Author Archives: Erica Siudzinski

Don Giovanni Reflection

Posted on by

Don Giovanni is Mozart’s masterpiece opera. It is simultaneously tragic and comedic, transitioning seamlessly between the two. Don Giovanni is a tale of a reckless womanizer who will stop at nothing to make as many conquests as possible. Through a series of encounters with past lovers, his act is unravelled and he is ultimately sent to hell for his crimes. Though two people die in this opera, there are moments of profound wit and comedic relief from Leporello and Giovanni. After reading the libretto, I had classified the opera as a comedy. However, the operatic rendition took me by surprise; the set was large and overbearing, the costumes drab and dark. It seemed that, for the director, the tragic dimension of the opera overpowered the comedic dimension in the performances. Seeing the opera on the stage and not just reading it gave it a different dimension. Despite the themes of betrayal, jealousy, and revenge that pervaded the opera, the content seemed light and comedic. The performances were comedic: Don Giovanni’s plots and conquests were funny and ridiculous, often throwing Leporello into the craziness with a result of Leporello’s comedic remarks about his master. Don Giovanni himself never seems to take anything seriously, and the other characters look overly dramatic as a result. These instances of comedic relief from Leporello and Don Giovanni keep the opera light, despite the deaths of both the Commendatore and Don Giovanni, and the continual grief of Donna Anna. Ultimately, it seems that Don Giovanni can be interpreted as either a tragedy or a comedy, depending on the audience.

Class differences in Don Giovanni were quite apparent. Don Giovanni feels entitled to his womanizing with peasants and noblewomen alike due to his noble status. Though Leporello is his only true friend, he treats him badly and makes fun of him, often making him an accomplice in his plots. Donna Anna and Don Ottavio are stunned to see this type of behavior from a nobleman, as if his high status is meant to represent his high moral standing. Don Giovanni’s plots revealed the difference in the strength of the romantic relationships in the opera. Don Ottavio holds a strong allegiance to Donna Anna throughout the opera, pledging to catch the villain who seduced her and who killed her father. Even when it seems she has been seduced by Don Giovanni, he believes her when she says it went no further once she found out it wasn’t him. On the other hand, Masetto isn’t so trusting of Zerlina. At the first signs of infidelity, he seems to want to leave her, unable to believe that there is nothing going on between her and Don Giovanni. Mozart portrays the nobles’ love as stronger and less susceptible to jealousy than the peasants’ love. The only two instances of equality between the peasants and the nobles are when Leporello states that Don Giovanni will go after any woman regardless of her class, and when the peasants and nobles stand together at the end of the opera, united by Don Giovanni’s death and their justice.

Don Giovanni, like any opera, is driven by its music. Operas are reliant on their music because it is the only form of communication; it drives the plot forward and reveals the tone of the scene as well as the character’s feelings. When reading the libretto, one can only imagine the feelings of the characters. Yet the instrumentals and vocals of the opera truly revealed the tone of the opera. In light scenes, such as Leporello’s listing of all of Don Giovanni’s conquests, there was light and lilting music, meant to convey the comedy and hilarity of the content. Yet in darker scenes such as the scene when the Commendatore asks Don Giovanni to ‘dine’ with him, there was deeper, slower music that conveyed the dramatic and ominous content. The music alternated between light and heavy, comedic and tragic; this helped represent the duality in the tone of the opera.

I am a huge fan of opera and have now seen twelve operatic performances at the Metropolitan Opera House. This experience was not a new one for me, yet I appreciated it all the same because of its antiquity. There was something nice about dressing up and going to a performance at an old opera house. The costumes, music, and acting all added to the spectacle of the night. Opera itself is large and grand, as reflected in the opera house itself. As opposed to the modern performances we saw, there was something more respected and traditional about opera, rather than new and experimental such as Roseann Spradlin’s “beginning of something”. Because I had a lot of previous experience with operas, it was the modern performances that truly put the opera in perspective. I saw its enormity and grandeur in a new light. Though this wasn’t my favorite rendition of Don Giovanni, I appreciated the operatic skill of the performers and the stylistic efforts of the costume makers and set designers to create such an all-encompassing world for the opera. After all the modern dance performances, I saw this opera with new eyes.

