Hey Dancers,Great work this week.
I posted this photo of Martha Graham because it highlights some ideas that came up this week. We spoke about form versus essence. This came up when Jennifer said that she was working toward getting things "right" first and then working on performance quality. Catherine Cabeen says that for Martha emotion comes first and then she moves, then the forms appear. In this work called Letter to the World it is clear that her emotional state is one with her body in this moment.
As we worked on creature dances, we worked all week to allow feeling to inform the body. How did this work for you? What was most challenging about this? What worked?
Wednesday began with my eruption of the idea of dance being equally important as other areas of study. If you have thoughts to share on that subject, please blog about them. Please feel free to disagree!
On Friday, we danced and danced and danced. We pushed to the edges of our ability and felt the altered state of awareness that exists there. It's like willingly entering a state of physical emergency. When we get there, we find a visceral experience of movement, energy, physics and gravity that is exciting. What did you experience here on Friday?
Wow, where to start!
ReplyDeleteMonday - I loved the creatures. At first it felt very odd and I didn't know what I was doing! By the end of the phrases, I still didn't know what I was doing haha, but I was confident in embodying the creature more and more because I gave up "doing" it right and started "being" the creature.
Wednesday - THAT CLASS WAS SO FUN! I LOVED having a change in music. I appreciate Kane and think he is incredible, but the fact that it was so drastically different than Kane's music was refreshing. Also, because John Mayer is one of my favorite artists and I play the guitar so that music was much more familiar in my body and I connected emotionally to the song right away. Also, the combination we did to Timbaland was SO fun! It was first really challenging getting used to the music that wasn't designed for our dance. Kane works with you and observes and creates music with accents where our dance has accents... and wednesday it felt like switching from the dancing dominating the music to the music dominating the dancing. Not dominating in a bad way, I just mean the music came first and then the dance was added on top instead of the other way around. This was challenging but also so fun once I got into the groove of it. I could have done that combination for another hour :).
Friday - Going back to Kane was an adjustment because it surprised me how much I loved having the different music on Wednesday. Like I said I love Kane but it definitely affects my connection to the dance as well as how I move to it, depending on the music. I ALWAYS experience a little holding back on my part when dancing, almost like I'm constantly afraid of falling.... and I hate it. It's something I constantly notice and try to move past. Friday was great because I pushed against this more than usual and felt like I actually got beyond my "limit" that I always recognize is there.
Another note - about Dance being of equal importance as other classes/subjects. I appreciated what you said Wednesday and I am glad there are people like you who stand up for that side of things, when so many others are arguing for the opposite. From dance I learn a lot about myself and the world. I think that sounds corny but I really believe it. Dance is always somewhere I grow and expand my learning in ways that I don't in other classes. You said last quarter that in Dance you play with the idea of failing and you fail often and learn new things each time. In other classes, failing is not something you want to do and teachers definitely don't encourage it. In dance though, failing gives you an opportunity to find out something new and expand yourself. So thanks for giving us a place to fail.
Wow, I had a lot to say. Haha, I'm done now.
I agreed with Jennifer when she said she tries to get the combination right before putting emotion into it, but I feel like my experience is slightly different. I have spent a long time with a pre-professional dance company and performing has been a huge part of my life before this year. But at the same time, I'm used to having at least a couple of weeks to learn choreography before performing it. I guess this puts me in a spot where I concentrate on muscle memory before I think about my emotional expression in a combination. Sometimes this process is very short, I learn a combination walk through it once or twice then I can throw my heart and soul into it, sometimes it simply takes more time. Basically I have to, to a certain extent, be able to do the combination without thinking about steps before I can do it with phrasing and performance or emotion attached.
ReplyDeleteI thought your speech on wednesday was important. I am majoring in Chemistry and I don't think you would believe the number of times I have told people I'm taking a dance class and they insist on asking if it is for credit and then act shocked when I say yes. It seems so ridiculous to me sometimes. I danced very little over the summer and I began swing dancing last quarter, but this quarter has been amazing because of this class. It made me realize how crazy I was for thinking I could stop dancing cold turkey after 12 years and it has made me consider a minor or double major along with my chemistry degree. I love them both equally and while I have intentions of having a degree in chemical research or teaching, I have no intentions of quitting dance any time soon.
