Author: Ariella Caminero (Page 1 of 2)

Upon entering The Kitchen where we would be watching Ralph Lemon’s Scaffold my mind was running with the possibilities as to what we were about to see. As soon as the performance began I had a feeling it wasn’t going to be anything like I’ve ever seen before. The first woman to come out first began jumping on what appeared to be a mattress on top of a two-story set and remained doing so at different speeds and paces for a while. She then came down and from what I remember began rambling about people like Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, and their fans. She went on to permeate the room with an uncomfortable and awkward atmosphere as she read aloud from sexually explicit novels. She finally exited the room in slow and quiet manner. The second woman who came out began by singing a song in a bad and almost very childish tune. Her part of the performance also included a lot of dialogue, some of it explicit too. But one part of her performance that I vividly remember is when she laid down on the floor in the back of the room while a horrid screaming device went on for what felt like 10 minutes. I could feel my ears ringing as the frequencies of the screams changed. I tried to piece together what exactly the movements and dialogue of both women meant but I couldn’t really make sense of them.

Though I do admit that I found my self laughing at some of the humorous parts, by the end of the performance I was just disappointed. The only part of the performance that I truly enjoyed was the final performance piece where three men danced nonstop to infectious musical beats. The main issue I had with Ralph Lemon’s Scaffold was that with it’s two-story set and ongoing dialogue it felt more like one big abstract and confusing theatrical performance. When I chose to take this seminar I hoped to be immersed into the many different cultures of dance and be able to watch a variety of dance performances but so far I feel as if I have really only seen one or two dance pieces with the rest being some kind of movement based art. Overall I feel as though I was disappointed in this performance because it is just another abstract movement based art that left me very confused by the end of it.

-Ariella Caminero

In the 1960s there was a break away from Post-Modern dance to a style that used the body itself as the subject of the dance rather than having the body serve as instrument for expressing the deeper meaning of the dance. Thus this dance style focused on the way in which dance was expressed rather than the meaning behind the dance. In order to showcase this new style choreographers and dancers experimented with different and new uses of time, space, and the body. One specific choreographer, Merce Cunningham, decided to disengage the relationship between music and dance and had his dancers learn movement with no music until the day they had to perform the dance.

Moreover, in the 1970s an even greater deviation from post-modern dance emerged to form a style called analytic post-modern dance. This dance form stripped dance of all expressive elements such as music, lighting, costumes, and props. The dances were often performed in silence, and well-lit rooms, and the dancers dressed in ordinary clothes like sweatpants and t-shirts. The goal of analytic post-modern choreographers was to redefine dance in the wake of the controversy of the 60s. Thus movements weren’t overtly expressive and gave no illusionistic references. Rather the moves were simple and usually involved, repetition, reversal, geometric forms, and comparison and contrast. As Banes describes, the dance’s energy was “literally reduced”. With the elimination of musicality and rhythmic organization it is obvious that analytic post-modern dance was a very divergent dance style in comparison to ballet and modern dance.

In 1972 Steve Paxton created Contact Improvisation.  This form of dance involves “physical techniques of falling, duet situations, and physical improvisation, but its forms have social and political connotations” (Banes XX). Meaning that a dancer and their partner(s) must work together to continue the flow of the dance while maintaining physical contact the entire time. The elements of the performance were also symbolic of a world that could be better. For example the improvisation stands for freedom and adaptation, and the support stands for trust and cooperation. Thus Paxton is related to analytic post-modern dance in that he used the ideas of analytic post-modern dance in his contact improvisation style. Not only did Paxton incorporate the social and political issues of the time like other analytic post-modern choreographers but Paxton presented audiences with a new and different idea of dance as well.

Ariella Caminero

Reflection, New York (Delancey Street) 1940-1950

The photograph I chose is titled “Reflection” and the photographer is Lisette Model. The use of reflection in this photograph is what first caught my attention. I was interested in how you could see inside of what seems to be a restaurant or bar and see the surroundings outside all at the same time. At first my eye was drawn to the man on the right who is standing. He in my opinion is the main subject of the photo even though the buildings and the trees in the reflection of the window also caught my eye. Whenever I see photographs of people in earlier decades I always wonder about who they are. I start to ask myself, do they have a family? What kind of work do they do? What are their interests? And then I go on to focus on and wonder about the specific situation they were in when the picture was taken. To me the man seems to be waiting, maybe for a friend. Or judging by his facial expression he may have just heard some confusing or worrisome news. I can’t see his eyes but he seems not to notice the photographer. When I looked harder at the photograph and tried to further distinguish the reflection of the outside from the inside I realized there was a second man inside who seems to be looking straight at the camera. Furthermore, I then could see the the people outside as they walk on the street. The thing that I found most intriguing however, was that as hard as I looked I could not see the photographer or the camera in the reflection of the window which I feel should’ve been noticeable.

Moreover, I feel that this photograph is compositionally strong because it uses the rule of thirds and counterpoint correctly. The photographer uses the rule of thirds when she places the main subject in the right third of the picture rather than in the center of the picture. Even though the second man in the picture may appear to be in the center, if you break the picture up into thirds you can see that he is placed in the middle but towards the left third of the photo. With these two men the photographer also slightly incorporates counterpoint in the photo. Since she placed the primary focal point at the thirds position, she could place the secondary focal point at the diagonally opposite thirds position. Although he isn’t exactly diagonally opposite it is clear to see that the head of the second man is at a slight diagonal from the first man’s head. This means that she used counterpoint.

Overall, I found the elements of this picture very interesting. For snapshot day I feel that I will now try to use the rule of thirds and try to incorporate counterpoint in my photograph since it makes the photo more appealing to the eye.