House/Divided

Posted on by

“House/Divided” focused on the parallels between the modern housing and financial crisis and the 1930’s Dust Bowl, crops crisis, and Great Depression. It alternated between the Joad family from John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath who, forced off their land by the bank, were forced to travel westward, facing death, poverty, and starvation; and the everyday families who now face foreclosure at the hands of irresponsible banking institutions. Each portion was heavy with personal as well as national tragedy.

Though both portions of the performance were heavy with multimedia, it was also mixed in with live, human performers. Live actors portrayed the Joad family, the bankers, and the families facing foreclosure. There was a huge, transformable house as a prop in the center of the stage. However, the media elements were prominent. Interview videos, booming music, and projections on top of the house of everything from a dilapidated modern house to the fields of the Midwest gave the blank canvas of the house a character and a story. Stock market tickers and telephone calls, as well as video conferences and large projections of the actors’ faces were also used.

I am strongly in the Phelan camp when it comes to the debate over media and “live” performance. I believe that media, while creative and sometimes beneficial to a performance, can ruin the live aspect of the work. Live performance is a privilege; it is sacred and unfiltered, unlike mediatized performance. The audience gets more of an experience with live than with mediatized performance. However, the directors took an Auslander view in this performance. Auslander believes that mediatized performance is just as “real” and “live” as truly live performance.

In this performance specifically, I felt that the media often overpowered the actors. While some of the media added to the emotional resonance of the piece, such as the compelling music and the telephone calls, other elements such as the voiceovers, the interviews, and the projections of the actors’ faces seemed to overshadow the human element of the work and made the characters mere digital images. The piece lacked the visceral connection to the human tragedy that truly occurred in both eras.

Nevertheless, though I was less than enamored with the mediatized section of the performance, I felt that there were some very strong elements to the piece that truly made me appreciate my home and my family. By placing the Joads in comparison with the modern housing crisis, it really hit home the idea that these types of tragedies still occur and are still affecting America. The post-performance discussion gave us a good look into the writers’ and directors’ minds and I gained a lot of insight into the theory behind this type of performance, which borders more on conceptual performance art than a play. The performance was a good experience in terms of my views on the “liveness” of medaitized performance. Though I am still strongly for Phelan’s view that live performance is more “true” than mediatized performance, I can see that some elements of media often help to enhance the performance.

Caretaker Study

Posted on by

For my first pose, I chose my father as my caretaker. He’s been one of the most influential people in my life, shaping me into the person I’ve become. He’s in his late sixties and is a teacher of high school English. Before that, he was an editor and travelled the world. For my realistic pose, I stood lecturing with a book in my hand. I see my father as a wise and cultured person and I chose to portray him in a confident and knowledgable pose. This is a pose he would often assume as a teacher, but it is also a pose I think represents the qualities he possesses such as knowledge, wisdom, and confidence. Many people quickly knew it was my father and that he’s a teacher. The hand was meant to represent my father’s quality of reaching out to others and share his knowledge as a teacher. The class was very spot-on in this pose.

For my abstract pose, I chose my mother as my caretaker. Although the pose wasn’t abstract in its physicality, I chose it to be abstract because it’s not a pose I would see a caretaker assume normally. It’s a mentally abstract pose in that it’s a pose a child or teenager would take, not a parent. My mother is normally a very communicative and social person. To me, this pose was an abstraction of the way she normally is and represents her her internal feelings about her difficult familial background. I see my mother as a very strong person, despite what she’s overcome in her childhood. However, there are times in my life when I’ve seen my mother falter in her strength. Everyone was correct in thinking this was a woman, however they all believed it was a child or teenager. Often, I think my mother feels like she’s still a child or a teenager and that’s she’s stuck in her parents’ divorce. This is a physical representation of the way she closes herself off and regresses into those feelings. Eloise was correct in stating that sucking my stomach and my arms, as well as the closed feet and downturned head were meant to represent a feeling of safety.  However, it was also meant to represent the way my mother closes herself off and holds in all these feelings. This person is not physically five, but is mentally regressing into the feelings of that age.

