“What is going on in these pictures in my mind?” (Didion 2). Joan Didion’s “Why I Write” provides an explanation to her perspective om writing and why she writes. Later on, she states that she writes as a way to discover the meaning behind what she is seeing. During this past semester as we wrote about dance, a heavy focus was on description and interpretation rather than contextualization and evaluation. With Didion’s philosophy in mind, we can use writing as a tool in order to discover a meaning of a particular dance piece. Throughout the semester, reading from other writers have provided helpful hints when writing about dance as we discover that by detailed description, underlying interpretations can expose themselves. During this semester, there was a considerable amount of focus on description and interpretation that lead to a few difficulties. From previously taken dance courses, I have had experience describing dance movement through writing so that the readers could see a dance without physically viewing it. This particular course provided more insight on how much description I …show more content…
“Artworks have ‘aboutness’ and demand interpretation” (Barrett 71). This statement creates a foundation for writing, specifically about dance, as each dance piece is always about something, no matter how simple it appears to be. As I began to write about dance I knew not only to provide a description of the piece, but utilize the description as evidence as I develop a possible meaning. Additionally he explains, “There can be different, competing, and contradictory interpretations of the same artwork” (Barrett 73). When I would begin to develop an explanation from the description I provided, I had to remind myself that my interpretation was only one view of the dance and I should not try to provide one comprehensive interpretation for the
When you are dancing, there are many things you can channel; emotions, memories, people, experiences, stories, the list goes on and on. These properties can be portrayed through movements, facial expressions, and music. Dancing can also portray conflict; such as the conflict between Ponyboy Curtis and Darry Curtis in S.E. Hinton’s beloved novel, The Outsiders. In our dance piece, titled, Hard to See, both the music and movements work in harmony to illustrate Darry and Ponyboy’s maturing relationship.
Twyla Tharp is a choreographer who had a deep appreciation for choreographic innovators such as Merce Cunningham. Throughout her career, Tharp utilized and diverted from the ideas of choreographic precedents which ultimately led to Tharp becoming an innovator herself. She used their inspiration to create works that were entirely original while breaking the barriers and classifications of dancing all together. Twyla Tharp questioned and challenged the labels given to choreography that were based on genres, dancers, and music. Tharp was able to use the body to create movement in a way that appealed to both concert dance and mainstream audiences, prompting society as a whole to view dance as an art form independent of other artistic mediums.
The Alvin Ailey modern dance company is known internationally for their works and dancers but how they began is a very interesting story. The company formed in 1958 and just two years later one of the most memorable and notable performances of the company was created, “.Revelations”. Although Alvin Ailey was the creator and director of this company, Ailey’s style and the technique he used and that the company still uses stems from Lester Horton. Horton was a pivotal teacher for Ailey and inspired him to create a company and carry on this technique from Horton. This paper will illustrate the beginning influence Horton had on Ailey and how the company has grown overtime.
Messages can be conveyed in many ways including through movement. A dancer knows how to use their facial expressions, combined with the dynamics of their body, to get their message across. A choreographer knows how to structure a dance to communicate a message through body in motion. Alvin Ailey choreographed his dancers and used this form of communication to create many powerful dances.
Summary In the analysis, “Write For Your Life,” Anna Quindlen’s thesis is that in the movie “Freedom Writers,” and in our everyday life, physical writing is a necessary form of therapy and release. Quindlen describes the movie and then points out specific lines that express the situation of the children. She continues by explaining how physical writing is important to our wellbeing but how it has disappeared from our lives.
The Elements of Dance Shown Through Sergei Polunin “Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their compassion,” this quote by Martha Graham describes Sergei Polunin, who was the dancer in our assigned video. While this dancer is dancing to “Take Me to Church” by Hozier, he is using many different elements to create the form of art called dance. Three of these elements are mine and pantomime, the music, and mise-en-scene. Through each and every one of these elements the dancer is able to tell his audience exactly how intense his feelings are and he can also send emotions to us and make us feel what he is feeling.
Writing Down the Bones is Natalie Goldberg’s first book out of the ten she has written. The book is internationally known and has sold over a million copies. This is not hard to believe, at all . Goldberg touches on important tactics that help one develop into becoming a strong writer, using examples through out her life and her path to writing her first book. Goldberg compares writing to the spiritual practice of Zen.
In her article, Embodying Difference, Jane Desmond argues that dance offers important insights into the ways moving bodies articulate cultural meanings and social identities. In other words, she explains the importance of studying the body’s movement as a way of understanding culture and society. She has two main arguments. First, she argues for the importance of the continually changing relational constitutions of cultural forms. Desmond further explains that the key to shedding light on the unequal distribution of power and goods that shape social relations are the concepts of cultural resistance, appropriation, and cultural imperialism (49).
No other choreographer of African-American decent in his time could be even slightly comparable to Ailey’s success. The style of ballet and modern dance were predominately domain to white choreographers and performers. Even today, to some extent, they still are. Ailey was one of the first to modify the norm by inspiring multiethnic dance opportunities.(11) Ailey’s goal as a choreographer was not only to place emphasis on black culture, but moreover to completely remove the idea of colour itself.
A dance film, on the other hand, employs dance as a main character with a more pivotal role in the transformation of the protagonist. Thus, in Shall We Dansu?, because it is an active force in the narrative with human-like characteristics, such as being shrouded in shame, ballroom dance becomes an initiator of intimacy. In Salsa and DanceSport, McMains explains Mexican-American Giselle Fernandez’s need for a creation of an alter ego despite already being
Throughout her lifelong anthological studies and dance performances, Dunham has shown to be responsible for the exposure and establishment of dance as a cultural topic of anthological
This dance is supposed to be beautiful to show everyone how wonderful differences could be. The style in which the story is written changes in this passage by showing a lovely, beautiful scene than the usually harsh tones. Question Four :
In Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz”, the speaker seems to be an adult reminiscing his childhood through a metaphor of a dance. The poem suggests that the boy was abused and the mother stood by without doing much about it. Three topics that
Home is My Life Burden Home. An alternative life kept from the outside world. Behind closed doors, it can be filled with tension but others may see happiness. Life outside my home is my escape from the anxiety that’s built from within the walls of what is called my home. But now, it’s not fully a family with just me and my mother.
It is a performance or happening, intertwined with dance, improvisation and conceptual art. The attitude towards the text changed greatly as today the core of the performance is body and autobiographical stories instead of sceneries from great classical writers. The subject of this essay is to define postmodern time and the relationship between art