Archive for architecture
August 28, 2008 at 6:18 am · Filed under architecture, SUSAN, theatre, education, school, NYU, susan kim, ethan stiefel, columbia university, theater, north carolina school of the arts
News très exciting: Tomorrow, I become a bulldog!
A Yale Bulldog, that is. (The more appropriate expression is, I think, “Yalie”?)
In no more than seven hours from now, I will officially join the Theater Management department at the Yale School of Drama. (Yea!) The three-year graduate program was one of quite a number of amazing opportunities that were presented to me in the early months of this year. (It broke my heart to turn down the other offers extended to me; I can only hope to be so fortunate in three years’ time.) The notoriously demanding and rigorously intense programme at YSD certainly promises to challenge me in ways that I’ve never before been challenged. Consider, for instance, my first (hunormous) hurdle: catching up on a lifetime’s worth of theatrical history and dramatic knowledge. (Eeps!)
I’ve so many ideas floating about in my head that I want to share. These I will save for another time and for a separate post. For now, my thoughts are buried beneath renewed impressions of Yale University and the town of New Haven, Connecticut. (The luxury of first impressions was, for me, exhausted during my many visits here during my brother’s time as an undergraduate student at Yale College.)
Still, the architecture of the school and the beauty of the neighbouring town never fail to strike a certain awe. Here are some glimpses:
The ever-dominant (and always-domineering) Harkness Tower.
Phelps Gate–the official entrance to Old Campus.
The Bridge of Sighs
The gate leading into Memorial Quadrangle.
Saybrook Tower.
Memorial Hall at an angle.
The New Haven Green.
More to come in a later post (though, hopefully, at an earlier hour).
Wish me luck for tomorrow!
Recent Posts by susan kim
February 8, 2008 at 11:31 pm · Filed under SLOAN, dance, architecture, lincoln center, photographs, redevelopment
Bye bye old fountain!
For some reason I feel a little attached to the older pieces of Lincoln Center that are getting traded out for the new. Don’t get me wrong, I couldn’t be more excited that the complex is getting a beautiful redesign/face-lift, but having spent the past 13 years of my life walking through this place, and thinking about the history of what’s happened here before me…
I think about 7 years ago (maybe?) they took out the darker colored granite of Josie Robertson plaza (where the fountain is) and replaced it with concrete. The jack-hammered site was completely open, with granite chunks like Oreo cookie crumbles scattered all over the place. I reached down, picked up a little chunk, and it’s been in my theater case ever since.
A bird’s eye view of the Promenade of our theater. If you get the chance, try to come early for a show to go up to the various levels of the photo exhibit. It’s really interesting!
Recent Posts by kristin sloan
February 7, 2008 at 1:07 am · Filed under SLOAN, dance, culture, architecture, lincoln center, ds+r, arts, fx fowle
The main area of the Lincoln Center campus is about to get crazy, but it will be worth it.
Looking forward to a reinvigorated arts complex by the minds at Diller Scofidio + Renfro and FX Fowle.
DS+R rendering from Lincoln Center’s website.
DS+R rendering from Lincoln Center’s website.
If you are coming to a show in the future, be sure to leave a little extra time to get to where you are going!
Recent Posts by kristin sloan
November 28, 2007 at 2:29 pm · Filed under ballet, dance, tour, travel, architecture, projects, DAVID, american ballet theater, Repertory, cities, architects, opera houses, david hallberg, traveling, companies, process, san francsico, benjamin millepied, giselle, american balet theatre
As the City Center season winded down and ABT went on a week tour to Berkeley, CA, bringing some of the rep. that we did in NYC, the dancers then embarked on a four week lay off. My travels brought me all over the country, and then to Europe for a week of preparations for an upcoming debut.
The week in Berkeley was filled not only with performing repetoire that I enjoy very much, Ballo Della Regina and Benjamin Millepied’s From Here on Out, but also all the advantages that Northern California can bring. I had a wonderful meal at Chez Panisse, hailed as one of the best restaurants in the country, and soaked up some great art, the photography especially interesting, at San Fransisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA).
Outside my house, Camelback Mountain
With the tour finished and with the reason that I don’t get home to Phoenix as often as I would like, I spent a quick 48 hours being pampered by the ‘rents’ as only ‘rents’ could do. But most importantly, seeing my BEAUTIFUL GOLDENS, as I have shared with you in past enteries.
On to Minneapolis, where I spent another 48 hours gawking at the architecturally stunning Walker Art Center, newly redone by Herzog and De Meuron, the same architects that completed the refurbishment of the De Young Museum in San Fran, as Sloan pointed out on a recent visit. I had a much anticipated meeting with a very well respected artist that might possibly turn into a future project. We shall see…
The Opera House in Amsterdam
I only stopped over in New York, to do a little laundry and re pack my bags, to go onto Amsterdam for a week. Guillaume Graffin, a former Paris Opera trained and 17 year principal/ballet master with ABT, moved to Amsterdam 2 years ago and joined the Dutch National Ballet as ballet master. When he was working over at ABT, we formed a certain bond in the studio… he having coached me in my first full length ballet with the company, Swan Lake. I have always wanted to go over there and work with him, continuing my desire to learn from him as an artist, and I finally had the free time to do so. I am going to debut Giselle in the spring, with none other than Stella Abrera, GORGEOUS dancer with the company, dancing the lead. One of Guillaume’s great roles was Albrecht in Giselle, and I found the opportunity of him passing on his expertise to a fresh Albrecht something that I couldn’t pass up.
