Category: Reading Responses (Page 2 of 11)

When I was nine years old my mom took me to see my first dance performance, The Nutcracker. Since that day, every year around Christmas time we go to any theatre we can find and watch the show in awe as if we have never seen it before. To me, dance is one of the most beautiful forms of expression. There is so much emotion and passion behind it, you can’t help but to submerge yourself in the allure of it.

I was surprised while reading the history of dance in the black community. I have learned that slaves used songs to cope with their harsh conditions, but I have never heard of slaves using dance to build up their stamina to prepare themselves for uprisings against their white masters. Dance has been a part of their culture and a way to get by for centuries. I think it is amazing that choreographers, such as Kyle Abraham, include the traditions of their ancestors in dances today. For example, “The Watershed”, one of the performances he choreographed, is inspired by the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, the 1960s, and the Civil Rights Movement. He considered the gains and losses that African-Americans have had over the years and how they view them today to create a story and convey those feelings through the choreography. In another one of his works, titled, “When the Wolves Came In”, he used a unique subject and related it to the message of the dance. Abraham came across a local news story in his hometown of Pittsburgh about a boy that fell into a pit of Africa dogs in the zoo and was mauled to death. Instead of building a higher fence or placing the dogs in a different part of the zoo, they killed them. The incident grabbed Abraham’s attention, and he connected it to our views about “perception, race and identity”. He was able to link modern human behavior with the history of maltreatment that African-Americans had to endure.

When we think of art, dance is not usually the first thing we think of. However, throughout history it has been a vital means of expressing ourselves. It is important to consider dance just as significant as any other artistic expression because it usually has a story and meaning behind it.

As I was reading through Quinn Peterson’s “Choreographer Kyle Abraham Discusses “The Watershed” and “When The Wolves Came In” I was slightly bothered when Kyle Abraham said “And when you put that Black body on stage with any other dancer, the story shifts based on the history that whoever is watching it has already experienced. Whatever your experience is – if you’re seeing a Black body and a white body, a Black man and a Black woman, and Black man and a white man – all of those things have their own kind of politic to them.” I agree with Abraham in that your interpretation of a scene can shift based on a person’s history but disagree with the idea that each race, when seen by an audience, has a “politic” to them. It might be because I my peers and I were born in a time where we can be separated from segregation by more than one generation, but I feel that we as a society have moved on from racial stereotypes as serious ideas, only using them for off-color comedy. Because Abraham is older than my classmates and I, his parents, or even he could have experienced racial injustice himself. This is where I believe the disparity in our interpretations of a scene lies. When I see two men on stage, one black and one white, I don’t immediately associate this with this nation’s past racial injustices, which is what I believe Abraham is trying to say. When I am trying to assess a scene, I look past the performers’ race and try to analyze things like the set, the tone of the music, their posture, and the clothing that they are wearing. This reminds me of my piece, “Is today’s society too sensitive when it comes to race.” from the 10/2 NY Times blog. In the blog post, I discussed how casting trends are leaning toward not casting a person of particular race, leaving the role open to actors of all races, even though having the character be a particular race would add to the impact of the story. I find it interesting that Abraham is sort-of doing the opposite here. Abraham is intentionally using actors of a particular race to try to convey a story. Another difference lies in that in Othello, the character Othello is usually casted as an actor with dark skin only because it makes him stand out from the other actors, where as in watching the video of the dance, the white male actor seems to be a racist man, possibly a past owner of slaves, so his race represents a stereotype. I’m not sure what to make of that.

When the word “dance” comes to mind, I usually think of dances that are unique in form and style, like ballet, breakdance, country dancing, or even folk dancing, among the many others types of dances. These dances are usually defined by their distinct characteristics: structured movements, specific type of music, and even rhythm.

Breakdancing

Ballet Dancing

Country Dancing

When I first heard of “Black Dance”, there wasn’t really any specific dance moves that came to mind. After reading the article, “History of Black Dance: 20th-Century Black American Dance”, I quickly discovered how significant of an impact black culture had on dance, especially Katherine Dunham and Pearl Primus with their influence that inspired the emergence of black modern dance. After learning about a new dance category, I became curious as to what dance actually means, so I actually looked up what the word Dance, and I found that the Encyclopedia Britannica even refers to dance as a “nonverbal language”. So regardless of dance category, each dance must, without words, communicate a story, an emotion, or and idea.

