Monday, October 31, 2011

Get Ready to Smile

Elizabeth Morales, fellow MFA candidate, new friend, and all around awesome lady made this video for the dance for camera class.  The assignment was to create a video using already existing choreography.  I dare you not to smile while watching this.



The video also features her boyfriend, Jaime.  I dare you not to be jealous.

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Washed with Vodka and Polished with Squirrel Tails

The Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow re-opened Friday night after six years of renovations.  Read about the process of the renovation, history of the theatre, the reception in Russia, and the opening night gala here from BBC and here from the New York Times.  Below is a video of the opening night gala performances that includes excerpts from many famous operas and ballets.


As the video is 2 hours and 17 minutes long, I suggest skipping to the 1hr 22min mark to watch an exquisite dancing of the white swan pas de deux.  The orchestra is incredible and the ballerina dancing Odette moves with  an unparalleled  grace and beauty rarely seen in contemporary incarnations of the role.

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Halloween!

Halloween is my favorite holiday.  No pressure to find a gift or be romantic or buy rounds of Patron to make sure every one is the same level of inebriated before midnight.  Just plain old dressing up like you're someone else and trolling for candy, partying, and scares and tricks. (Not that I'm a misanthrope that doesn't like gifts, romance, and Patron; I love those things.)  In the spirit of Halloween I would like to share with you Mary Wigman's Witch Dance.  Wigman is an originator of modern dance.  She was a pioneer of absolute dance, dance composed of only essential movement; music is not necessary or needed.  Much of her inspiration for movement came from exploring her unconscious.



The gestures and physicality that are culturally understood of being "witch-like" are found in Wigman's dance.  I think you can see manifestations of this dance in many of our popular culture representations of the witch.  In the Halloween classic Hocus Pocus, one of my favorites, Bette Midler is fantastic in her gestures and physicality of representing the witch you always imagined when you were a child with the perfect amount of kitsch. Watch this hallmark scene from the movie when the witches sing "I Put A Spell On You" and notice the similarities between Wigman's hands and Midler's hands, also the similarity in physicality in the way Wigman approaches the camera and the way Midler struts downstage at the end of her song.

Happy Halloween!

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Balanchine's Theme and Variations





The Balanchine Trust is very fastidious about removing full length recordings of his work from the internet.  So I have to share this before it gets removed.  Theme and Variations was first presented in New York City on November 26, 1947 to a stunning orchestral suite by Tchaikovsky, that is one of my personal favorites of the composer.  This recording is from 1978 danced by American Ballet Theatre featuring none other than Mikhail Baryshnikov and Gelsey Kirkland.  In describing the ballet, Balanchine said, "it evokes that great period in classical dancing when Russian ballet flourished with the aid of Tchaikovsky's music."  It is one of my favorite Balanchine ballets.  It contains one of my favorite pas de deuxs in ballet.  Not only does it showcase virtuosic partnering and musicality but it allows the soloists to dance alongside each other, creating a more conversational relationship, rather than the man only supporting the woman.  The choreography and music of the final movement are so exciting that I find myself smiling every time I watch it.
This recording also has a bonus interview with Gelsey Kirkland.  You can hear her talk about her process and what it is like to dance the ballet.

First. Let's talk about dance.


Hello, friends and strangers.  For my first blog post I would like to share with you a dance I created.  It was first performed the summer of 2007 in Chapel Hill, NC, and went on to be performed again in 2008 at my alma mater UNC Asheville, and then in 2009 at the NC Dance Alliance Choreographer's Showcase.  This recording is the 2008 performance.  This is the most popular piece I've created amongst audiences, dancers and non-dancers alike.
The process:  I have a surprisingly vivid memory of when I conceived of this dance.  It was my freshman year of college and I was talking with one of my closest friends about choreography, and I had this idea about seeing the back of a body from the audience's perspective.  The movements would be subtle isolations accenting the musculature of the body.  The isolations would also serve the purpose of creating an optical illusion.  The body would not be one individual, but (spoiler alert) multiple bodies moving seemingly as one.  The idea sat on the back burner of my mind until the summer after my freshman year when I was creating a dance review with some friends and was listening to The Blow.  Their song "True Affection" has the perfect rhythms for the movement quality, and the lyrics made me think to create the abstract narrative of a man and a woman being next to one another with very little contact.
I hope you enjoy.