Dixon writes of Auslander’s conviction that when an audience sees media and live performance combined, the mix does not create a dichotomous viewing experience, but that rather the two (media and live performance) blend and mesh. However, Auslander elaborates, it is true that one overpowers the other; as he says, “Dance + Virtual = Virtual.” I agree that media sucks in all other forms of performance and mediatizes them (acting also, not just dance, which Auslander focused on), as happened in “House/Divided.” In “House/Divided,” which employs live performance, recorded footage, digital ticker tape, and real-time live electronic projections of the performers, it really did feel as if the media overwhelmed the live performance and performers. Ausler makes an interesting conclusion (actually using an original thought of Phelan’s as the basis for his argument–he reversed her statement logically) that recording live performance metaphorically transforms it into television. This is a very accurate portrayal of how I felt watching “House/Divided,” especially when there were both performers and media present onstage; I felt that even though I saw the actors right there in front of me, they were but cogs in the media performance.

This play made me agree even more strongly with Phelan that there is nothing quite like a pure live performance. Even when I saw an actor moving and speaking, if that actor was recorded and projected onto one of the screens on stage, he or she felt less real, was less powerful. “House/Divided” proved to me that, indeed, recordings are not comparable o live performance, and that, as Pelan says, “Performance’s independence from . . . reproduction . . . is its greatest strength.” Though I very much enjoyed “House/Divided” and hope to see more performances like it in terms of media incorporation, I have gained a new appreciation for purely live, technology-free performances.

Analytic post-modern dance is what we now call one of the many phases of post-modern dance. The term “post-modern dance” was coined in the early 1960s by Yvonne Rainer, a choreographer in the movement, but it was not until the early 1970s that analytic pst-modern dance emerged as an independent style with its own aesthetic code. Analytic post-modern dance, as wrote the first person to study it in print (Michael Kirby in The Dance Review), was focused on the “interior view” of dance; there were no restrictions on what kinds of movements were acceptable in terms of visual appearance because movement was considered by the analytic post-modern choreographers to be a result of decisions, goals, concepts, and problems, not just aesthetically pleasing poses and transitions. As long as a movement or stance adhered to those rules and principles, regardless of whether it was pleasing to the eye, that movement was considered dance.

Analytic post-modern dance also rejected musicality, forced meaning, imposed classification and characterization, clear moods, and atmospheres. This school of dance used props, lighting, and costumes in purely functional ways: dancers performed in sweatpants, T-shirts, or casual everyday dress and danced in silence in plain, well-lit rooms. Analytic post-modern dance was, in a way, an attempt to redefine dance after the 1960s-post-moderns tore apart any and all standing definitions.

One dancer/choreographer who had a hand in shaping the movement was Tricia Brown. In the early days of post-modern dance, when the school as a whole was struggling with bringing new uses of time, space, and body to the art of dance, Tricia Brown danced on a chicken coop roof and in a parking lot, pioneering the “unconventional stage,” the new performance space. Brown also developed, with choreographers Yvonne Forti and Dick Levine, “violent contact” improvisation and later, alone, Accumulation Pieces and Structured Pieces, which explored movement devoid of expressive effects or references. The two experiments of sorts pioneered new ways of moving that became accepted types of dance, and as analytic post-modern dance took on momentum as a movement, Brown started her own company, the Tricia Brown Dance Company, and collaborated with many other by-then-established choreographers (including Rauschenberg and Judd). Tricia Brown was completely entwined in the analytic post-modern dance movement and was a pioneer of many of its most striking characteristics.

I chose this photo because of its striking composition and contrasts (both visual and symbolic); I like the play of light and dark and the textures in this Roy DeCarava photograph.

In terms of visuals, I like the bright sunlight and the shadows of a large building that overlay the shadows at the edge of the sidewalk, the light on another building in the upper left corner, the gentle gray shading on the girl’s dress. The diagonal of the main shadow line is not exactly at 45 degrees (it is more horizontal), which elongates the picture and makes it look like the scene is facing us, which lends an aura  of intimacy to the scene that it would not have it it was at a harsh angle from us. I also like how the triangle of light seems to pierce the darkness like a spearhead, bringing with it a beautifully gowned girl. 

In terms of symbolism, this scene offers much texture and nuance. The main subject, the girl, has recently or is about to graduate (as is indicated by the title of the photograph) but is walking directly from light into darkness, an analogy in complete reverse. She is wearing a gown, gloves, and headband reminiscent of a certain princess, but the sign in the background that presumably said “PRINCE” at one point is now falling apart and not offering; There is an advertisement for a “Style Star of an All-Star Line” Chevrolet, which she seems to be looking at, but the only actual means of transportation in the frame is a broken rickshaw. The entire scene has a sort of beautiful sad aura. 

