Posts by winnieyu525
Berger and Barnet….Pre-MOMA
I have never considered myself artistic, nor have I ever claimed to fully understand art. I always believed that each person that views a piece of artwork would see and interpret the piece differently than the person next to them. However, I sometimes feel lost and even wrong when looking at certain artworks because my interpretation differs from that of the majority of the people who have also seen the art.
After reading the required sections of Berger and Barnet’s writing, I realized how silly I was for thinking that. For example, based on the circumstances of which a painting is seen, say, in a photograph or in person, the beauty of the art would be altered and some aspects of the actual piece would be missing because a photograph would not be able to capture the essence of the painting compared to if you were to see it in person. Barnet writes, “The color of images, reproduction in books, and images on the World Wide Web range from pretty accurate to very poor.” This applies to how I will view the Modern Art exhibition because I will be more detail-oriented in examining the texture, color, placement and objects within the piece. I also really like the line from the first chapter of Ways of Seeing that says, “The visual arts have always existed within a certain preserve; originally this preserve was magical or sacred. But it was always physical: it was the place, the cave, the building, in which, or for which, the work was made.” (pg. 32) It reminds me to think not only about the present work but also about the origin of the piece, the artist that created the piece and the time period during which it was made.
Both writers teach us through their text to analyze and interpret art from different angles. When I go to visit the MOMA for the Modern Art Exhibit, I will look through the exhibit and formally analyze them for their structure and components, just like Beer did in his analysis of Prince Khunera as a Scribe.
Comments by winnieyu525
"Although I do not claim to understand the ideas and beauty of every movement within Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s “Cesena”, I will say that I thought the overall piece was choreographed beautifully. Like Erica, I did have to look at the NYTimes preview and the BAMBill to make the full connections of the dance choices to the ideas behind the performance. I wouldn’t say I was necessarily confused during the piece because I focused more on the dancers, their style and their singing rather than what Keersmaeker was trying to convey to us.
The most obvious factor of this piece was the adjustment of light. From the man running around the chalk circle in almost complete darkness in the beginning to the gradual brightening of the stage as the spread of dancers who laid on the floor rose up, this play of light added a sense of curiosity and serenity to the piece. As Donna said after the performance, I actually thought the darkness was calming and made the piece so much better because it had a sense of watching movement in the dark as if you were at the beach at night and you saw the outlines of people moving around further from you. I still cannot believe the woman screamed to turn on the light…yes, it did get a bit hard to see after more than half an hour of watching the performance in the dark, but it brought such a halt to my focus of the dance that I would have honestly rather continue squinting than have the lights turned on.
One of my favorite parts of the dance was parallel style of the piece. Keersmaeker included parts where the singers, who were separated into two rows on the opposite sides of the stage, would follow a conductor on each side. She also had dancers move in pairs around the smearing chalk circle, as well as single dancers that were later joined by a partner who danced similarly with the first dancer. I thought the two women in the black dresses who danced opposite one another around the circle were beautiful; the way the spun so freely and loosely made their bodies seem like it was just moving to the music.
A few of my favorite bits of the dance included the way some of the dancers rolled on their ankle as they moved, the circular style of some of the dances, and the singing that tied together the entire dance. I noticed that the two women in the black dresses were the first to do the ankle rolling movement – as they spun around and moved opposite one another, both of them would roll of their ankles to move their bodies from a bent angle to reach higher up into the air. I also liked the idea of the circle smearing throughout the duration of the performance – it was as if the dancers left their marks along each part of their dance.
Even though I might not have appreciated the dance as much as Professor Uchizono did, I did see and think about each of the qualities she mentioned when she told us why she loved the piece. I might not have been as moved by the performance as her but I did find the stunned and somewhat wondering feeling that the piece left on me beautiful.
-Winnie Yu (Blog A)"
--( posted on Oct 22, 2013, commenting on the post
“Cesena”: A Beautiful Mélange of Light, Dance, and Music )
"Analytic Post-Modern dance sprouted from the want of artists and dancers to move away from the modern dance forms and traditional types of dance. Like many other movements that follow after a period of change, Analytic Post-Modern dance incorporates new beliefs and new technology and it brings together groups of individuals that might have otherwise never come together to produce a work of art. Banes writes, “The new dance both simplified itself and complicated itself with technological experiments…” (Banes 14). This dance form was simplified because it removed the music, props and audience as the focuses of the performance; instead, the dance is made “…for the pleasure of the dancer, whether or not the spectator finds it pleasing, or even accessible…” (Banes 16). As Jill mentioned in her post, this movement aimed to be a representation of the dancers or the creators in their own desired form. Rather than have the audience watch the piece through an already laid-out story, analytic Post-Modern dance allows for the spectators to bring in their own stories to the performance and to interpret the dance from their own perspectives. This new form of dance differed from the traditional forms because, like Dunn’s dance composition class, “the freedom from evaluation and prescribed formulae was unprecedented” (Banes 11).
Steve Paxton focused on experimental dance and worked as a choreographer throughout his career. As one of the participating founders of the Judson Dance Theater, he developed a new type of dance, known as Contact Improvisation. He was interested in exploring the movements between bodies and how the physical touch can produce its own surprising movements. Contact Improvisation dancers needed to divert their thoughts away from conscious control because they needed to work together to create the dance. By moving with the other person(s), each dancer engages in a play of weight-exchange that brought about an element of surprise and spontaneity. Like some of the other artists of Analytic Post-Modern Dance, Paxton hosted more “bare” performances – by this, I mean that he avoided the use of extra costumes, props or music. This allows for the audience to focus on the dancers and the performance in itself. Paxton’s dance form, like those of Analytic Post-Modern dance, highlights the beauty of a performance in just the dancers and their movements by eliminating the outside influences that may affect the piece as it is.
-Winnie Yu (Blog A)"
--( posted on Sep 30, 2013, commenting on the post
Private: Trisha Brown and the Post-Modern dance movement )
