Coming up this weekend is the Chamber Dance Concert. This is required performance for you to see and respond to. (See the syllabus below for ticket information). In response to this concert, you will write a two paged, double spaced, one inch margined paper.
The subject of this paper will focus of the performances of the dance artists. Pick one or a few of the dancers and write about their performance work. You might need to do some detective work to find out who they are. I can help with that. Who were you drawn to? How did they use their focus? What about their performance inspired you or made you feel a certain response? If you choose a piece with a number of dancers in it, you could compare and contrast performance styles. If there is a particular performance you feel was memorable, pull it apart and try to figure out why?
Things to think about: set choreography, improvisation, focus, arrhythm, commitment, connection between dancers.
Enjoy the show and have fun writing the paper. Although you will be writing about others, you will learn about yourself as a performer by noticing what you are drawn to as an audience. This paper is due in class on Friday, October 16.
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Observing class today turned out to be an interesting experience. I would rather have participated, but it was a different and more reflective experience to be on the sidelines watching. I got to notice how the other dancers in the class use their focus and inhabit their movements in the exercises. A theme that recurred throughout the class was being present in the path of a movement rather than just arriving at the endpoint. It was easiest to directly observe this in the arc-running exercise. I saw many dancers committing to an arc-shaped path and running along it with their eyes and awareness open to seeing what they saw along the path. I also saw a few who seemed to be looking around for a place to go, unsure of their path and obviously searching for an appropriate endpoint. It was much more engaging and pleasing to watch the ones who confidently and clearly followed a path. Fortunately, this approach clicked better for the class in the other exercises when choreography was introduced. I think the class is slowly becoming more comfortable with presence through every part of their movements, but struggles some when there is an absence of dance "material" to fill the space/time. We still have some more work to do on being present in some of the moments that fall outside of our perceptions of "dance".
Class was very interesting on Wed. My concept of dance and movement keeps changing and expanding everyday. I find that if I stay focused and commit to being in the now with whatever movement I am doing, it is as if I become a channel for other movements to flow through. There is a wealth of creative expressions inside us just waiting to come out when we break down the barriers of what is and what isn't dance.
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