I'm going to take an extended blogging vacation. I might post occasionally but I probably won't be blogging on a regular basis for the next few months.
I have a meeting in Brooklyn later this afternoon near Mark Morris Dance Group. So I'm going to take a ballet class there for the first time. I've been continuing on my non-stop ballet class mission. I figure my technique is never going to improve unless I focus on the basics for the next year or two.
I hope everybody had a good summer and best for the fall.
Last night I took a wonderful beginner ballet class with Yoshimura Hitomi at New Dance Group - I had never heard of NDG until I saw a performance there two weeks ago. It's on 8th ave. and 38th street.
Taking a regular beginner ballet class is a bit on the challenging side for me because I've taken no more than 10-15 hours of ballet. But the class was fun and Hitomi gives a lot of helpful direction. When I figure out my "regular" dance schedule for the fall, I should probably take a combination of a real newcomer beginning ballet class along with a beginner ballet class. (If you haven't taken many concert-form dance classes, "beginner" almost never means beginner; it usually means that you have at least an introductory background in the dance form).
Since I started dancing in my 40s, part of me wants to find a way to accelerate my dance training. But in the end, there clearly is no magical way to learn how to dance faster than people who start at a younger age. I just have to keep telling myself that.
It simply takes time. And given my dance interests, it requires taking lots of modern, jazz and ballet classes.
Intro to Anatomy & Kinesiology
Explore the skeletal-muscular system experientially through functional and expressive movement, activation of the subjective body, group discussion and hands-on work.
Intro to Bartenieff Fundamentals
Immerse yourself in an extraordinary, integrative movement experience that goes beyond technique. Explore the underlying principles of movement through the lens of Bartenieff, the somatic movement approach that is shaking up and waking up the fitness, dance and sports worlds.
Intro to Laban Movement Analysis
Learn to analyze the body in motion, become a more dynamic mover and communicator through understanding your movement preferences and investigate the many ways the body can shape itself and project into space. Experience LMA, applied in fields including the Performing Arts, Public Speaking, CGI and Robotics, Fitness, Psychotherapy, Corporate Team Building, Anthropology, Athletics and at all levels of Education.
Recently, I've been teaching myself more about human anatomy and physiology so I can have a better idea of what teachers are talking about in dance and somatic classes.
An excellent online resource for exploring our skeleton, muscular and other systems is the Visible Body - I've included screen shots below that give you an idea of how you can explore the body with this 3D tool.
Visible Body only runs on a PC with Internet Explorer. My only other complaint is that the muscles of the torso are not delineated. I was really hoping to see a very detailed view of all the core muscles.
What would be great to see in the next version of Visible Body would be 3D simulations. In somatic education classes, teachers are often talking about breathing, the lungs and how the respiratory system works. I'd like to see this entire process in operation so I can see how the parts work together.
Finally, I'd like to explore the rotation of all of the joints. If I clicked on the shoulder, I'd like to then drag and turn the elbow or wrist to see what the full range of the arms were when pushed and twisted in different directions.
Here are some screen shots of Visible Body - click for larger images:
Opening screen for Visible Body:
Ilium bone of the pelvis highlighted in skeletal view:
Fulbright Recipient Deborah Eve Friedes Completes Coverage of Contemporary Dance in Israel
For the 2007-2008 academic year, dancer and dance scholar Deborah Eve Friedes received a Fulbright grant to research contemporary dance in Israel.
I think that Deborah has done a wonderful job of writing about the dance scene in Israel and I encourage you to read her own blog and her posts on The Winger. She has also been conducting audio interviews with Israeli choreographers and dancers on Israel Seen.
You can learn more about Deborah's performances, directing, teaching and other activities on her website.