Snapshot Day

Posted on by

 

In taking my photo for Snapshot Day, I had a difficult time thinking of what would best suit the tone of my everyday life. It had to be a shot I saw often, yet something that fully represented how I saw the city. I entitled my photo “Side by Side.” One of my favorite places to spend time when I’m sick of studying is down by the water on FDR Drive at the Waterside Apartments where there is a huge sitting area, park and a beautiful view of the water. As I sit here, I often think that the city is such a diverse place in that everyone and everything seems to coexist simultaneously; city and island; water and land; bridge, tunnel and buildings; west and east; uptown and downtown. The city has its own dichotomy and its own rhythm. To capture only one of these elements is to betray my experience in the city; I live downtown but I go to school uptown. I work on the East side, yet I attend arts performances on the West. The city is far from a place of isolation or a place where you get stuck in a bubble. More or less, I’ve been everywhere, exhausting my unlimited MetroCard. This snapshot, to me, was an encapsulation of my life in the city as well as the true history of a city like New York, where cultures blend together and where many lives coexist.

In taking this photo I kept the Rule of Thirds in mind; the picture is divided into water, land, and sky to represent the elements that all play an equal part in the city’s habitat. I also kept the lighting in mind; one of the most important elements of my photograph was the clouds–they seemed to be looming dark and grey over the city and lightening up to white, fluffy clouds towards the water. This changing climate, as well as the cloud streak that curves downward, seemed to run parallel to the slope of the buildings into the bridge. This slope of the buildings draws the eye across the picture from left to right, city to island. The bridge emphasizes how the all the elements of the city are connected into one unifying word: Manhattan.

Photo Analysis: Kiss by the Hotel de Ville

Posted on by

Kiss by the Hotel de Ville

Kiss by the Hotel de Ville by Robert Doisneau drew my attention because of its immediacy. The couple stands out mainly because they are stationary while the rest of crowd moves around them. Doisneau’s contrast between the stillness and sharpness of this couple and the blurred figures creates a dynamic component in the picture and draws the viewer’s attention to the couple. The moment is fleeting; everyone else rushes past, but this kiss is a moment of quiet in the midst of the chaos and busyness of everyday life. Doisneau’s use of the Rule of Thirds gives further definition to the couple. Though the man’s body is placed at the center of the photo, the kiss is what truly takes center stage; it is about a third of the way into the photo that the kiss is framed. The shot seems to be taken from a street cafe, with tables and other objects half-obstructing the view to the street, giving it an immediate tone. The cafe setting also obstructs the bottom third of the picture. The top third is framed by a stark white sky, contrasting the dark figures and framing the kiss.The couple is also flanked by two non-blurred figures, both walking in the same direction with identical expressions. These figures pay no attention to the kiss and act as balancing points for the kiss. Doisneau’s point of view and framing draw the eye immediately to the intimacy of the moment. The strangers walk past in a rush, not paying any attention, but this moment is just the two of them.

I hope to apply Doisneau’s techniques and elements of framing and perspective in order to focus on the subject of my photo. I like the immediacy of the moment and the rushed sense you get from the crowd, yet the quiet and stillness of the couple. This is such a fantastic element to apply to photos in New York. Though life here is rushed and chaotic, there are these few moments of stillness. Photography, to me, is about capturing a moment and cataloguing it and this is exactly what Doisneau does. I like that the moment is human; we live in a city that is packed with people and these moments happen every moment. Every second there is something going on. I hope to capture the stillness of a moment within the chaos of the city in my photo.

-Erica

Roseann Spradlin’s “Beginning of Something”

