The Jerome Bel and Theater Hora “Disabled Theater” is the most touching and exciting performance I’ve seen so far.  It started off in a serious tone with the actors being asked to come out one by one and stand in front of the audience for one minute.  Already society’s barrier of disability vs ability is introduced with each actor being put face to face with us.  As I would imagine, it is uncomfortable for any actor to remain stationary and be the sole subject of attention– some of them closed their eyes whether from the blinding light or being looked at by a large crowd.  On the flip side, the audience may not be used to looking directly at disability, eye-to-eye.

Then the actors introduced their name, age, profession, mental disability, presented a short dance, and said what they thought of it.  By the end of the performance, I felt like I really got to know the actors.  We were able to break not just the barrier of being disabled verses disabled, but also the imaginary “fourth wall” that usually exists between performers and there audience.  Even the delay in translation was not a barrier because just the tone of their voice told a lot about what they were saying.

When the 10 performers were asked to say what their profession is, I expected a variety of answers.  Instead, each and every one of them introduced themselves as an actor or actress.  I guess this fits in with the name of their group, Theater Hora.  Nevertheless, it was interesting because if these people were acting out anything, they were acting out themselves.  This goes against what we’re used to actors doing, pretending to be someone else.

Relating to our discussion on privilege in class, I believe that theater gives these actors the privilege be who they are, something they probably have less freedom to do in daily life.  Theater is a venue for them to express themselves, to be normal, and not have to feel different.  In daily life, these people probably get a lot of unwanted pity or attention.  Theater gives them attention as well, but a different kind of attention on them showcasing their talent, just like any other actor would.  Therefore, I don’t think that Jerome Bel is exploiting Theater Hora to make a controversial dance.  As for his responsibilities, unless he completely breaks off connection with them, I believe it is understandable that a choreographer moves around working with different theater/dance groups.

Besides some of the collective question and answer sessions, the performance was lighter and exciting in nature.  The actors were all so enthusiastic when their name was called, especially when it was their turn to dance.  Their personalities really shone through their dance and they danced so freely, as if no one was watching them.  Even when they weren’t dancing, they bopped along to the music and sang along.  The actors were very much a community.   They were supportive of each other from checking on each other to make sure the other person was ok, hanging up their jacket and helping them put it on, and even allowing them to rest on their lap.  They were having so much fun that I was enjoying myself as well.  I couldn’t help smiling, laughing, and cheering them on.

~Erica Kwong (Blog B)

“Cesena”, choreographed by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, is a beautiful mélange of light, dance, and music.  This is not to say that I wasn’t confused throughout much of the piece.  In fact, compared to during “A (micro) history of economics, danced”, I was more frustrated at times because I didn’t understand what was happening.  However, after reflecting with the help of the NYTimes article and BAMBill, I was better able to admire the talent and appreciate all the thought that went into this performance.

Light was definitely a powerful component in this dance.  The stage started off pitch black with only a dim light in the center and progressively got brighter.  It is interesting to note that De Keersmaeker created En Atendant, a compliment to Cesena, which gets darker throughout the piece.  She also chose to portray the transition from the Middle Ages to Renaissance, which I thought was very fitting.  The physical darkness represents the Dark Ages as the Middle Ages is sometimes called and the brightness a revival or rebirth of culture.

She also intended these pieces to be performed in natural light outdoors, starting at dusk or dawn.  This would be a very different experience because they wouldn’t be able to adjust the lighting, as done when someone in the back yelled that they couldn’t see the movements.  At the time, I was somewhat glad that they turned the lights up.  Like some of my classmates, I had been squinting to see what the dancers were doing.  The person in front of me was looking through his binoculars, the people behind me were whispering how they couldn’t see, and many people actually left.  Looking back, I think the beginning was meant to be a more auditory experience, hearing them singing and listening to the rustles of the movements.  The big picture was slowly revealed with the gradual addition of light.

I was also amazed by the combination of dance and music.  According to the NYTimes article, de Keersmaeker wanted all the dancers singing and singers dancing.  This was really apparent to me when the stage was bright and I realized that everyone on stage could not only dance, but sing as well.  I felt the vocalizations were synchronized with the lighting.  The piece started with one dancer vocalizing and more people joined in until everyone was singing the end.  These dancers had so much stamina as they were able to alternate between dancing and singing and continue this medieval music for the two hour performance.  There was also great acoustics, accentuating the melody and filling the theater with surround sound.

De Keersmaeker also wanted to go back to the raw material, concreteness, and the body.  There was something very natural about how the dancers leaped, ran across the stage or threw themselves on the floor.  She also mentions how important time and space are and describes her piece as an “a cappella composition not only with the voice, but also with movement”.  The dancers were definitely very aware of their surroundings and their voices and movements, although different, worked together in harmony.  Overall, I am satisfied with the way De Keersmaeker choreographed these seemingly random parts into a very insightful performance.

