The Life of the Bee
Posted: May 10, 2009 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: life of the bee, swarm 1 Comment »
I’ve become interested in looking at Doris Humphrey’s Life of the Bee next to concepts of swarming and mass movement. Maybe the connection is too literal; I’m not sure yet. But I know when I first read about this dance, my impression was “that sounds wierd.” It sounds like a bunch of women literally dressed up as bees, frenetically scooting around stage. I’d like to know more.
Swarming
Posted: December 23, 2008 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: swarm Leave a comment »
“When I look up from a cultural landscape traversed by thousands of singular, locally intensive, restlessly crisscrossing projects and adventures, at times I see a new figure hanging in the air, multitudinous, diaphanous, evanescent, continually coalescing and dispersing into the wind. You have helped me to perceive its movements, to sense its potential. We might call it a diagram of the swarm.” –Brian Holmes, “the Potential Personality“
It is worth exploring to me how a group moves, becomes one object and then divides apart again individually. What did it feel like to participate in a movement choir? How do movement choirs relate to swarming, if at all? How does a swarm function? How does each bee know?