Guillaume in Giselle
The week was an intense one, mainly just talking about the character of Albrecht, and dissecting what to portray through out the story. Guillaume is such an intuitive artist, that I can only try and absorb what he tells me ‘he did’ or chose ‘not to do’ when he was dancing the role. It will take much more preparation for the actual debut but it was really nice to break the ice with someone I respect so much.
And that leads me here… back home, working on more preparations for the Met Season, and at my computer, finally with internet service and The WInger.
Recent Posts by david hallberg
October 22, 2007 at 12:47 pm · Filed under studio, architecture, technology, TONY, science, theatre, space, dance technology, visible, stage, video cube, sarah lawrence college, you, politics, set design, performance, school, michel foucault, discipline, dance house, design, audience, intermission, ASHLEY, performance space, theory, art installation, THE ( INTER ) MISSION, social network
Over the past few weeks of my Dance and Technology class at Sarah Lawrence College, the students and I have been programing, dissecting and repurposing surveillance systems to develop mediated performance outlets/environments. To aid and inform our strategies in this project we have been thinking and reading about panopticism.
What is panopticism anyway? wiki wiki
Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, a theoretical architecture imagined in the 1780’s, is illustrated above. The name literally means the “all-seeing place.” He describes it as a multi-purpose architecture whose design principles are applicable to constructing factory, school, prison, hospital or asylum. A multi-story ring of individual cells surround a central watchtower; every cell is visible from the watchtower while the watcher remains invisible.
The viewer can see everything while remaining invisible.
This panoptic prison named Presidio Modelo, built under the dictatorship of Gerardo Machado in Cuba, once held the one and only Fidel Castro. It is now a national monument.
Foucault uses the Panopticon to analyze the new ways in which power is exercised in the modern world and the role surveillance technologies play in creating a disciplined/docile body. He describes Bentham’s architecture as a kind of multi-staged performance space.
The unverifiable possibility that a subject is being observed at any time is the essential mechanism by which the machine operates. Visibility, as Meghan noted in class, makes one take responsibility for their own subjection.
He who is subjected to the field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play simultaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection. Discipline and Punish 202
What does this have to do with performance? Everything…
Foucault describes the stacks of cells; “They are like so many small cages, so many small theaters, in which each actor is alone, perfectly individualized and constantly visible.”
In one way the panopticon is like a super-theater, a nesting of many stages.
However Foucault stresses that surveillance architectures are exactly the reverse of those of theater. He writes, “We are much less Greeks than we believe. We are neither in the amphitheatre, nor on the stage, but in the panoptic machine.” Survellence allows one to see many while theater and spectacle is based on many seeing one
Compare the structure of the Panopticon to that of the Globe Theater.
Different yet the same. Definitely involved in a complex tangle.
This assembly can be used as a dance technology. On April 28th and 29th 2007 Martha Williams directed and performed in a dance installation entitled Stacked, converting an out of business clothing store into a surveillance menagerie. Each dancer took residence in one of nine changing rooms which they themed and designed the interiors of. Camera feeds from each cell were composed and projected in the central room so that all of the dances could be seen at once.
Turning the panopticon back into a performance space constitutes a double reversal.
With this in mind, take another look at the dance-cube I prototyped last fall. In this staging the cameras are on the perimeter of the studio so that the gaze is directed from the outside in (as in theater) rather than from the inside out.
Though still, looking at this dance I am reminded of the cells of the panopticon.
“They are like so many small cages, so many small theaters, in which each actor is alone, perfectly individualized and constantly visible.”
Could we characterize the structure of the internet as panoptic? Here is a great essay that explores that question.
This very space is haunted by panoptic geometries. Have a look at the contributor list in the sidebar, look at all those little faces, “perfectly individualized” subjects you can see all at once and may click on to reveal “so many small theaters.”
The design of social networking and internet dating sites, showing all your friends faces in an array, seduces us with a kind of panoptic fantasy, being able to see many at once. This is where things become slightly more complicated. Just like the panopticon embeds tiny theaters in an array, these social technologies embed so many small panopticons in a matrix of connectivity. Each cell is now its own theater and watchtower.
All these ideas should not creep us out. Rather, they should inform our thinking about performance and visibility and the way technology provides new venues for artistic expression. It is an open problem. In my estimation projects like Martha William’s Stacked, my dance-cube, or The(Inter)Mission are all part of a project to reverse-the-panopticon. While flirting with aspects of surveillance and making the subject hyper-visible, they enhance communication rather than simply separate us into little boxes.
So next time you feel like you are under surveillance consider it an opportunity to put on a show.
Recent Posts by tony schultz
September 30, 2007 at 2:20 pm · Filed under SLOAN, dance, architecture, history, new york city, city center, iphone, fall for dance
I was so blown away by the fact that City Center opened up the top balcony for the Fall For Dance Performances! In my limited experience with CC, I have never seen it open for ballet. The only time I’ve been up here was for a Harry Connick Jr. Christmas concert!?
Anyhow, it’s actually a very interesting perspective, much like being up in the fourth ring of the New York State Theater, minus the horizontal distance from the stage. One of the most interesting things about being up here though, is that you can really see and appreciate the interesting architecture and decorative elements of the space.
For those who may not know, City Center is actually in a building that was originally created as the Mecca Temple, where The Shriners would hold their meetings (according to wikipedia). All the moldings and light fixtures have a middle eastern flair (evidently it was built in the Neo-Moorish style), and on the left side of the house at the entrance to the lower mezzanine, there is a preserved splotch of amazingly colorful and intricate wallpaper, which has been painted over in the rest of the space.
Perhaps some of you out there know even more about it??
Recent Posts by kristin sloan
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