Archive for community
January 4, 2008 at 4:49 pm · Filed under TONY, dance technology, community, blogging, communications, THE ( INTER ) MISSION, social network, discussion
I have been fairly quiet this semester on the winger, delving into deeper recesses of the blogosphere. Most of my writing has been on Dance Machines, the group blog for my class at Sarah Lawrence College, and in the bowels of the dancetech network. The dancetech network is similar to the inter-mission, they are both social networks run on the ning platform, and cast the ever enticing poly-panoptic gaze.
Its decription reads:
A dance and technology social network that aggregates and facilitates the flow of information and the distributed intelligence among movement, new media artists and theorists working in the confluence of embodied performance practices and new media.
It is interesting to compare the two. To view the intermission you have to be a member. You dont have to be a member view dancetech. The intermission has great graphic design. Conversations are friendly and straightforward. I especially like the fact that their is a member called theintermission whose interests include 1’s and 0’s and bodies in motion. This embodiment of many in one is Malkovichian and devilishly post-modern. It is a socialist gesture made through recursive induction.
The dancetech network is not such a friendly place. The site lacks the solid design of intermission/winger; the erratic changes in the layout make it feel more like battleground on some unstable landscape. Conversations range from metaphysical to ‘pataphysical. Forum conversations often run off topic and involve a significant amount of head-butting. The language can be cryptic, esoteric and vague.
And for all this I love it. Come over and have a look. The blog can be found here.
It is a great place to interact with people entangled in research involving technology and dance. It is where I met Julie Cruse of Ohio State’s Experimental Media and Movement Arts Lab. The work and interaction demands its own posting.
Recent Posts by tony schultz
October 17, 2007 at 8:59 pm · Filed under SLOAN, dance, community, myspace, THE ( INTER ) MISSION, kristin sloan, social network
Hello WIngers!
We’d like to invite you to join THE ( INTER ) MISSION - a Social Network for DANCE - brought to you by The WInger.
The intermission is a time when people in both the audience and backstage can decompress and discuss what’s happening with like-minded people. They share what they’ve seen, what they’ve done, experiences, ideas, and opinions.
The mission is to bring that discussion online, to a group of unique individuals with one common interest, potentially bringing new life, ideas, and expertise to ongoing issues within the dance world.
The site functions a lot like MySpace and Facebook but there is one important difference - everyone on the site has an interest in DANCE.
There are currently over 100 members, so you won’t be lonely. Also, if you are a member or organizer of a dance company of any kind, the Group feature makes it really easy to have a central spot in which to promote your company. Individuals can also add photos, videos, blog posts, forum discussions, customized widgets, RSS feeds…
All blog posts and forum discussions throughout the network appear on the main page (unless you choose to keep them private), opening up everything you contribute to a community of dance enthusiasts.
In the future I’m hoping to be able to offer discounts or special offers to our members for performances or dance products.
If you are an event organizer or represent a company that creates dance products and would like to work on creating a special offer in conjunction with THE ( INTER ) MISSION, let us know.
Hope to see you at the intermission!
Recent Posts by kristin sloan
September 12, 2007 at 6:18 pm · Filed under ballet, dance, music, composers, art, stage, judson church, performing, mercecunningham, set design, performance, modern dance, community, choreography, john jasperse, costume design, performance art, art into life, composer, duchamp
The roundtable discussion, “Approaches to Collaboration: Choreographers and Visual Artists,” took place on Saturday, September 8th at The Philoctetes Center for the Multidisciplinary Study of Imagination at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, on the upper east side. Collaborative models for performance were discussed.
Complete description of event and panelist bios: http://www.philoctetes.org/Event_Archive/Approaches_to_Collaboration_Choreographers_and_Visual_Artists
Following are my notes from the panel, as discussed by Noel Carroll, Roger Copeland, Mary Fleischer, Lynn Garafola, and Yvonne Rainer.
Ballet Russes’ collaborative model exemplified the Wagnerian idea of Gesamtkunswerk, or “total work of art,” via a synthesis of poetry, scenic design, staging, action, and music.
The ballet Parade was cited as a very early example of artistic collaboration, composed for Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes 1916-1917. Choreography by Léonide Massine (who was also dancing), music by Erik Satie, a one-act scenario by Jean Cocteau, costumes and sets designed by Pablo Picasso, and the orchestra conducted by Ernest Ansermet. Painter Henri Matisse also did sets and costumes for another of Ballet Russes Le Chant du Rossignol 1920 (or The Song of the Nightingale).