Kyle Abraham

But this is no simple task, and choreographer, Kyle Abraham, knows just how difficult it is to convey a message. Knowing he admits that conveying a story that makes sense for its audience without being too abstract is “tough”, makes me wonder how truly “tough” it will be, as a member of the audience myself, to fully interpret and understand the meaning of the dance. As opposed to many on stage productions (whether that be a play, opera, show, concert, etc) that incorporate verbal communication to help the audience grasp the meaning of the performance, dance does not have that element. This fact allows for a more leeway and range in the audience’s own subjective understanding of the dance, which I think can make the experience a very personalized one!

I’ve never been to a professional dance performance or event (other than my younger sister’s dance recitals years ago), so I’m curious to see what it’s like to interpret the meaning of show purely through the analyzation of body movements!

In many of the history classes that are offered in our middle and high schools, students are exposed to a lot on the topic of black history. We learn about the origins of slavery and about the many forms of racial discrimination; we learn of the violence that a whole culture of people faced because of their skin color; we learn about reform movements and efforts against racial prejudices; we learn of modern day hate crimes and how old injustices still carry into today’s society. One thing though that, after reading about the work of Kyle Abraham and others like him in the past,  I realize we did not cover much in school was the way that some of these repressed people dealt with their struggles: by putting their focus and energy into dance.

I think it is a shame that “Black Dance,” an art form that really took off in the twentieth century mainly in Europe but more gradually became more accepted in the United States, and other positive aspects of Black-American culture are not integrated much in our history lessons. Despite living in a time of hate and repression, many of these leading individuals took their feelings and converted them into a form of physical expression. It was a way to bring the community together. I was able to learn from these articles, “Choreographer Kyle Abraham Discusses ‘The Water Shed’ and ‘When the Wolves Came In'” and “History of Black Dance: 20th Century American Black Dance,”  how dance, especially, grew in popularity amongst the black population during the 1900s. There is so much background that people don’t know about behind certain styles of dance or moves that makes them a lot more meaningful; many of them are even meant to tell a story.

I wasn’t sure what to expect before I watched the video, “Kyle Abraham/Abraham.In.Motion at the Modlin Center” but, like with most dance, the first thing I really appreciated were its visual elements. More than that, though, I can better understand how in person the viewers can connect with everything that pans out on stage. The fluidity of the motions between dancers and how it is translated to the audience is truly beautiful. I was better able to recognize smaller details of the message being depicted by the dancers as well and it made me think deeper about the emotion and times that these stories were based upon. As mentioned in the Life and Times article, ““The Watershed” derives inspiration from the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, the 1960s and Civil Rights; “When The Wolves Came In” grows from Emancipation, as well, in addition to the 20th anniversary of the abolishment of apartheid in South Africa.” This is one example of the thick historical roots that can be discovered in dance.

As a separate lesson in history classes, then, I think teachers need to focus on the culture, customs, and arts that surfaced during the more negative time periods in history. As “Black Dance” has proven, there is always something great that can be made from terrible situations. With the repression and violence of the 20th century towards

Kyle Abraham

black people came the emergence of an exciting and new passion in the dance world that still resonates and is being expanded upon today. Maybe students could learn some history from one of these performances alone.

This gets me excited for the dance that we are going to see this Thursday. I have gone to ballet performances and a few other shows in the past but I have never witnessed anything like “Black Dance” before. I have high expectations built from what I have just read and watched and I think they will  be met.

It was intriguing to read about how modern art was influenced by black culture right after the civil war. Sometimes we don’t even think about what helped make things the way they are today. It’s really great the after many African-Americans overcame the struggles of slavery they were able to incorporate their traditions and culture into works of art that they could share with everyone.

