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
Authority and Power
Posted: May 16, 2009 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: action theatre, authentic movement, tap, theatre of the oppressed Leave a comment »
I seem to be able to do what will please others, or to resist doing what will please others in order to resist. Have I ever known what it is that I want to do, and just done it? My four-year-old demonstrates a purity of intention when he says exactly what he wants. A workshop in inspired by Authentic Movement, Action Theatre, and Theatre of the Oppressed, as well as my own struggles with the structures imposed by family, civic life, my graduate program, and the residue of all the expectations I’ve taken on or imposed on myself throughout my life cause me to want to move forward with clarity, to say, “yes, this. this is what I will do”.
Tap dance and movement choirs have become the unlikely arena in which I perform this foreign strong identity. In teaching tap dance, I have to allow the stability of strong weight to meet with sudden timing and drive my actions in the present moment. I have always enjoyed movement that allows me to flow freely from place to place without much attention to time, or initiative, full or response, unweighted. Suddenly, in teaching tap, I have had to say with my body. “BE HERE NOW” I am performing strength and activity.
Movement choirs are another kind of action. They were performances of citizenship in an ideal, imagined, pre-industrial society that countered the actual context in which they were created. They were a performance in which the participants set limits on progress, capitalism, growth, production, and activity. The Ascona community decided that they could and would limit the dominance of the machine in their lives, spent time dancing naked on mountainsides, and in doing so, said “NO!” and “STOP!” to the constant activity and production of industrialism. Their resistance did not stop at negation, but instead made something new, something they could live with – the group dances called movement choirs.
