this was something I definitely looked forward to. I always loved to watch people dance. Whether it was the street performers on the subway or impressive YouTube videos. Despite all of that, I was really exposed to dance by my friend who majored in Dance throughout high school and now a Theater major in Taiwan. She loved to dance and took master classes during her whole entire stay in the U.S. with my family. She is trained in modern, ballet, classical, Chinese opera, lyrical and jazz, and even choreographed many of her dance troupe’s performances. She would take any opportunity to dance. We would walk down the street and turn around to she her pirouette-ing or leaping or just moving her body in anyway that doesn’t resemble normal walking.

She taught me a lot about how disciplined dancers have to be. She would start classes at 7:00am and leave at around 9:00pm, or even later if there was a performance approaching. For the entire performance, even if I didn’t understand what the dancers were trying to portray, I was utterly amazed at what they could do with their bodies and thinking back to what my friend told me. These dancers pushed their bodies past breaking points and have achieved so much to be on the stage.

Dance is very much intertwined with the dances and choreography styles of each performance. The music that left the most impact on me was Lucinda Childs Dance Company’s Concerto performance. It had really jarring music that wasn’t my taste, but I can understand why the choreographers had chosen them. The music I enjoyed the most accompanied Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s performance of Minus 16. The music was fun, simple, and soulful.

What I also learned from my friend is the importance of lighting. Her dance troupe would always hire a different lighting designer to come and create the lighting for their specific dance. The way body movements looked in different lightings were extremely important, and even the mood of the dance is partially through the lighting. This was clearly seen in Minus 16, it was bright and well-lighted when they took audience members on-stage to dance with them, creating a really cheerful mood along with their ridiculous body movement. But in the dance when they were chanting, the lighting was from above and cast a shadow over their bodies as they were crouched over, because they wanted to create an intense mood.

The highlight of that night was seeing Sebastian Ramirez and Honji Wang outside the building after their performance. The large crowd was already gone and Sebastian Ramirez and Honji Wang were just talking to their friends. I had to get a picture with them, so I did!

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and then the rest of the class decided to photobomb.

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And a shoutout to my friend Sarah who came with us to the performance!