Feeding the Ducks in the Late Afternoon is a photograph taken by Andre Kertesz in Tisza Szalka, a village in eastern Hungary, in 1924.  What really struck me about this photo is the effect that black and white color can have.  I don’t think it would be as powerful if the painting were in color.  There is a strong contrast between the bright roof of what looks like a barn and the rest of the painting.  The roof, the ducks, the woman’s dress, the bowl, are light, while the rest of the painting is dark.  I really like Kertesz’ attention to shadows and light.  The shadow of the tree, especially the leaves, almost create a pattern on the building.

At first glance, one may think there’s only a woman feeding ducks, hence the name of this photo.  The woman is sitting on the sidewalk ledge holding a bowl of duck food, facing forward, but it’s hard to tell if she’s looking at the camera.  The ducks are in the standing in the dirt and although they are looking in various directions, their backs are faced to the camera.  However, if one looks in the upper right hand corner we see a woman almost hidden by the tree shadow and the darkness.  She seems like she’s going into the building.  Even further back, we see a hut with a thatched roof. There are many “layers”, which give depth to this photo.  Kertesz did a good job of capturing many aspects of a rural lifestyle, giving the photo a slow-paced, peaceful feel.

As well as being appealing, the photo is compositionally strong according to the “seeing photographs” handouts we received and the links on the website.  The handouts mentioned the use of contrast, shadows, light, and depth, which I wrote about above.  Although Kertesz chooses to place his subject at the center of his photo, the Rule of Thirds is still evident.  If we imagine the grid on top of this photo, we would see that the ducks are on the intersection on the lower third, which explains why our eyes are attracted to them.  The trunk of the tree and the side of the building seem to form the two vertical lines of the grid, while the edge of the roof and sidewalk form the horizontal lines of the grid.

Another point made was giving space for a moving object into.  The ducks are faced slightly inwards so they don’t look like they would waddle out of the painting and they point our attention to the woman.  I also noticed that Kertesz made sure the roof didn’t cut through the head of the woman, which would have been distracting.   Instead, the roof forms a line just above the woman’s head.

By analyzing this photo, I realize how much goes into framing just a single photograph.  When I take my photo for snapshot day, I will try to focus not just on the particular object but also the big picture, no pun intended.  I will pay attention to the background and the placement of the surrounding objects.  Taking a good photograph, like many other skills, needs practice and cannot be learned in a few days.  However, with the background knowledge I have attained, I hope to be able to incorporate at least a few of the many techniques into my photo.

~Erica Kwong (Blog B)

Last Thursday, our class watched John Jasperse’s dance rehearsal.  I am really grateful for this unique opportunity that we may not have had outside of this class.  Although the dancers are “vulnerable”, like Prof. Uchizono mentioned, because they make mistakes, they really allowed me to see the process behind making a dance.  There was no imaginary “fourth wall” which separates the audience and the performers like in show.

Reading the syllabus beforehand which said “John Jasperse’s dance rehearsal”, somehow I imagined in my mind that we would just be watching one person.  Instead, we watched three people working together: Simone and Stuart, the two dancers, and Jasperse, the choreographer.  I saw how important communication and collaboration was.  Jasperse paid much attention to detail, correcting Simone and Stuart on little things such as moving the head counterclockwise/clockwise or a part where they were out of sync.  He also demonstrated, for example, the specific movement and shape of the hand, and the placement of the foot.  Although I didn’t notice these small things until they were pointed out, I did notice the difference between the subsequent and previous practice.  Each time, Simone and Stuart would have better timing and would parallel each other even more smoothly.  At the same time, Jasperse asked the dancers how to make the performance better and was really open to their ideas.  For example, sometimes he let them explore and try new moves that could be incorporated into the dance.

Seeing this rehearsal, even though it could end up totally different from the real performance in May, helped put an image to the words of the project description.  By just reading the project description, I had really no idea what the dance would look like.  Although this was a proposal for a grant written many months ago,  I still saw many of the themes he discussed in the rehearsal.  The main focus was on emergence, how “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts”.  This really clicked for me when he made the analogy he made in the project description about 2 hydrogen and 1 oxygen combining to form water.  He mentions that he wanted to work with people with different experiences and perspectives from each other and himself.  From hearing them talk, we could tell that Simone had more traditional training, i.e. ballet, whereas Stuart had more modern training.  Perhaps this is the “native vs foreign contrast” he refers to.  Also on that note, he boils the dance down to its simple movements, such as assigning them to different letters of the alphabet.  I thought it really interesting how he adds some randomness by using the first sentence of his contract to shape the dance.