I really liked the creature movement all week. It was fun to explore what it was like to move based on sensations in individual parts of my body and see how it would affect how the rest of my body moved. I did a lot of trying it "sense" through my wrists or the middle of my back, I think it informed how the rest of my body reacted.
~Caitlin Bannan
I love Martha Graham. We studied a lot about her with Jenn in Dance History. Her emotions are so evident in her dances. It is amazing. I agree with Louie that dance is just as important as other studies. I am a dance major, and I get frustrated when people think I should have a second major too. Movement is so important to our overall health, that to say Dance is not as important is rediculous. There are plenty of unuseful degrees out there, and Dance is not one of them.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed all the creature movement we did this week. It is nice to have all the time we need to explore a creature in our pieces. I wasn't feeling good when I came to class, but getting into the creatures body made me feel better. Connecting to my creature helped me forget about all my human problems.
I really enjoyed the creature movement this week. It was interesting to figure out how to try to become a creature that is whatever you want it to be. I discovered that I am a better creature with certain characteristics than with others. The more wavy creature is much more comfortable to me, but I liked working through the other creature forms that didn't feel as natural. I really had to think about-- how to stop thinking I guess.
ReplyDeleteFriday was such an exhilarating and exciting day for me. I loved practicing the different combination's again, and through this I feel I was able to reach that heightened, visceral experience. I was able to forget about the steps more and give my energy and emotion into the movement and how it felt in my body. Pushing at the limits of the movement really helps me learn about how far I can really take my body, and exaggeration of the movement makes it seem more "real" somehow. I feel more involved in it mentally and physically, like I am taken to another place somehow.
I had the most fun with this in the phrase that moved across the entire diagonal. Getting to the point of almost falling over because I was pushing so hard to get to the outer limits of the movement and my body was thrilling and I loved it!
This past week has been very fun! On monday, I really enjoyed working on the idea of creatures and being able to make them my own. It is very different to work on the feelings to control movement rather then... a specific movement to create a feeling. I was not to sure about the movement of a sea creature, but after I got used to the feeling it was easier to explore the idea more. I have used the ideas of emotions to create movement, but the use of a creature was intriguing.
ReplyDeleteWednesday, threw me off a bit. Dance is a very important part of my life! I am a dance major so how can it not be. I feel a bit hurt because I brought up the topic, which I am sorry to have done. This is my first quarter at the UW and I am trying to get an understanding of things and Wednesday was just one of those odd days. I personally view all my classes with equal importance and I feel that there is never a good reason to miss a class. One thing that I appreciate, is that we are considered adults, we are all responsible for our actions and the things that we have going on in our lives. I often feel that most teachers don’t take that into account; which is why I feel that it makes us the only ones that can hold ourselves accountable for our actions, no one else. As far as, the class went, it was really nice to have the change of music. I really like the music that Kane usually plays for us... but the change in pace was cool too. It is very different to dance to music that has lyrics in it; somehow I have a connection to the words when I am dancing, I almost feel like it has more meaning.
On Friday, it was fun to just dance everything that we have learned. It was hard to push my mind and body to the edge. I begin feeling self conscious of the fact that I am not doing the correct movement. But once I got over that feeling, it was fun to just dance and feel the movement. I am curious... is it better to dance on the edge or play it safe? And how would ‘pushing the edge’ affect my dancing in other classes? It is something I would like to try this next week. And I hope that this next week will go better then the last. - Katelynn C.
