Week 8 assignment: essay – interrelationships reflection apa format | Applied Sciences homework help

3. Is there anything archetypal in the subject matter of Revelations?

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Martha Graham Quite different from the Ailey approach is the “Graham technique,” taught in Gra- ham’s own school in New York as well as in colleges and universities across the country. Like Ailey, Graham was a virtuoso dancer and organized her own com- pany. After Isadora Duncan, no one has been more influential in modern dance. Graham’s technique is reminiscent of ballet in its rigor and discipline. Dancers learn specific kinds of movements and exercises designed to be used as both prepa- ration for and part of the dance. Graham’s contraction, for example, is one of the most common movements one is likely to see: It is the sudden pulling in of the dia- phragm with the resultant relaxation of the rest of the body. This builds on Duncan’s emphasis on the solar plexus and adds to that emphasis the systolic and diastolic rhythms of heartbeat and pulse. The movement is very effective visually as well as being particularly flexible in depicting feelings and states of mind. It is a movement unknown in ballet, from which Graham always wished to remain distinct. Graham’s dances at times have been very literal, with narrative pretexts quite similar to those found in ballet. Night Journey, for instance, is an interpretation of Oedipus Rex by Sophocles. The lines of emotional force linking Jocasta and her son-husband, Oedipus, are strongly accentuated by the movements of the dance as well as by certain props onstage, such as ribbons that link the two at times. In Graham’s interpretation, Jocasta becomes much more important than she is in the original drama. This is partly because Graham saw the female figures in Greek drama—such as Phaedra (Figure 10-9)—as much more fully dimensional than we have normally understood them. By means of dancing their roles, she was able to reveal the complexities of their characters. In dances such as her El Penitente, Graham experimented with states of mind as the subject matter. Thus, the featured FIGURE 10-9 Martha Graham in Phaedra, based on the Greek myth concerning the love of Phaedra for Hippolytus, the son of her husband, Theseus. Graham performed numerous dances based on Greek myths because she felt energized by their passion. ©Jack Mitchell/Getty Images jac16871_ch10_254-275.indd 269 12/9/17 10:12 AM 270

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male dancer in loose white trousers and tunic, moving in slow circles about the stage with a large wooden cross, is a powerful interpretation of penitence. Batsheva Dance Company The Batsheva Dance Company (Figures 10-10 and 10-11), founded by Martha Graham and Baroness Batsheva Rothschild in Tel Aviv in 1964, derived from Graham’s per- forming and teaching in Israel. By the mid-1970s both Graham and Rothschild had withdrawn to let the company find its own way. Eventually its current director, Ohad Naharin, who had begun with Graham’s company in New York, took over and re- shaped Batsheva Dance Company into an internationally respected troupe. Batsheva has appeared frequently in the United States and throughout Europe. It is respected for its imaginative dances and the risk taking that has been its trademark. FIGURE 10-10 The Batsheva Dance Company. ©robbie jack/Corbis/Getty Images FIGURE 10-11 Batsheva Dance Company, Decadance. 2017. Photo: Maxim Waratt. Courtesy of Batsheva Dance Company jac16871_ch10_254-275.indd 270 12/9/17 10:12 AM Naharin, because of a personal injury that threatened his spine, developed Gaga movement, a special way to train and special movements that permitted him to re- cover and dance again. The Gaga training has been widely used and is now taught worldwide. Just as Graham developed her style based on the contraction of the body, Naharin developed his by imagining the spinal column to slither like a snake. Dancers are sometimes asked to dance like spaghetti in boiling water. In the 2017 dance Decadance, Naharin sums up the past twenty-five years of the company by presenting excerpts from its repertory. In one dance set to Passover music, the dancers, in a circle, systematically take off their jackets, then their shirts, all the while tossing each in the air to resemble the flight of birds. Some conserva- tives in Israel protested, but the dance has been popular wherever it has played. Pilobolus and Momix Dance Companies The innovative modern dance companies Pilobolus and Momix perform around the world and throughout the United States. They originated in 1970 at Dartmouth Col- lege with four male dancers and choreographers Alison Chase and Martha Clarke. Their specialty involves placing moving bodies in acrobatic positions. Moses Pendle- ton, principal dancer in Pilobolus and director of the dance company Momix, choreo- graphed F.L.O.W. (For Love of Women) and had it performed by Diana Vishneva, one of Russia’s finest Mariinsky ballerinas (Figure 10-12). Vishneva performs on a highly reflective floor, producing a complex visual dynamic that complements other parts of the dance. Such intense moments characterize much of the style that Pendleton has developed with Momix and echoes some of the acrobatics of the Pilobolus company. Suspended, with dancers Renée Jaworski and Jennifer Macavinta (Figure 10-13), shows the Pilobolus company’s commitment to the principle that choreography is an art dependent on the body, not just on music, pretext, or lighting. FIGURE 10-12 Diana Vishneva, from Russia’s Mariinsky Ballet, dancing in Moses Pendleton’s F.L.O.W. (For the Love of Women) at the New York City Center in 2008. Pendleton’s emphasis on the body is intensified here by the reflective floor and the acrobatic position. ©Richard Termine/The New York Times/Redux FIGURE 10-13 Renée Jaworski and Jennifer Macavinta in the Pilobolus Dance Company’s Suspended, emphasizing the body in space. The Pilobolus company is known for its highly experimental and daring dances, sometimes involving nudity. ©John Kane 271