This photograph is compositionally strong due to its observation of the rule of asymmetry (the main human subject, the girl, is off center), the rule of thirds (the girl is in the left vertical third and in the middle horizontal third), the rule of dynamic balance (I find that the distribution of light and dark is very well balanced), and the rule of diagonals (the girl’s head is on a diagonal, as is the black object very near the center of the photo, which I think grounds it all )

In the future (and specifically for Snapshot Day) I want to use more compositional rules like the rule of diagonals and/or golden ratio. Professor Grimaldi’s lecture broadened my horizons to new techniques that I did not know would improve the aesthetics of a frame (i.e. rule of dynamic composition). I love photography (I must have saved three dozen photographs on my search for this one) and now I have tools to create some myself. I especially like the (rule of?) the golden ratio; it is an old technique, even used in paintings (I like the idea that a photograph can look like a painting), and it is difficult to master but improves every picture once applied. I hope I can se it effectively in my own work.

(9/12) Berger presents the idea in Ways of Seeing that “[a]n image is a sight which has been reproduced. It is an appearance, or a set of appearances, which has been detached from the place and time in which it first made its appearance and preserved.” However, dance is not an image, and I propose that it is not detached from its source. Dance is not a reproduction of a sight, it is the live reiteration of a feeling, sentiment, thought, or idea. Because dance is performed, because a human being must retrace the actions of the choreographer every time he or she rehearsed and performs, dance is alive, not a reproduction that, in Deborah Jowitt’s words, “hang about on walls to be revisited or wait by your bed with a bookmark in it.” Each time a dance is performed, the dancers feel a link to the choreographer, and because it is nearly impossible to understand a dance without knowing the context in which it was conceived, the dancers also learn about the history of the time during which the piece was created. In this sense, art in the form of dance (indeed, all performance) is never a reproduction in the way that paintings or sculpture is; the performers relive the thoughts and movements of the original performer of the piece, thereby crating a strong link between themselves (the present) and the choreographer (the past).

Many of Berger’s ideas about viewing art are applicable to dance and performance, like his proposition that the way people view is affected by a “whole series of learnt assumptions about art,” but by and large his excellent observations on the way art is viewed, interpreted, and felt by its audience is slightly inaccurate. For example, Berger describes a scenario in which a viewer of the “Virgin on the Rocks,” by Leonardo da Vinci, lists his or her assumptions about the painting as he or she views it: “‘. . . This painting by Leonardo is unlike any other in the world. The National Gallery has the real one. If I look at this painting hard enough, I should be able to feel its  authenticity. . . .'” When one views a dance performance, he or she may have had ideas similar to those of the viewer of “Virgin on the Rocks,” but a performance demands the viewer to be completely immersed in it, therefore leaving little time or mental space for the viewers to run an inner monologue as they watch dancers perform. The live aspect of dance prevents it from being a reproduction in the sense that a picture of a painting is a reproduction, and it immerses viewers so much so that their assumptions and preconceptions about the piece are put on a shelf as the performance takes place.

At Fall for Dance, one piece in particular reinforced my belief that dance is not a reproduction the way many other art forms are. “Chronicle,” by Martha Graham, was so powerful and exact in its portrayal of the feeling that, judging by recordings of Graham herself performing pieces she choreographed, it was less a reproduction than a reliving. The acute focus and exact movements of the dancers looked like they indeed belonged in 1936, the year “Chronicle” premiered. Though I am not particularly fond of the piece (the style itself is not one that I personally enjoy), I immensely appreciate that the movements of the dance are extraordinarily precise and difficult, and the thought that went into the telling of the anti-war message that “Chronicle” is. Like the playbill for this performance states, “The shock of Graham’s early movements is still evident in this vibrant choreography.” Though I was not fond of it, as I watched the performance I became completely immersed in it, and I could almost taste the atmosphere of 1936. Berger claims that if a piece is not the original, it loses some meaning and power. Graham’s “Chronicle” loses none of its great power as it is brought into the future.

RoseAnn Spradlin’s beginning of something was interesting, but the audience’s reaction to it was even more so; it was captivating. As the four women flew to the edges of the stage, their bodies completely bared, some lookers-on grew wide-eyed at the flesh undulating and jiggling. Some looked away when a performer extended her hand or tried to make eye contact while some grasped the hand in front of them; some seemed to lean in to the performance while others sat rigidly in their seats. Audience members reacted in a wide spectrum of ways (from crying to smiling uncontrollably to nodding off to sleep) to each part of the performance.

Sophie remarked that, in the very beginning of the performance, no one sat in the four seats directly in front of the naked woman strumming an electric bass. At the end of the performance, when the last dancer had walked off the stage platform, the audience seemed to fall in on itself, the four sides collapsing in and crashing against each other at the absence of performers to take up space–act as a buffer–between the four sides of the rooms.

My last remark is that this piece felt more like a multimedia performance than a dance. The dance components were central and powerful, but I feel that “dance” does not fully or accurately described what we witnessed tonight. beginning of something feels like a journey into an unfamiliar dimension more than it feels like watching women dance.