It's fitting that I saw the Batsheva Ensemble perform the latest version Ohad Naharin's Deca Dance at the Suzanne Dellal Center last week. You see, Deca Dance is the piece that drew me here to Israel. I wrote my Fulbright grant proposal having only seen the Batsheva Dance Company perform an earlier incarnation of this work (albeit 3 times). I hadn't seen any of Naharin's other dances, nor had I seen any other Israeli companies. Now - 4 years after I last saw Deca Dance, 9 and 1/2 months after landing in Israel, 2 days after finishing the term of my Fulbright grant, and 90-some dance concerts later - I feel I have come to the end of a cycle. I set out to learn about the wider field of Israeli contemporary dance, and although there is still more to explore, I have a much deeper understanding of dance's history in Israel as well as the scope of the field today. I devoted a considerable amount of time to independent choreographers and to companies other than Batsheva, but again and again, my attention returned to the origin of my interest, the center point of Israeli contemporary dance.
As I place Deca Dance within the context of Naharin's repertory, Batsheva's history, and the larger frame of Israeli contemporary dance, I realize how much I have gained from my research. I love being able to look at a dance from different angles, and with the information I have gathered, I now have a tempting menu of choices for how to view each performance. I also have had the pleasure of watching the same dancers develop over the course of the season and talking with them offstage; as I'm sure many of you know, it's a delight to watch dancers that you know, to seek them out during the sections at which you know they excel, and to find your attention captured unexpectedly by them when they perform something with added nuance or new skill. A part of me wishes that my Fulbright could continue - after all, it's been a dream to structure my own time and pursue independent research with few restraints! - but I am blessed with the gifts of this grant as I complete this cycle and start the next.
I started taking modern dance classes again after a six-month hiatus. Last night I took Isabel Gotzkowsky's slow intermediate modern class at Dance New Amsterdam in downtown Manhattan. It's always a pleasure to take Isabel's class. I'm going to try to get in a routine of taking her Wednesday and Saturday classes.
I thought Isabel's slow intermediate modern class would be too challenging for me. In the past I've always taken her beginner class. While it was challenging, it felt manageable and my technique will improve more quickly in a more advanced class. The routine she taught the last half hour of the class did feel a little overwhelming at first. But by the end of the class I had the general idea. And she's teaching the same phrase this Saturday.
I even woke-up with minimal pain, which is great. I've actually been preparing for going back to dance classes for about 5-6 weeks. About every other day, I do a two-hour routine of stretching, strengthening and exercises. I incorporate a lot of what I learned from my physical therapy for my back and hips and combine that with exercises from jazz, modern, ballet and yoga. I also use a workout ball for my back and core and use a rubber band for strengthening.
It does take more time than I'd like to do my exercises and strengthening. But at 46, I know my body can't handle the physical stress from dance classes unless I'm in good shape.
Even though I enjoyed my foray into Argentine Tango, I'm much happier taking modern dance classes again.
Dance Class at Movement Research and Creative Tango
After a hiatus of four months, I'm back to "real" dance. That's about the most unfair characterization of different types of dance I could possibly come up with. Starting in January, I became obsessed with Argentine Tango--taking classes, going to practicas (practice sessions) and dancing at milongas.
However much I enjoy tango, for me it's not the "real" thing. It's social dancing. It's not the same as taking modern or creative movement classes. I'm sure everybody has their own notion of what's "real" when it comes to dancing. My definition is related to freedom of movement and experimentation and not being tied down to very specific rules and structures. But even tango can cross-over into the more creative dance realm. I've really enjoyed the Tango-X workshops with Fayzah and Kendra that take place once a month at DNA in downtown Manhattan. They'll take a concept from tango such as sacadas (displacing the weight of your partner) and developing a creative approach to experimenting with this idea.
At the about the 42-second mark of this Argentine tango video, the leader executes a back sacada with his left leg, which requires that his partner move her left leg as well -- this is what is meant by weight displacement:
What I like about the Tango-X workshops is that they are much more experimental than regular tango classes and part of the focus might be on how many different approaches you and your partner can create to doing sacadas. Unfortunately, their classes are only about once a month. I'd like to take the Tango-X workshop once a week.
Movement Research Class with Jennifer Monson
I didn't mean to go into my tango digression. I meant to write about my Saturday class with Jennifer Monson at Movement Research. Jennifer was subbing for K.J. Holmes' Saturday morning class, which is called "The Athletics of Intimacy, Improvisations."
