Dance, Sustainability, and Counterpoint
Posted: May 26, 2009 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: amateurism, Ascona, counterpoint, critical pedagogy, emerson, housewifery, husbandry, john holt, joshua penrose, laban dance notation, maria montessori, mothering, Movement Choirs, physical practice, Rudolf Laban, tap, theater of the oppressed, thoreau, wendell berry 2 Comments »My friend Hannah used the Counterpoint Tool from Synchronous Objects as a way of framing related ideas. This process of examining a web of ideas first in terms of one relationship, then another, then maybe several relationships at once, brings a holistic, open-ended and non-linear knowledge of what those ideas are. The process is useful to me right now as I try to integrate my ideas about my creative research and right livelihood, as well as the political ramifications of Rudolf Laban and his career.
I’m sitting with some plain white paper and a pencil and trying to sketch the contrapuntal play of these ideas on the paper, but having difficulty mapping the ideas out for myself visually. I seem to need my model to move, to be able choreograph them and thereby see how they play with each other. Presently I have a series of triangles with a word, representing a chunk of concepts at the corners of each triangle. From one triangle to another one or two of the words may stay the same. The terms in the triangles are these:
sustainability, ascona, anna halprin, my creative process, rudolf laban, wendell berry, somatics, and dance reconstruction
I’d like for this model to be able to show how the triangles interelate, and how varying relationships between concepts can show different facets of each concept. Despite my training in Labanotation, I can’t think of a visual representation for this inherently relational way of being with ideas.
Now, I will try something like the facebook friend wheel. I’m placing the ideas around a wheel with an open center. Any idea can connect to any other idea along the wheel. The important thing is not to only draw a connection but to use the visual connection between two or more words to better understand the words and their relationship. I’ve added a few words to fill out my wheel now, including the following:
physical training, freedom, emerson, thoreau, amateurism, mothering ballet, tap, labanotation, jazz, theater of the oppressed, mark johnson, maria montessori, john holt, friere, critical pedagogy, movement choirs, gender, husbandry/housewifery, working with joshua
Winter 2009
Posted: March 16, 2009 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: A-Scale, collaboration, dance, group notation, improvisation technologies, joshua penrose, knust, laban dance notation, Laban Movement Analysis, Max/MSP Jitter, Monster Partitur, Movement Choirs, physical practice, Richard Maxfield, score, Space Harmony, Titan, Vivaldiana, Wii Leave a comment »Working backwards, here’s what I’ve been doing the last few months.
- Meditative tracing of skeleton sculptures for William Forsythe’s Monster Partitur in the Wexner Center Performance space.
Photo: Lindsey Caddle Lapointe
- Afferent Data, an eight-channel sound environment responsive to the small movements of respiration, with Joshua (mentioned by Bill Mayr in the Dispatch). And therefore asking. . .
Photo: Ryan Agnew
- What is it to be alive? What is it that makes me alive? Is it possible to be still? What is the smallest amount of movement? What is the essence of being alive?
- Studying Vicki Blaine’s 1978 Progression dance score with regard to Rudolf Laban’s theories of space, and thus;
- Committing Laban’s A-Scale to muscle memory
as well as. . .
- Rolling, swinging, rocking and dropping my way through some Bartenieff fundamentals.
- Gathering information on John Rodriguez’ abstract ballet Vivaldiana, reading the Labanotation score, and embodying it. This has felt like a satisfying, complex physical Sudoku. Learning that every personal story is interesting if one spends enough time with it.
- Twenty-one beautiful sessions of playful, intentional improvisation (and four ballet classes) with Nik Haffner and friends in a workshop presenting William Forsythe’s ideas at OSU’s Department of Dance.
- Batsheva, Batsheva, Batsheva at the Wex. That’s watching them, dreaming about them, and talking about them.
- Learning the differences between Labanotation in 1927 and now.
- Attempting without much success to understand the score of a movement choir from Germany in 1927. Staring with fascination at pages of Knust’s Group Notation.
- Attempting, again without success, to map data from movement into Max/MSP through the Wii remote. The idea is to make an instrument which will classify movement according to the space and effort qualities of Laban Movement Analysis.
- Reading the fantastically illuminating responses of elective students in dance to a dance concert, and thus;
- revisiting the question; what do we make things for, our audience, our research, or somewhere in between? Facing that I have not really been asking this question with honesty. Appreciating the ideas of Richard Maxfield in his Composers, Performance and Publication essay in light of all this.
Ethics of Dance and Tech “Collaboration”
Posted: December 16, 2008 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: animation, collaboration, joshua penrose, laban dance notation, Max/MSP Jitter, physical practice, symbol systems 2 Comments »Dancers seem to be excited about collaboration right now. I have been encouraged several times since last week to “collaborate” with a programmer to complete this Wii movement choir project. Other dancers have encouraged me to come up with the idea, get a small amount of understanding of the software, and then get a programmer to do the work. I would be providing the idea and the movement expertise –basically feedback on the software. I have considered that this type of relationship with a programmer is problematic.
A dancer actually said to me, “Oh, you don’t have to learn any of that tech stuff, just get somebody else to do it. Then you’ll have a collaborator, and then it’s really easy to get grant money. If you can use the word collaboration in your proposal you’re set.” I’m skeptical of taking this route. Dancers are marginalized as artists and have to struggle to be considered legitimate. By the numbers dancers are mostly female. I’ve had the opportunity to closely observe sound installation artist Joshua Penrose and his process of painstakingly learning the skills needed to make his work, coming from a traditional music background. Did he assume he could do it because he’s male, or because there’s a different sense of empowerment in the music community? It seems dancers assume that they can’t learn software or that it’s not worth their time.
Judging by the dialogues here at OSU and in non-profits, dancers are tired of being marginalized and considered unintelligent. Isn’t just being the bodies while other people do the programming going to keep us there? I’m going to assume that if I can master Labanotation, then I can master other systems of symbols, and learn to write code. If I can learn to coordinate the parts of my body, possibly I can manipulate physical objects as I need to to choreograph this interactive environment.
However it is possible that the people encouraging me to find a collaborator already have something figured out that I don’t. Maybe it is impossible to keep the sense of physicality I get from a daily practice and sit at the computer enough to learn the skills myself.
My argument is made weaker by my lack of experience, I know. But I hope to move forward on learning Max/MSP Jitter and animation, and on figuring out what the Wii can do. I also plan to take ballet class this winter and maintain a studio practice. Wii’ll see what happens.