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Mark Morris Dance Group The Mark Morris Dance Group was created—“reluctantly,” he has said—in 1980 be- cause he found he could not do the dances he wanted with other existing compa- nies. Morris and his company were a sensation from the first, performing in New York from 1981 to 1988. Morris’s first major dance was a theatrical piece with an intricate interpreta- tion of Handel’s music set to John Milton’s lyric poems: L’Allegro, il Penseroso, ed il Moderato. The title refers to three moods: happiness, melancholy, and restfulness. David Dougill commented on the “absolute rightness to moods and themes” with Milton’s poems and Handel’s music. Morris’s Dido and Aeneas (Figure 10-14) was first performed in 1989 but continues to be produced because of its importance and its impact. Based on Virgil’s Aeneid, it focuses on the tragic love affair of a king and queen in ancient Rome. Morris continues to be one of the most forceful figures in modern dance throughout the world. FIGURE 10-14 Amber Star Merkens and Domingo Estrada Jr. with fellow members of the Mark Morris Dance Group performing in Dido and Aeneas as part of Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival at the Rose Theater. Set to the music for Henry Purcell’s opera, Dido and Aeneas, this is considered Morris’s finest dance. ©Andrea Mohin/The New York Times/Redux FOCUS ON Theater Dance Dance has taken a primary role in many live theater productions throughout the world. In most cases, dance supports a narrative and shares the stage with spoken actors or, as in the case of opera and in musicals, with singers and music. In the 1920s the rage was for revues that showcased dance teams or dance productions, as in the London revue Blackbirds, which introduced “The Black Bottom” dance. Lavish revues in the early 1930s, such as the Ziegfeld Follies, staged lush dance productions, while other revues like The Great Waltz featured dance in the service of the biography of Johann Strauss. The dancing was lavish, not original, but the show was enormously successful. jac16871_ch10_254-275.indd 272 12/9/17 10:13 AM continued The great dance piece for the postwar era was Jerome Robbins’s staging of Leon- ard Bernstein’s West Side Story in 1957 (Figure 10-15). The play was innovative on many levels, but with the genius of Rob- bins, who was at home with ballet as well as modern dance, it was a major moment in the history of dance on stage. A loose adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, the play pit- ted the migrants from Puerto Rico, who by 1957 had peopled New York’s West Side from 58th to 85th Street, against the earlier immigrants, mostly poor Irish, Ital- ians, African Americans, and Jews. The play not only told a love story but, at the same time, introduced a sociological theme. The dances were central to the story and remain the most memorable images from that first production, the following film production, and the countless revivals of the drama. In 2000 Susan Stroman introduced an- other major dance piece at Lincoln Center, in the very same neighborhood portrayed by West Side Story. In the 1960s Lincoln Center replaced the tenement areas that had housed earlier Puerto Rican migrants. Contact (Figure 10-16) was an almost-pure dance theater piece. It had no continuous narrative but instead focused on the idea of swing dance. It was inspired by Stroman’s experience in a late-night New York club, see- ing a woman in a yellow dress in a group of people dancing to swing music. The dancing in Contact was set to three rudimentary “stories” centering on love relationships, but there was no dialogue to carry the narrative along. The first segment, “Swinging,” featured an eighteenth-century girl on a real swing being pushed by two men. The sexual emblem of that era was a swing, and the opening scene reproduced in tableau the famous French painting by Jean-Honoré Fragonard that was understood to symbolize infi- delity. The second segment, “Did You Move?,” was set in a restaurant with an abusive husband and an unhappy wife who lives out her sexual fantasies by dancing with a busboy, the headwaiter, and some diners. The third seg- ment, “Contact,” featured the girl in the yellow dress choosing from among a number of men as dancing partners. One of them is a successful advertis- ing man who has come to an after-hours pool hall nightclub with suicide on his mind. The girl in the yellow dress enchants him, but as he reaches out for her, she disappears, then reappears, keeping him suspended and constantly searching. Most of the music in Contact was taped contemporary songs, but the last section of the piece featured the great Benny Goodman version of “Sing, Sing, Sing” from his Carnegie Hall concert in 1938. The reviews of Contact empha- sized the sexiness of the entire production. When it came time for Broadway to give out the Tony Awards in 2000, it was decided that Contact was unique, partly because it did not use original or live music, and was given a special Tony as a theatrical dance production, rather than as a standard musical. FIGURE 10-16 Debra Yates in Susan Stroman’s Contact. 2000. Susan Stroman conceived this theatrical dance event after seeing swing dancers in a New York club. The show won several awards. ©Paul Kolnik FIGURE 10-15 A scene from the new Broadway revival of West Side Story. 2009. West Side Story, 1957. Book by Arthur Laurents, music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, choreography by Jerome Robbins. ©Sara Krulwick/The New York Times/Redux 273 jac16871_ch10_254-275.indd 273 12/9/17 10:13 AM PoPular Dance Popular styles in dance change rapidly from generation to generation. Early in the twentieth century, the Charleston was the exciting dance for young people; then in the 1930s and 1940s, it was swing dancing and jitterbugging. In the 1960s, rock dancing took over, then disco; and then in the 1980s break dancing led into the 1990s hip-hop (Figure 10-17). Recently a resurgence in ballroom dancing has spawned not only competitions at a professional level but also widespread compe- titions in urban middle schools across the United States. Street dancing can still be seen on the streets of many cities where young danc- ers put out the hat for tips. But it is also becoming a mainline form of dance seen on the stage and television. It is marked by sheer energy and virtuoso moves suggest- ing the one-time competitiveness of jazz music. In films, great dancers like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers as well as Donald O’Connor, Gene Kelly, Cyd Charisse, and many more, captivated wide audiences. The Nicholas Brothers (Figure 10-18) were among the most dazzling tap dancers on film. Stormy Weather (1943) was their favorite film, but one of their best dances was in Orchestra Wives (1942). Some of Fred Astaire’s great films are Flying Down to Rio (1933), Swing Time (1936), Shall We Dance? (1937), and Daddy Long Legs (1955). Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse are famous for Singin’ in the Rain (1952), one of the best-loved of all dance films. Fortunately, dance films are almost universally available on DVD and video, and as a result it is still possible for us to see the great work of our best dancers, what- ever their style. FIGURE 10-17 Hip-hop dancing. ©Chau Doan/LightRocket/Getty Images 274

