DANCE CLASS
Dear students,
Here are our arrangements for tomorrow’s dance class.
It starts at 1:30, at the
55th St.
9th Avenue
I will be waiting for you in front of the building at 1:15 pm, as we agreed.
If you are late (which, of course, we hope won’t happen), please explain that you are students at Macaulay Honors college, ask for direction for the studio, and also for the changing room – and just join in.
It might be a good idea to bring a bottle of water, possibly a towel, while it would be a bad idea to come to the class with a full, heavy meal on your stomach or feeling absolutely starving!
Since there is no meeting room available at the school directly, we will take this opportunity, staying on the West side, to go the new Macaulay Honors building, at 35 West 67th Street (between Columbus and Central Park West) to have a discussion there. So please, plan to make your way after the dance class, which will end around 2:50 to the address above. Starting around 3:20 and for about an hour, we’ll talk first about this new experience, and then some more about the paper on dance and other practical matters.
I also want to signal that if you are interested, there is a performance at 7.00 pm the same evening at the
I look forward to seeing you tomorrow.
Evelyne Ender (cell number 617 817 6873, just in case)
November 13th, 2007 at 7:52 pm
“To see an African dance is to witness his cultural past and present…For the African, the fullest expression of art is dance.” When I read this quote from Lee Warren in his 1972 book The Dance of Africa, I couldn’t help but relate it to our dance experience at the Alvin Ailey Theater. The music and movements relayed to me – a girl living in the United States in 2007, totally removed from West African cultures and practices – a story enriched by tribal history and experience. Displaying the capabilities of the body with elongated arms, showing reverence for gods with hands together and knees bent, acknowledging the power of community by dancing together – all of this was conveyed to me within a two minute long dance. I think what I enjoyed most was learning a tribal past with my body as a primary instrument. Our teacher, our “textbook,” so effectively lead us through a series of movements embedded with experience and feeling. It was this richness, in my opinion, that strengthened the appeal of the dance. The experience has piqued my interest not only in West African culture, but also in taking more African dance classes, hopefully at the Alvin Ailey Theater.
Another interesting point to consider is the overwhelming universality of appeal music and dance have. To tell the truth, the dance experience reminded me of a lecture I attended at the New York Academy of Sciences last year. At that lecture, a scientist shared with us the incredible universality of emotional expressions. There are some facial expressions, he argued, that are recognized and understood throughout the world despite tremendous regional and cultural differences. Dance, I think, is another type of expression that can link humanity. I understand a number of students were unfamiliar with West African dance (and dance in general), yet a majority of us were able to respond to movement and rhythm seemingly foreign to us. The more I danced and sang, however, the more similarities I noticed between West African music and the 1970s disco beat. The dance we learned could easily be configured to Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive”!
On the whole, the dance experience was as fun and exciting as it was enlightening. It opened my eyes to a world of dance I would probably have never experienced. **I also noticed a Fitness Series class in West African dance on the Brookdale Council’s November calendar. I look forward to experiencing more aspects of the culture in a few weeks.
November 13th, 2007 at 11:37 pm
The dance class was a lot more fun for me than I expected. At first, there were shared looks between students of uncertainty and awkwardness, as we got used to being barefoot, watching ourselves and each other move in unfamiliar ways; as the class went on though, the looks started to show enjoyment and amusement as people got comfortable with the movements and each other, and following the rhythm of the drums.
Our teacher very systematically taught us steps piece by piece, that seemed silly at first; it took me a while to start taking myself seriously watching myself in the mirror, since it’s not every day that white girls do traditional West African dance. Once I got into it though, the movements started to flow and really feel natural. Each step was not difficult to learn, but it took several tries of practice for me to master them, for the dance to start feeling natural.
This free expression of the body, the big, loosely structured movements of hands, feet, head and back was a contrast to ballet and tap dancing that I had taken classes in for nine years when I was younger– the restricted motions, still posture and “turned out” poses are still pretty engraved in me, so it was a conscious effort for me to dance in a completely different manner.
I couldn’t help noticing, as we were learning certain motions, similarities in quick sharp movements such as back popping and turning had striking similarities to hip-hop dancing– though the hip-hop culture is clearly very different from African culture, the roots of the current dance are clear when watching and performing African dance.
On the whole, I thoroughly enjoyed the class at the Alvin Ailey Center. Our teacher was patient and talented, and the the drums added to an excellent experience. This is probably something I will not have the chance to experience again, and I am thoroughly glad that our class was able to participate in the class.