Week 8 assignment: essay – interrelationships reflection apa format | Applied Sciences homework help
- If someone who has had training in ballet is available, you might try to get him or her to present a small portion of the ballet for your observation and discussion. What would be the most important kinds of questions to ask such a person?
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DANCE
MoDern Dance The origins of modern dance are usually traced to the American dancers Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis. They rebelled against the stylization of ballet, with bal- lerinas dancing on their toes and executing the same basic movements in every per- formance. Duncan insisted on natural movement, often dancing in bare feet with gossamer drapery that revealed her body and legs in motion (Figure 10-7). She felt that the emphasis ballet places on the movement of the arms and legs was restric- tive. Her insistence on placing the center of motion just below the breastbone was based on her feeling that the torso had been neglected in the development of ballet. She believed, too, that the early Greek dancers, whom she wished to emulate, had placed their center of energy at the solar plexus. Her intention was to return to nat- ural movement in dance, and this was one effective method of doing so. FIGURE 10-7 Isadora Duncan at the Parthenon, photographed by Edward Steichen. ©2017 The Estate of Edward Steichen/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: ©The Museum of Modern Art/Scala/ Art Resource, NY jac16871_ch10_254-275.indd 265 12/9/17 10:12 AM 266
CHAPTER 10
The developers of modern dance who followed Duncan (she died in 1927) built on her legacy. In her insistence on freedom with respect to clothes and conven- tions, she infused energy into the dance that no one had ever seen before. Although she was a native Californian, her successes and triumphs were primarily in foreign lands, particularly in France and Russia. Her performances differed greatly from the ballet. Instead of developing a dance built on a pretext of the sort that underlies Swan Lake, Duncan took more-abstract subject matters—especially moods and states of mind—and expressed her understanding of them. Duncan’s dances were lyrical, personal, and occasionally extemporaneous. Since, she insisted, there were no angular shapes in nature, she would permit her- self to use none. Her movements rarely came to a complete rest. An interesting example of her dance, one in which she does come to a full rest, is recounted by a friend. It was performed in a salon for close friends, and its subject matter seems to be human emergence on the planet: Isadora was completely covered by a long loose robe with high draped neck and long loose sleeves in a deep muted red. She crouched on the floor with her face resting on the carpet. In slow motion with ineffable effort she managed to get up on her knees. Grad- ually with titanic struggles she rose to her feet. She raised her arms toward heaven in a gesture of praise and exultation. The mortal had emerged from primeval ooze to achieve Man, upright, liberated, and triumphant.2 Martha Graham, Erick Hawkins, José Limón, Doris Humphrey, and other inno- vators who followed Duncan developed modern dance in a variety of directions. Graham created some dances on themes of Greek tragedies, such as Medea. In ad- dition to his Moor’s Pavane, Limón is well known for his interpretation of Eugene O’Neill’s play The Emperor Jones, in which a slave escapes to an island only to become a despised and hunted tyrant. Humphrey, who was a little older than Graham and Limón, was closer to the original Duncan tradition in such dances as Water Study, Life of the Bee, and New Dance, a 1930s piece that was very successfully revived in 1972. PERCEPTION KEY Pretext and Movement 1. Devise a series of movements that will take about one minute to complete and that you are fairly sure do not tell a story. Then perform these movements for a group and question them on the apparent pretext of your movement. Do not tell them in advance that your dance has no story. As a result of this experiment, ask yourself and the group whether it is possible to create a sequence of movements that will not suggest a story line to some viewers. What would this mean for dances that try to avoid pretexts? Can there really be abstract dance?