Posted on by
A silence hung in the air, murmuring chatter around us and the singular strum of the electric bass guitar. All eyes and ears were fixed on a figure sitting on the edge of the stage, naked except for the guitar, engrossed in the plucking of one string after another; the notes hung suspended in the air, filling the space. The audience was so absorbed in the story the guitar told that when the last note faded into silence, it was complete. We held out breath. The girl, dressed in ornate crown and shoulder beads, strutted around the stage to baroque-sounding music, stopping suddenly to reach out for an audience member’s hand, a silent, anxious plea, a reassurance.
One-by-one, three other girls in varying stages of undress joined her on stage; each started in on their own individual dance. Like planets, the girls orbited each other, seemingly absorbed in their own worlds, yet managing to avoid hitting each other. At first their movements were fluid and the music happy, but as the dance went on and the music transitioned into a melody of haunting violins, their movements became more erratic and disorderly. They would take turns strutting up and down the stage like models, pivoting mechanically. Slowly undressing, the girls revealed their intricately different bodies; they were all sizes and shapes. Each girl was simultaneously unabashed and apprehensive of their nakedness. Ornate mirrors reflected an image that did nothing but frustrate the girls; they danced around the stage in a mad stomp like erratic, excitable atoms. The girls shook with epileptic-like fits, their entire bodies vibrating with movement as the music reached a terrifying crescendo. Just as suddenly, the shaking would stop and the girls would resume their dances as if nothing had happened. At one point, they started screaming in rage.
The simultaneous singularity and symbiosis of the piece is what truly struck me; though each girl was absorbed in her own dance, to the point where she seemed disconnected from the others and the audience, sudden shifts would occur where the girls would fall back into line. Stomping erratically around each other became stomping in unison; strutting up and down the stage became a group affair where one girl became the ringleader, shouting commands like ‘go,’ ‘pivot,’ and ‘now’; and leaps were performed in groups of three. In this, I saw the pressures of modern girls to fit in; inclusion and individuality and all the raw anxieties that come with both were presented. As one girl was lifted by two others, the fourth ran after in desperation, begging to be seen. As soon as the leap was finished, the girls would rotate, the fourth becoming the first and the first becoming excluded.
The societal pressures on women were prevalent in the piece. The nudeness and mirrors represented a type of body image crisis to me. The first girl seemed to dress up in fancy decorations as a way to meet society’s expectations of her. The division of the piece revealed the two parts of each girl; the nudeness of the first half was the truth to each girl, while the dresses of the second half were the expectations of society. Midway through the second half, the girls tore the clothes off, only to experience fits reminiscent of a breakdown, and to step back into these covers. Each girl was different and beautiful in her own way, yet they all screamed in rage at the picture they saw in the mirrors. They all looked into the eyes of the audience and asked for acceptance. At one point, the small band on the side sung a jazzy rendition of “Don’t Make Me Over” by Dionne Warwick, which pleaded to “accept me for who I am, accept me for the things that I do” and to “love me with all my faults”. It’s clear that Spradlin sought to convey the confusion and anxiety of women over the modern conception of beauty. The feverous fits seemed to represent some sort of attack on the body, whether it be internal or external, psychological or societal. These women were torn between their own self perception and society’s expectations of them.
Coming into this performance, I tried to keep an open mind because I had never been to a dance performance before. The article on Body-Mind Centering as well as the Roseann Spradlin video clarified a lot of the movements the girls made; being informed about the techniques of the choreographer beforehand helped me interpret . Reading Wendy Oliver’s comments about dance reviews helped me in focusing on specific details to remember later, yet also being open to the full picture. I tried to watch everything that was going on; often, I wished I had a video of the performance. Yet there is nothing like a live performance; it is precious in its transience. Although I took mental notes for myself about the dance, I tried hard not to interpret the themes before the piece was complete. Like a book, it’s hard to know the moral of the story until the last page; similarly, I was surprised by each new movement until the spotlight on the last girl faded and the padding footsteps receded off the stage. As a woman, this piece was particularly powerful. As my first dance performance, it was the beginning of something.

Analytic Post-Modern Dance and Steve Paxton

Posted on by

Analytic post-modern dance uses a factual, objective, down-to-earth style that emphasizes choreographic structure and movement. The way the dancer’s body moves is more important than the meaning of the dance. Often, analytic post-modern dance calls attention to the workings of the body in a scientific way, focusing purely on the physicality of a dance. Dances are then defined as ordinary movements such as tasks and everyday work.

Steve Paxton’s contact improvisation focuses purely on the way the dancers’ bodies move against each other. The dancers use physical contact in order to explore the physical workings and movements of the body. Dances revolve around spontaneous and improvised moves that explore different and new ways to balance and move in concert with the other dancers. This follows directly with the definition of analytic post-modern dance to explore the body’s workings in a purely scientific way. Paxton displays the human body as an exhibit, a machine rather than a vehicle of meaning and metaphor in a spiritual or meaningful way as most dance seeks to. Paxton’s contact improvisation doesn’t seek to mean anything or symbolize anything. It makes no statements about politics, art, or religion. It seeks merely to display the versatility, flexibility, and improvisation of the human body in concert with other bodies.

Shakespeare Society Events

Posted on by

Since my father is an English teacher in the city, he hears about arts events going on. He’s also a member of the Shakespeare Society which often holds performances at the Kaye Playhouse at Hunter North which is really convenient for all of us.

Here’s the link to the upcoming events: Upcoming Shakespeare Society Events

I think these are great opportunities for us that we should take advantage of. If you’re all open to it, we can petition to add one of these upcoming events to our class schedule. Otherwise, they’re always available for you to go independently.

Erica Siudzinski