Wow. We really brought up a lot in class this week, and not all of it was about the physical movement that dance entails. To start things off, I guess I'll address the concept of "getting things right" before dancing with emotion. Many years before I started taking this class I succumbed to the idea of working through combinations and perfecting them in a more mechanical way before I added emotion or expression. Now however I think that this has worked for some in the past and will continue to work in some circumstances, but interestingly enough I find it easier to reach another level of emotional expression if I try to incorporate it into practice. It doesn't come as so much of a shock to my body. For me I feel like it is more of a factor of showing emotion in dancing in a way that is easily or directly conveyed to the audience.
ReplyDeleteThe dance creatures really pushed me out of my comfort zone. I don't think I've ever had to create a sea creature with my body in any ballet class I've ever taken (unfortunately), and it was actually really fun. I found that it was way more difficult than Louis made it look, especially since we were supposed to consider that our creatures had brains more in the center of their bodies, and we were thus driven and influenced by our cores. I thoroughly enjoyed watching other people play with their own creatures as well.
I thought Friday was awesome. My body doesn't enter a state of emergency willingly, and it took a lot of convincing just to get my brain and body to the point where I could sort of abandon myself to the dance a little bit. When you do experience that feeling of having your toes sort of hang over the cliff, so to speak, it is thrilling, but seems to happen to me very rarely. Turing one's brain off and letting movement or gravity or feeling take over is an experience similar to sky diving or bungie jumping. The more we learn about dance in this class the more interested I become in the psychology behind dance.
~Kristen
I really really really really really really enjoyed the creature dances last week! :) I felt like I could really let go and take on those different personalities and it was an amazing experience. I also appreciate that note you gave me about how a lot of my movements were fast and I should try incorporating moments of suspension too. I tried that out, and it really worked for me. Sometimes when I really get into dancing, I just like to move quickly, but that note helped me realize that slow moments are just as necessary as fast ones. So thank you very much for that!
ReplyDelete- Allyson Wang
Wow, sounds like I missed out on Friday!
ReplyDeleteWhile I was out of town, I was telling a friend of mine about this dance class - about the partner work we've been doing, about being first nervous then thrilled about even small lifts, about making creatures. They pointed out something to me that I guess I've been feeling for a while, but didn't think of explicitly. What they said was "It sounds like you all have carved out a safe, creative space together."
I thought about that for a bit and I totally agree with him. This class offers times and ways for us to be individuals - our warm ups surely serve this purpose as does the approach to dance of "feeling first, form second" and Louis' reassurances that "there is no wrong." But largely, as we've moved and grown together, this class has become a place where we can reach and stretch and trip and fall and trust each other. It's a great environment to be in.
As far as the dialogue that came up on Wednesday and has been continuing in text, I have sort of a two-sided opinion about it. I'm not a dance major or minor, I'm in my final weeks of grad school. Last year, I started to take dance classes as a way to continue moving, expand my community, and burn off school stress. I gave dance class a sort of "secondary" status in comparison with my other classes. Since then, dance has become a more and more important part of my life. Although going out of town and missing class doesn't exactly demonstrate this, I feel like my dance classes are almost *more* important to me at this moment in my life than my academic work (though I'm not taking classes anymore, persay). I'm pretty bummed not to be able to stick around long enough to do a minor!
I feel physically and emotionally different when I haven't danced for a while (in a not-good way). I study better and with more enthusiasm when my body feels good and my mind can focus. In this way, dance class is not only important to me in and of itself (and it most certainly is), but it's also important to me in the sense that it helps me make myself a more able, full, efficient person in non-dance life as well.
Thanks, everyone, for carving out this space for us to grow in!
Cheers,
kristi
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ReplyDeleteI loved how fast paced friday's class was. It was almost fast enough to not be able to think about much else inbetween the different dancing that we did, which I think is really neat. I mean, I usually don't let outside things distract my mind in the dance studio, but when there are pauses and talking inbetween dancing, things may creep in from time to time. But of course those pauses are never useless, since they mostly involve you giving us feedback and constructive comments.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, what I'm trying to say is that I loved the pace of the class, especially the last dance, the one that was the most fast paced. It was good to practice connecting the movements and flowing through them efficiently. And I like the idea of already thinking about the next "section" or movement while still doing the preceding one, which is what helps connect everything.