Ariella Caminero

The dance review, ” ‘Zero One’ Plays With Difference at Danspace” by Siobhan Burke focuses on how the dance piece revolves around the concept of two’s. Burke mentions how the performance essentially draws from the very different backgrounds of the two dancers. One being trained in Japanese Butoh, and the other in European contemporary dance, Burke states that “Ms. Yokoshi…seems interested in both reconciling and teasing out differences, finding the two-ness in their oneness, and vice versa.” I personally found it most interesting how the choreographer, Yasuko Yokoshi, chose the identical Fukuoka twins to be the two performers in the dance. Having two visually indistinguishable dancers makes the concept of two’s and the differences among the two dance styles all the more ironic.

Furthermore, I was able to make note of how Burke utilized some of the critiquing techniques mentioned in Wendy Oliver’s “Writing About Dance”. Oliver emphasizes how the goal of a dance critic should be to write as vividly as possible in order to try to “re-create some aspects of the performance for the reader”. It is evident that Burke attempts to evoke the performance in the reader’s mind when she says “one dancer, stiffened, collapses in the other’s arms, her bones knocking against the wooden floor”. Aside from the duality exhibited in this piece, Burke makes note of the haunting film excerpts displayed in the background of the dance. The excerpts are from Ms. Yokoshi’s film “Hangman Takuzo” and they exhibit an old “Japanese performance artist who hangs himself — safely — each day in his garden”. It is noticeable that the film being played in the background influenced Burke’s description of the performance when she says ” their movement, much like the dangling Hangman Tazuko and the ghostly Ms. Kawamura in the film, hovers delicately between being here and being gone”. Although Burke does a great job of describing the piece, I feel that her critique was incomplete. I learned from Oliver that criticism includes “description, analysis, interpretation, and evaluation, which are equally applicable to observing and writing about dance”. After reading the review I felt that her critique lacked thorough analysis and interpretation. I felt like I didn’t get a sense of what she exactly thought of the dance piece or what she might’ve thought it represented or meant.

Ariella Caminero

With the onset of personal health issues at the epoch of the 20^th century, it is believed to be that Claude Monet produced works of art that were to coincide with his developing cataracts. This influence is depicted in the differences between his works “Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies” and “The Japanese Footbridge”. Although both paintings are centralized around the same subject, it is evident that there is a transformation in his style. Monet’s style evolves from concentrated and detailed to a more indeterminate and fluid technique. However, Monet was known for focusing on “capturing the moment” such as changes in light and the passing of seasons. Thus it is possible that this change in style between the paintings could not only be attributed to his health, but also the fact that he wished to encapsulate the atmosphere of the very moment he was a part of.

Ariella Caminero

The two art works I have chosen to analyze are Claude Monet’s “Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies” and “The Japanese Footbridge”. I chose these two works because I found it interesting that although they are both by the same artist and are supposed to depict the same subject there are so many contrasts between the two. It is easy to see that “Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies” painted in 1899 exhibits a short and seemingly narrow footbridge over a pond that is flourishing with water lilies. Using many shades of green and different brushstroke techniques Monet fills the background of the painting with many different kinds of trees and shrubbery, almost enclosing the area to give it a more private feel. Monet also mainly sticks to greens, yellows, whites and blues in this work. I found the painting to be very pleasing to the eye and I thought it was exhibiting a serene and beautiful landscape. On the other hand I interpreted “The Japanese Footbridge”, 1920-22, to be more of an angry and confusing painting due to its strong use of warm colors and indeterminate structure. I was first drawn to it because it was so different from Monet’s typically more calming paintings such as his water lily series. Monet’s style, more specifically his brushstroke technique seems to change drastically in the span of twenty years. In this painting Monet loses all attention to detail and rather paints with thicker strokes and in a more fluid manner. It is obvious that “The Japanese Footbridge” requires a more interactive viewing process in order to try and see the scenery in the way Monet saw it at the time. I admit that it was very hard to understand what the painting was trying to illustrate without reading the title at first first. However, once I read it the pieces slowly began to come together and I could make out some resemblances of the footbridge that Monet had painted twenty years earlier.

Ariella Caminero

In Ways of Seeing, John Berger starts off by saying that “the way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe in” (Berger 8), meaning that all art is relative to the person and their past experiences in life. The way one person may see a painting may be completely different from the way another sees it. According to Berger the way people look at art is also affected by “a whole series of learnt assumptions about art” (Berger 11). For example, people may go into a museum expecting to see works of beauty or truth and even though they may not see it in a painting at first, they may force themselves to formulate some type of interpretation that includes these assumptions rather than making their own interpretation. When visiting the MOMA, I found myself approaching most of the paintings with a mindset full of the assumptions Berger described. I felt that they greatly influenced my interpretations too. For example, there were some paintings that I really couldn’t understand and didn’t think were all that great but then I would consider the possibility of abstract beauty being displayed in the paintings or the fact that there must be a deeper meaning behind it. Berger also emphasizes how the authenticity of a painting plays an important role in how people view it. I understood and experienced what Berger meant when he says that “their historical moment is literally before our eyes”( Berger 31). In the MOMA seeing authentic paintings such as “Starry Night” made me feel like I could essentially see and feel what the artists did when they were creating the paintings.

Moreover, Barnet highlights how anything can be art if artists and the public say it is, this is called the Institutional Theory of Art. I found that I could apply this theory when viewing some of the more abstract paintings and sculptures. Sometimes I would ask myself, “How is this is art?” but then I would remember what Barnet said. I couldn’t really see the artistic value in some sculptures but I may just have not been able to see the art piece as other people do. Barnet also introduces the Reception Theory which states that art is not a body of works but is rather an activity of perceivers making sense of images. Thus art is a collaborative effort and I was able to see that when my friends and I worked together to interpret and figure out the meaning behind some paintings we viewed at the MOMA.