Connections – The Final Blog
We played around with a couple of
different styles and a mixture of techniques. House was the first style
to come up. Throughout the whole class, isolation of the hips and chest
were targeted the most, looked upon, and needs the most improving.
Personally I find that I love House dance and want to get better at the style
and progress, however as Carla kept saying – she needs us to release, I
sometimes find my body wanting to do this, but then I find that I don’t have the
certain mind set, the connection with the style perhaps, to compare with my
B-boying, sometimes changing the way I do things, subconsciously to fit my own
style, rather than following Carla’s directions, which brings me onto my next
point:
At one point, Carla pointed out that our
movements where not looking or feeling the exact same as what she was telling
us to do. The original choreographer’s vision, material, feeling, themes,
and movements have to be as he/she wants them to be, rather than taking the moves
and steps and turning them into our own thing, our own style. A tip was
to focus and break down a teacher’s/choreographer’s body into sections and analyze
each part of the body, the direction, the level, the form, and how it is
moving.
Continuing the House routine, an
emphasis was on hip rotation. Carla put a lot of time into explaining the
different variations and ways to move the hips. The key word was “internal”.
I enjoyed the different feeling of simply rotating and isolating the hips
in the usual way. I was able to open myself up to a new way to
choreograph and use hips in dance. The internal feeling of rotating the
hips personally remind me of chakra manipulation, and how the body channels
energy throughout the body, as the hips are close to the naval, where a ball of
energy sits.
Many of my peers are not classically
trained, I, and I believe many of the others find it hard to map contemporary
technique onto their bodies, the strictness of ballet technique and how the
body is meant to respond to the completely different muscles used
throughout. For example some peoples knees, including my own cave inwards
in retaliation to the new technique. Carla explains that it is a
conscious effort to continuously train and engage the core muscles, and the
specific muscles that haven’t been used, slowly at first, to acquire strength
in a new technique.
This made me begin to wonder about
dancers’ minds and how it is related to the body as an entity. I believe
that there is no “mind-body split” and that they act as the same entity.
In relation to dance Anna Pakes writes: “Within dance circles, there is a
tendency to think that even to refer to the mind-boy relation as a ‘problem’ is
to get off on the wrong foot by assuming that mind and body are separate
entities.” (Pakes, 2006, p. 88) I agree with Pakes as, as a dancer when we are
training we are constantly using metaphors to guide and fuel our movements,
also creating emotions and feelings on stage: “a decision on the part of the
choreographer that this action be performed. These purposes shape the
quality and significance of the movement” (Pakes, 2006, p. 87)
Carla’s choreographic intentions are
starting to seep through the movements that she has given us during other
rehearsals. The piece starts with a party type atmosphere flooding the
room, with Salsa, and African dance. The music had also changed from our
previous sessions with the house dance routine. It was now far more up
beat, and had a Spanish/Mexican theme to it.
As a dancer, I believe it is important
to have music that the whole cast can have a feeling towards. Without
this I think that the movements and choreography can become weak and not supported
by the dancers. If I was to do the house routine at the same pace, but
with a slower, classical piece of music, I wouldn’t really know what vibe I was
meant to be having with the movements of a dance style and culture which is
completely different from each other, unless, I suppose the choreographers
intention was to explore this theme, if this was the case, my mental attitude
towards the music would be different.
I am always thinking of how dancers need
to train in order to improve their speed and power through training and
conditioning. I come from a martial arts background; I developed my love
of dancing from Shotokan Karate. When I was younger, the strictness of
Karate helped me with disciplining myself, the hard movements of punches and
kicks gave me a foundation for popping. Throughout these classes with
Carla, I have wanted to go back to my martial artist roots and develop strength
and flexibility through old movements. The Martial Artist’s Book of Yoga
has helped my combine my martial arts with Yoga, which in turn has allowed me
to envelop foundations to help strengthen certain poses and sink lower into
plié’s and stances in Carla’s sessions: “Transitioning in yoga is similar to
combining various martial arts stances in fluid fashion, whether you pair kicks
with hand strikes, or move from a mount position in grappling into a scarf
hold.” (Chou, 2005, p. 22)
While grappling with the new techniques
that we are learning during the lesson’s I had a flashback to how my body was
aligned during my time studying karate. My alignment has changed
considerably throughout my time studying at university; compared to when I was
a martial artist: “Alignment when performing yoga poses is similarly important:
when you’re properly aligned, there’s no break in energy flow and often the
pose is easier to hold.” (Chou, 2005, p. 24)
I am happy with my progress so far in
the routines and understanding Carla’s choreographic intentions.