As for feeling vs form (or essense vs form), i personally quite agree with the idea of finding an emotion for yourself in the general movement before getting all the little details exactly right. I usually try to get the gist of the movement and then try to invest my "feeling" into it first. Then after a couple of times doing the movement I figure out the details and things that I have missed or haven't got quite right at the start. By saying I "invest" myself into the movement I mean I find what it means to me and how it works for my body, how it flows.
I would also like to include performance quality into the idea of investing. I know I don't always reach full performance quality from the start but I am definitely working on it and HAVE been working on it throughout this AND last quarters. As to wether I've improved, all I can say is I've noticed a difference within myself.
- Alisa. :D
I see the value in working on performance quality first and getting things "right" second most in our working on the creature dances. It seems like even though I wouldn’t consider myself getting the steps exactly perfect, as long as I was fully engrossed in the “becoming” a particular creature and my transformation or evolution into other creatures.. I couldn’t be wrong. I remember at one point, I went into a phrase on my left side and ended up getting slightly disoriented. However, when I got input from my partner, she described what I thought would be seen as my messing up the choreography.. as being the maturing of my creature, and kind of a search for self.. I wouldn’t have seen that one coming.
ReplyDelete~Casey
It made me think a lot when you brought up the idea of missing dance class for more “important things” because we are trained in this fast pace society to think that dance or a love or an art form is not as good or as acceptable as a math class or a major or an internship. But, who is to say that a love and an expression of art and something that makes a person happy is less important then something academic? I went through this myself when I signed up for 2 academic classes and yoga and modern this quarter. I felt guilty for about a week that I was taking dance classes and that I should be taking a more aggressive academic load, but I do not know why I felt guilty about doing something that I love so much and that I have spent so much time on throughout my life. Going to modern class this quarter has made me so happy. I look forward to it, feel energized, and am in a good mood after I leave. Everything that has been bringing me down in my life or anything that has put me in a bad mood, when I have gone to class I have forgotten about everything because I have been so focused on the class or I have used my breathing exercises as a release and it feels so good! I also absolutely loved the music you have been playing it was a very refreshing change and dancing to “Gravity” felt so good. I love dancing to a song and portraying the emotion and beauty from a song or dancing about what the song is about. So it was especially nice to be able to think about the way that gravity affects our bodies while we are dancing to a very powerful song about gravity.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing I was thinking about, after the academics verses dance talk is that in our lives we are trained to be perfect and not to make mistakes which is why I love that you stress that being your own individual person is okay and that there is not always a right and wrong answer and a right and wrong way of doing something.
I also love that you brought up the idea of riding each movement and each sequence and how it is like climbing a mountain because that feeling is so amazing to experience, but I get so caught up in the choreography and how I look and my surroundings that I rarely get to experience it, but it is something that I am trying to work on and I am trying to train myself the opposite way so I hope by the end of the quarter I can focus on dancing all my movements and not being caught up on the steps and being fearful of not being perfect. But, when all my movements flow together as a smooth and exciting sequence, I feel like I have really mastered the choreography. With your class I have realized there is soooo much more to master in dance then technique, perfection, and choreography, there is so much more to do with dance that the possibilities are endless and I love exploring more and more of the possibilities and how you introduce us to so many different walks of dance. I am always striving to improve my performance in the classroom. I also hope I can continue to allow feeling to inform my body because exploring this was very new and exciting to me and I have never moved like a squid or any of these creatures before so it was very refreshing and exciting and I enjoyed exploring this kind of movement!!!
-Nicole
i've never had any formal dance training before coming to the UW. i'm part of a winterguard that does a lot of dance-inspired things that could be considered a blend of ballet and modern and jazz, but it's always been more like, do this with your body and make it have the same sort of nuance that the person next to you does. so i guess, in a way, it's easier for me to understand the essence of what is asked of the choreographer and to be able to portray that to an audience. however, through going through that learning process (or dare i say "training") i've had to force myself to pay attention to those little details and incorporate them as i go along. those are the "dance moves" i pay attention to. that's the "form" that i feel i need to understand before i can add any performance quality to what is asked of me.