Being someone who rarely attends dance related events, I entered this exploration of modern dance with basically a clean sheet. I initially started with the video of Kyle Abraham’s dance show because I prefer to experience things visually first. I was in awe of how fluid and sequential the whole performance was, with all the dancers in sync as if they were one person. It was incredible to watch the dancers preform these abstract movements with such flexibly and dexterity. But the best part of the entire performance is that the meaning and motivation behind the dancer’s movements are left entirely up to the audience to interrupt. This unparalleled freedom in interpretation gives modern dance a unique feature that one can’t get with other forms of artwork.  

After watching the video, I was interested in further understanding Abraham’s mission in creating these performances, so I delved into the article about him. I learned that Abraham was attempting to “create an evocative interdisciplinary body of work.” It seems as if he wants to meld together multiple art fields to create a master piece. I was truly baffled by how he was able to narrate stories through his .

Modern dance and music as we know it began in early 1920s Harlem, New York. This period, known as the Harlem Renaissance, gave us dance moves like the Charleston and the Jitterbug. There are many inspiring and interesting stories about the growth of African American dance culture, but perhaps none more inspirational than Pearl Primus.

Pearl Primus is considered to be the first African American modern dancer. She, like most other African American dancers, used the art form to express the social and political hardships for African Americans in the United States. Primus did research on dance in Africa and included an in-depth study of African dance traditions in her performances.

Today, Choreographer Kyle Abraham continues this strive to use dance as a medium to express a strong social message. Like Primus, Abraham uses the work that has come before him to inspire the work he creates, particularly the hip-hop culture of the 1970s and the civil rights struggle of the 1960s.

Abraham states, “I’m creating dance, still today, a lot of the time I’m just moving in relation to what the subject matter is.” This is something that all artists, famous or amateur, can aspire to do.  Despite dance being a very abstract form of expression, it should never be written off as meaningless. When one creates art, they must consider what react they want to evoke in their audience, even if the audience in reality doesn’t always understand it at first. For this reason, I took me personally a few views of Kyle Abraham’s and Abraham.In.Motion at the Modlin Center clip to make heads or tails out of it. Before we see a dance performance in person, I personally will try to get as much background information about the authors intended message so I can better appreciate what is going on.

Kyle Abraham’s interview struck me as the most engaging of the three readings. Kyle Abraham, in conjunction with visual artist Glenn Ligon and musician Robert Glasper, formulate a response to very complex and provocative topics like the Civil Rights Movement and the Emancipaton Proclamation in a very abstract and positive manner. A number of aspects stand out to me about this medium of expression. The first is, how do the choreagraphers deal with very different societal views on these topics from the time of the actual events to the present day? Secondly, can this be an effective way of channeling our thoughts and inclinations in order to truly effect the world we live in today?

One of Kyle Abraham’s dances

Abraham Lincholn prominently issued the Emancipation Proclamation on New Years Day of 1863. That is about 150 years ago and society’s sentiment was very different back then. The Southern half of the country vehmently opposed this ruling, as seen by the Civil War, and the Northern states embraced this. While today’s world is not perfect, minorites are in a much better place now than they were at that time. As you can probably see this issue is not one that can be summed up quickly so an abstract representaion of this is plausible and creative. Having said that, I applaud Abraham because if I was tasked with representing such complex issues abstractly I would not know the first thing to do.

Growing on my second point, Can we use abstract choreography or just abstract art in general to further the causes that we are fighting for today? Would– lets say an abstract artistic response to the Black Lives Matter campaign make meaningful difference? I do not know the exact answer to thse questions but I think that they would certainly help to further the cause. Art I feel many times can be a catalyst to societal progression, but that progression could be positive or negative. I read an article in high school about how Hitler utilized the cartoon sections of German newspapers to ostrasize Jews and Blacks, basically anybody he didnt like. Although these minute details were not the gas chambers that killed people, they were in fact the catalyst for the majority of the German country to begin to discriminate and seperate from Jews.

I hope that there is a way to use the art of Kyle Abraham and others like him as a soruce of good and positive change in society. I admire Kyle Abraham for doing what he is doing because I feel it is people like him that inspire the masses to go out and make a change. To end rascisim and discrimination. To reduce the prevalence of police brutality. To curb the wealth gap. There is so much that can be done through abstract representaion that is not as feasible through conventional means.