Jasperse also discusses how the composer for his pieces, Jonathan Bepler, is able to combine many different sounds into one composition.  The dancers performed the same set of dance moves with two different soundtracks.  The first was a slow, relaxing piece probably used to help the dancers feel a beat, whereas the second consisted of talking and whispering, kind of like background noise, which was probably the real soundtrack.  From seeing this, I really noticed the effect of music on dance moves.  The former made me more focused, anticipating the next movement with the beat.  The latter, although interesting, sometimes drew my attention away from the dancers during the higher pitched and faster parts of the music.  The second set of dance moves with a different soundtrack contrasted the previous ones.  The music felt like pop and was very upbeat, which really fit the energetic, almost like a workout nature of the movements.

Ultimately, my experience watching Jasperse’s dance rehearsal with Simone and Stuart can really be summed up with the following quote.  In the words of the great poet, Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Life (or in this case dance) is a journey, not a destination.”

~Erica Kwong (Blog B)

In a post-modern dance issue of The Drama Review, Michael Kirby attempts to define [analytic] post-modern dance.  Sally Banes paraphrases his definition as “rejects musicality, meaning, characterization, mood and atmosphere; it uses costume, lighting, and objects in purely functional ways.”  This stage of post-modern dance in the 1970s was minimalistic, functional, and objective.  They replaced costumes with sweatpants and t-shirt/casual everyday dress, music with silence, and special lighting effects with plain, well-lit rooms.  Not only did they reject music and rhythm, they got rid of dramatic phrasing, contrast, and resolution.  They wanted the audience to see the structure and movements themselves.   An important focus was the scientific analysis of how the body works, which fits the name of this movement. Performers made pure, simple movements using repetition and reversal, mathematical systems, geometric forms, and comparison and contrast.  They distanced themselves by using scores, verbal commentaries, and ordinary, every-day actions such as about working or completing tasks.  They danced in a relaxed, but ready manner.  Also, the spectator would be part of the choreography actively participating or indirectly using objects.

Steve Paxton’s contact improvisation (CI) is characteristic of the analytic post-modern dance movement.  As we saw in his video on Friday and KJ Holmes’ contact class, two or more people are moving relative to each other while always maintaining physical contact.  We are able to take the dance for its face value without any special costumes, music, or scenery.  Even though I knew that this dance technique was improvisational, it felt really natural and at ease, somewhat like watching kids tumble around with each other, although their actions are smoother.  Neither performer knows what to expect next, but they are able to react quickly, for example, supporting the other person on his/her back.  In the exploration of the body sense, this can be used to discover new moves.  These then can be incorporated in choreography/scores of other dances or surprisingly, even CI to give it more structure.  This may seem to take away from the improvisational aspect, but it does make the dance more objective, one of their goals.

~Erica Kwong (Blog B)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/21/arts/dance/liz-gerring-dance-offers-mirrorlike-illusions-in-glacier.html?pagewanted=all

Just like how the Berger and Barnet readings helped us to “see art”, the Wendy Oliver readings taught us how to write good dance critiques.  Chapter 4 first introduces a critique as a “thoughtful discussion and analysis”.  On a deeper level, it focuses on the Feldman Model of Criticism, which consists of four components:  description, analysis, interpretation and evaluation.  The description is about the different components of the work and the analysis shows how these parts fit in with each other.  In the interpretation, the critic explains the meaning and in the evaluation, s/he gives his/her own opinion of the work.

Oliver goes on to mention construction and language.  Although these can apply to almost any writing in general, she gives many examples of these techniques pertaining to dance critiques.  She also provides a suggested format, a rubric, a checklist, and even a sample piece at the end, which is helpful.  We are able to see these characteristics in “Icy White Synapses in a Crackling Heat: Liz Gerring Dance Offers Mirrorlike Illusions in ‘Glacier’” by Alastair Macaulay.

Already, from the beginning, Oliver organizes her dance review well.  She starts off with her thesis statement: ““Glacier,” an enthralling and important new dance work lasting 60 minutes, by the choreographer Liz Gerring, abounds in arresting contradictions.”  Some other topic sentences of note are “Entrances and exits are lively ingredients of Ms. Gerring’s style.” and “Another beauty of the Gerring style is the keen focus she gives to her dancers.”, which often start of the body paragraphs.  Regardless, they are all followed by supporting details.

For example, in the first paragraph, Oliver describes the way the dancers move.  She analyzes the many contradictions: formal vs. informal, natural vs. practiced, wit vs. quirkiness, and passion vs. emotionalism.  She inserts her own interpretation in the second paragraph when she writes about dancing in both the main stage area and visible wing space.  To her, this represents “breaking down boundaries and worlds.”  There is also a statement of evaluation in the 4^th paragraph where she writes “I have admired Benjamin Asriel in works by several contemporary choreographers”.  However, for the most part, evaluation is implied by the many positive adjectives she uses such as “enthralling”, “fascination”, “absorbing”, and “moving”.