ReplyDeletenow the creature dances are, to me, in a different realm of performance than anything i've ever been asked to do. well, not DO, but perform. or BE. i like them. i like expanding this idea that dancing can just happen, if you let it. my whole experience with dance has had to do with looking like the people next to you and it's hard to encourage myself to dance like some creature i imagine in my head. at the end of class on... friday, maybe?... after we got to do the across-the-floors (i don't know if that's what they're really called) one more time, it felt like, because everyone just decided to sort of let go of their own concept of what was "correct," we all figured something out and looked the same anyway. and it looked BETTER. more comfortable. i don't know if that's because we finally embraced the "essence" of the moves or if the reps are what helped, but it definitely looked better. and was a lot more fun =]
on another note, for me, dancing to music from Louie's ipod was WAAAAY different than dancing to Kane's accompaniment. when Kane's there, he can see what we're doing and make his music emphasize all the necessary accents. when it's us dancing to music that's already set and recorded, i feel as if i have to find those accents in the music and use them to help me emphasize what i need to in the dance. i like both approaches to the dancing that we do, but i think i'm more comfortable with the latter. dancing TO music is easier for me. especially if i'm already familiar with the songs.
dancing has long since been a passion of mine. i've been performing in colorguard shows since i was 15 and have had a great time doing it. i'm no ballerina nor am i very comfortable with improv but being able to express myself is the outlet i need in my life to keep me, well, sane. haha. there are so many potential stressors in life that are centered on what your mind is capable of doing: school, work, balancing checkbooks... those sorts of things. dance is a full-body experience and is so different from everything else i do, it forces me to value it in a different way. it doesn't necessarily place it in a category any higher or lower on my priority list as other areas of study in my academic career. it's in its own realm, really. but it adds this sort of balance and variety to my life that isn't really fulfilled by anything else. this mind-body connection is something i definitely cherish and, over the years, it has incorporated my soul. i know, it sounds really trite but it's true! no calc class ever did that for me, i can assure you. there are things you learn through dance that you don't learn anywhere else and there are things in math or chem classes that you can't learn in dance. some find their niche in research or business and others get their kicks in dance class (no pun intended). to each his own. kudos to those who find what they love =]
~Jennifer
I loved the creatures, especially the cat one (the inward rotated kneading
ReplyDeletemovement). It, at first, felt a bit awkward but when I really got into it, it
was really fun. I actually kind of felt like a cat at times, kneading at a
blanket. As far as emotion goes, I experience both "tracks". Sometimes I will
really need to know the choreography enough to start expressing the movement
with enough emotion. If the choreography is really difficult it is hard to not
think about what happens next, instead of focusing on the actual movement at
that very second. Other times, I will learn a piece of choreography that feels
so right in my body that I can't help but expressing emotion and really feeling
the movement in my body (even if I don't have the choreography all that well).
For me, it depends on how natural and organic the movement feels from the get
go. Some movement just works from the beginning so it is easier to put emotion
into it. After taking Catherine's
Graham class last quarter I understand the intensity of emotion that goes into
her movement. I definitely think that Graham movement requires a particular kind
of emotion and intensity.
As for the class on Friday, I loved it! I love it when I get out of a class
and I am already sore from just dancing non-stop. Even if I get so tired that I
feel like I can't keep moving (Friday wasn't that intense) I still love it. I
can't stand going to a dance class and not actually dancing very much. If that
happens I get into a mindset that blocks me from dancing well or full out when
we do start dancing. When we dive right into the movement and dance intensely,
even if I go into the class tired, I start dancing full out and I get into the
mindset were I make myself move. I LOVE IT! What I'm trying to say was that I
loved that class, the more intense the class, and the more we dance, the better!
Jessica
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