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SuMMary Through the medium of the moving human body, the form of dance can reveal visual patterns or feelings or states of mind or narrative or, more probably, some combination. The first step in learning to participate with the dance is to learn the nature of its movements. The second is to be aware of its different kinds of subject matter. The content of dance gives us insights into our inner lives, especially states of mind, that supplement the insights of music. Dance has the capacity to transform a pretext, whether it be a story, a state of mind, or a feeling. Our attention should be drawn into participation with this transformation. The insight we get from the dance experience depends on our awareness of this transformation. Note: Many of the dance companies and their dances can be seen in full or in part in online video-sharing services such as YouTube, Hulu, Veoh, Metacafe, Google Videos, and others. FIGURE 10-18 The Nicholas Brothers, Harold and Fayard, were showstopping dancers in films such as this, Sun Valley Serenade, 1941, during a time when great dance was the staple of movies throughout the world. ©20th Century-Fox Film Corp. All Rights Reserved. Courtesy Everett Collection jac16871_ch10_254-275.indd 275 12/9/17 10:13 AM 276 ©Nan Goldin PhotograPhy and Painting The first demonstration of photography took place in Paris in 1839, when Louis J. M. Daguerre (1787–1851) astonished a group of French artists and scientists with the first Daguerreotypes. The process was almost instantaneous, producing a finely detailed monochrome image on a silver-coated copper plate. At that demonstration, the noted French painter Paul Delaroche declared, “From today painting is dead.” An examina- tion of his famous painting Execution of Lady Jane Grey (Figure 11-1) reveals the source of his anxiety. Delaroche’s reputation was built on doing what the photograph does best—reproducing exact detail and exact perspective. However, the camera could not yet reproduce the large size or the colors that make Delaroche’s painting powerful. Chapter 11

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PERCEPTION KEY Execution of Lady Jane Grey 1. What aspects of Delaroche’s style of painting would have made him think of pho- tography as a threat? In what ways is this painting similar to a photograph? 2. Why is it surprising to learn that this painting was exhibited five years before Dela- roche saw a photograph—actually before the invention of photography? 3. Examine Delaroche’s painting for attention to detail. This is a gigantic work, much larger than any photograph could be at mid-nineteenth century. Every figure is reproduced with the same sharpness, from foreground to background. To what extent is that approach to sharpness of focus like or unlike what might have been achieved by a photograph of this scene?