Lastly, there is powerful language interspersed throughout the dance critique.  This can already be seen in the first paragraph where she uses descriptive verbs such as “hurl”, “skim”, and “push”.  Oliver also inserts a few similes such as “its moods change like the weather” and “The main area is backed by a single white board, like a blank cinema screen”, which help us imagine the tone and setting of the piece.  Using the techniques mentioned above, Alastair Macaulay writes a strong review making me want to see the performance.

~Erica Kwong (Blog B)

I know I mentioned this in class, but I thought it would be a good way to start off this post.  Thursday morning, I bumped into Ilizar on the train and we ended up talking about our self-portraits.  I remember him giving me a very humble response, saying something along the lines of “I’ll just be drumming with my drumsticks.  Nothing big really”.  After watching his self-portrait, I saw it was the complete opposite.

Already from the beginning, Ilizar’s self-portrait was unique because he started off with an entrance (Sorry again for not catching that on video!).  He strolled in with his backpack singing some tune.  We then got to see a glimpse into Ilizar’s daily life.  He puts down his backpack, his headphones, keys and wallet before going on to make something for himself to eat/drink.  Although we weren’t allowed to use spoken word, his single utterance of “OMG!” really emphasized his arms flailing in the air and jumped backwards.  He takes out his laptop and books to do his work while beat-boxing and tapping on the table and his thighs.  He also took out his drumsticks, which surprisingly he never used during the performance.  He writes a bit on his To-Do list, before he starts typing to a very catchy rhythm on his laptop, while tapping his foot at the same time.  At this point, he is very focused but he seems a bit frustrated.

This is when he starts clearing his table, first of his school stuff.  He then looks at his drumsticks and makes the facial expression “Drumsticks? I can do without them”.  As he plugs his headphones, he is still concentrated, but in a more relaxed way.  He starts tapping on the table and tapping his foot, putting aside the pencil he was tapping with and his glasses.  I really liked the transition of a really cluttered table in the beginning to a bare table at the end.  Although Prof. Uchizono told us to rehearse our self-portrait, all of Ilizar’s rhythms seemed improvised which made it all the more impressive.  At the end, he even incorporated asking for how much time had passed as talking to himself, which made it not disruptive.  Ilizar’s self-portrait was an exciting, rhythmic show for us to watch.

I felt that Ilizar’s and my self-portrait had a common theme.  Both of us presented two different sides of ourselves.  For me, it was solving Science Olympiad: Physics problems and baking.  For him, it was completing tasks on his To-Do list, which made him seem very organized, and drumming.  I think this showed how we enjoyed doing things that were structural, but others that were more creative in nature. Baking and drumming were our ways of relaxing and putting our minds off work for a bit. I also noticed that we incorporated work with play.  I would problem-solve while waiting for my cupcakes to be done, while he tapped out a few rhythms while working.  We both had the show component, my cupcakes and the latter half of his self-portrait, but we also were in our own worlds before that.  What I like is that although we had similar ideas, our self-portraits came across differently because of our interests and really revealed who we were.

~Erica Kwong (Blog B)

After reading just several chapters of Ways of Seeing by John Berger and A Short Guide to Writing About Art by Sylva Barnet, I have become more aware of PERSPECTIVE.  First off, it is interesting to learn that art is not just about the painting or sculpture; it is also about viewers regarding it as art (the Institutional Theory of Art).  Simply put, we give different meanings to art because we are all unique individuals.  For example, the audience can interpret a piece of artwork in a way that the artist didn’t even think of him/herself.  Demographics, such as age, gender, race and ethnicity, can subconsciously affect the way we see art.  There is the culture and society of the time period that shapes us verses the artist’s contemporaries.  Finding more information about the artwork, such as reading the plaque in a museum, can change our initial thoughts.  Even the artwork nearby the one we’re looking at can affect us.  When a physical object is placed in a museum, it may lose its context and we may not be able to fully understand its significance.  Sometimes we’ve seen parts of the painting but not in its entirety or we’ve seen reproductions/pictures in varying contexts.  At other times, we’re not sure if the creator even intended for the object to be appreciated for its aesthetics.

Although I have become more open and welcoming of many different interpretations for the above reasons, I have also learned to be careful about jumping to conclusions too quickly.  This refers to the example involving Governors and the Governesses paintings by Frans Hals.  If we assume things about the subjects of an artwork based on what we know, we may become “mystified” and “seduced”.  However, we can avoid this “direct judgment” by writing about the emotions through the composition of the artwork.  We can also better understand the painting by learning about its time period.  In this way, we can balance out subjectivity and objectivity.  These are some things I will keep in mind when I visit the Modern Art exhibition at MOMA next week.