Jennifer is involved in a number of dance programs and research initiatives that are very interdisciplinary in nature. Just the types of projects I'm fascinated by.
Here's an overview of her two-hour class that had eight students:
In the early part of the class we explored the relationship among our kidneys, spleen and heart. How we could move our body from each of theses organs and what the connection was between these organs as we warmed-up.
We then partnered with a fellow dancer for the rest of the class. I partnered with Amy (she said I could use her name if I wrote about the class).
The first exercise was a ground-based contact improvisation exploration where we interacted with our partner while continuing to think about moving from our kidneys, spleen and heart.
Then standing-up, each person would dance for a few minutes while one's partner used one or two hands to press against the location of the different internal organs we were concentrating on for this exercise.
I told Amy after I danced that I would have had a completely different focus if I danced the same exercise again. When Amy danced and I put pressure against her different organs, we were much more engaged in a duet and she was not just using the exercise to be notified of the location of her kidneys, spleen, etc., she was also using this contact to respond to my movement as well. Which in retrospect seems obvious to me but I wasn't thinking about it at the time. It might have been partly that I was warming-up and partly that I was concentrating very much on the specifics of moving my body from each of my organs. Next time, I'll try to be more in a collaborative mind-set.
Energy Lines
Then we moved on to what I believe were exercises based on Skinner Release Technique. While an organ focus was more of a grounded, heavier dance, thinking about energy lines was more outward-directed and flowing.
To get started, one partner would stand still and the other would lightly draw straight energy lines on their partners legs, arms, back, chest and head. In other words, imagine lightly dragging your fingers starting at the bottom of a person's back, and quickly creating a line with both of your hands that goes up between your partners shoulder blades and then moves up into space. You're trying to give your partner a sense of a line of energy that moves beyond the body. This way when they are dancing, they can think about how these lines of energy can direct the flow of their movement.
Then once we generated these energy lines from a standing position, one of us would dance and the other one would continue to generate lines of energy on the different parts of our partner's body. This exercise is a bit awkward because you're trying to draw these energy lines while your partner is moving in unpredictable ways.
Then during the final exercise, we each did about a five-minute dance improvisation while our partner watched. The goal was to think about, in an active or passive manner, the different qualities of either dancing from the organs or moving with energy lines in mind. And to also be conscious of the transitions.
It took me awhile to warm-up for this exercise and I was thinking very analytically about what dance mode I was in and how and when I would transition to the other mode.
When I was watching Amy, some of the time I could tell which mode she was in and when she was transitioning from, say a more weighted organ-focus to the larger movements of energy lines.
I really have to take more classes at Movement Research - I find all of their classes fascinating and I have much to learn!
Lecture-Demonstration Dance Videos Would be Invaluable and Fun
I would like to encourage choreographers and dancers to create lecture-demonstration style videos for the Internet. There are literally thousands of topics that dancers can present in engaging video format that feature brief spoken explanations and dance demonstrations.
For example, in The Kinetic Interface blog I write about body and movement-centric developments taking place in science, technology and other fields. Yesterday, I wrote "The Sources of Vertical Movement," in which I discussed Capuchin, a robot that scales walls and cliffs, and can be used for geological research on earth and other planets. Here is a video of Capuchin:
I think that a fascinating video would be one that features a choreographer who discusses what he or she has learned about vertical-climbing robots from a dancer's perspective. These insights would be interspersed with solo movements and snippets of choreography that spring from this exploration of robotic locomotion. Maybe the choreographer would start a video section by saying, "I'd like to see the robot try this type of propulsion," "What would happen if the rhythmic patterns were altered," "The leg movements of the robot remind me of a dance piece I created two years ago..." or "What would happen if the robot used a different approach to balancing itself." There are many ideas to explore at the intersection of dance and robotics. My main point is that there are many topics to delve into and that dancers can help visualize movements in a way that few others can.
One of the advantages of this interdisciplinary approach is that by definition this video will be of interest to the dance community and the technology community. And the posting of this video provides an excellent opportunity to foster a conversation amongst people with different interests and areas of expertise.