While travelling in and out of each
formation It got me thinking about how choreographers creatively form each
formation and how It will become aesthetically pleasing for the audience to
view. Why is a V a good choice? A diamond? Or simple lines?
It is the viewpoint of the choreographer, who makes these formations based
around the initial, original concept of the overall piece. I am most
interested in how choreographers come to generate their viewpoints and ideas to
create choreography. Anne Bogart and Tina Landau explore these
viewpoints: “As each Viewpoint is individually introduced, information
accumulates. First, we isolate awareness of that particular Viewpoint,
then add another to it. Each Viewpoint is, in turn, dealt with on its own
terms, then added to what has already been investigated.” (Bogart & Landau,
2005, p. 35)
From this I imagined that the creativity
is explored through a mind-map or a spiders-web – stranding from many different
directions, diving deeper through each idea, however not becoming too
distracted with similar ideas that may be similar: “If too many Viewpoints are
layered on too quickly no single one can ever be explored with enough depth.”
(Bogart & Landau, 2005, p.35)
In a particular formation slow motion
was explored. As we began to weave in and out of each other in a tight
lump, we would open out spaces in order for lifts to be performed.
However the session was cut short.
Carla gave us, what I like calling a motivation talk. For me there are
too many “dancers” in our group who just don’t pull their weight and do not put
near to nothing effort into what they are supposed to love, it feels like they
are only here for the “University Experience” and to look pretty while they
apparently dance. I want to become one of the best dancers in the
industry, I push myself to my physical limits, and engage with my body mentally
in order to fully unlock my beaming potential. I try to give performance
elements to every lesson I attend. I love being here, and I love to
dance, most of the people here don’t seem like they care, about dance, about
life, about anything, and it annoys me:
“As with anything else, individuals who
enjoy b-boying do seek out opportunities to make a living out of it. But
for the most part, people become b-boys or b-girls primarily because they
simply like to do it. Nobody takes up b-boying to get rich.” (Schloss, 2009, p.40)
Emphasis was given on extension and
grounding yourself in House/African technique. In both Carla’s and
Alexandra’s technique classes, a lot of emphasis is put on lowering yourself:
“The ceiling has dropped” is said to us many times during our classes with
Alexandra, and today Carla re-iterated that exact point – with this center of
gravity low to the floor, it makes everything have more clarity – there is more
to see in a movement that is extended and low – stretched beyond what the
anatomy of the body can do, as Francesca Castaldi states in her chapter,
African Dance, Africanist Discourse, and Negritude: “represent the narrative
themes of the dances to … and relate the dances to “life experience,” making
the body bends “deeply rooted in society’s needs and objectives, clearly
defined by each dance theme”” (Castaldi, 2006, p. 44)
Bibliography
Bogart, A. and Landau T. (2005) The viewpoints book: a practical guide to viewpoints and composition. New York: Theatre Communications Group.
Castaldi, Francesca (2006) Choreographies of African Identities Negritude, Dance, and the National
Ballet of Senegal. University of Illinois Press
Chou L, Rothacher, K (2005) The Martial Artist’s Book of Yoga Improve Flexibility, Balance and
Strength. Ulysses Press
Pakes, Anna. (2006) Dancer’s
Mind-Body Problem. Dance Research,
Volume 24, Number 2. Edinburgh
University Press
Schloss , Josheph G. (2009) Foundation b-boys, b-girls, and hip-hop culture in new york. Oxford University Press