Parade Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parade_
Apparently, George Balanchine (one of the founders of New York City Ballet), was not so interested in visual aspects such as costuming and sets, but he was interested in lighting. Another choreographer who was very involved with lighting was Louie Fuller. She is considered a pioneer of both modern dance and theatrical lighting techniques.
Info about Louie Fuller: http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/c/current-loie.html
There was a good time spent on the Cage/Cunningham collaborative model. Both artists were in favor of “disillusion,” but for different reasons.
While Cunningham is a defender of the autonomy of the art form (in his case it would be dance), Cage is more of an integrationist, a descendant of Marcel Duchamp’s ideas who also wanted to dissolve the distance between art and life. Where Cage and Cunningham agree is on strategy: the use of aleatoric methods.
Yvonne Rainer called this collaborative model “mechanical,” where there is no apparent conversation between the collaborators. She cites a piece by choreographer John Jasperse, whose name she didn’t say but because of her description I suspect she meant California, as a good example of the integration of the stage elements (that set was designed by Ammar Eloueini).
Info about John Jasperse’s California: http://www.johnjasperse.org/index.php?name=rep8 Image of Set Design by Ammar Eloueini: http://www.digit-all.net
Recent Posts by nancy garcia
May 13, 2007 at 7:58 pm · Filed under dance, dance event, dancers, friends, TONY, science, space, sarah lawrence college, choreographer, performance, community, project, sara rudner, process
Posted by Tony Schultz
Happy mother’s day! Today my dance-mom, Sara Rudner, is presenting an afternoon of music and dance in Dancing-On-View (Preview/Hindsight) at the Baryshnikov Art Center from 5 - 9 PM. Sara describes the work as a “marathon installation in non-theatrical time and space in a celebration of dance and dancers. The audience, free to come and go throughout the event, is invited to stand or sit, and determine the length of the experience.” I went to an open rehearsal this past Wednesday. Tonya Plank went this past Friday. Her account of the work can be read here.
Sara invited me to a rehearsal of the project back in March. The work, first shown in 1975, presents dance as a practice more than a performance. For Sara moving is something worth doing more than seeing. In this way the rehearsal has as much meaning as the final performance. I felt joy in knowing many of the dancers. The dancers included Rocky Bornstein (Kristin’s physical therapist), Megan Boyd, Linda Cohen, Erin Cornell, Erin Crawley-Woods, Laurel Dugan (who I have introduced to you before), Maria Earle (friend and former graduate student of history with my mother Priscilla Murolo) , Liz Filbrun, Peggy Gould (Sarah Lawrence friend and faculty), Anneke Hansen, Patricia Hoffbauer, Rachel Lehrer, Merceditas Manago-Alexander (Sarah Lawrence friend and faculty), Sara Rudner, Vicky Shick (who presented Plum House at DTW), Maggie Thom (daughter of Rose Anne Thom, Sarah Lawrence friend and faculty) and Lori Yuill.
At the March rehearsal Sara Rudner had been kind enough to explain to me some of the compositional processes going on in the work. Much of the choreography is manifest through performing variational operations on phrases of movement. These compositional variations can be considered as transformational mappings of movement in both space and time. Reversal, for example, maps the right side of the body to the left side of the body. This can be thought of as reflecting movement across the sagittal plane of the body. Inversion generally maps the front side of the body to the back side of the body, in effect,a reflection of movement across the frontal plane of the body. Retrograding a phrase of movement runs it backwards in time, creating a reflection across the time axis. Many more kinds of operations can be used to transform movement, including moving it in space (translation) and changing the facing (rotation).
As Sara described these techniques I was struck how theories of physics used these same ideas. When physicists build theories of the world they characterize these theories by their symmetries in space and time. For example, to theorize the behavior of particles we want that behavior to be independent of where we perform the measurement. Smashing two electrons together should have the same effect so matter if we do it here or there. This is called translational invariance. The effect should also be independent of how our system is oriented in space. This is called rotational invariance or isotropy. The symmetry of a system in mapping right to left and left to right (as Alice does as she goes through the looking glass) is called parity invariance. For simple particle theories reversing a physical system in time yields another physically realizable system. This is called time-reversal symmetry.
The lesson in this way of thinking is that when we know a dance we automatically know all of the dances that can be manifested from this dance through these variational techniques. In physics we know that for a theory to be “good” its mathematics must obey the same symmetries that we observe in the physical phenomenon we are trying to characterize.
In watching the rehearsal/performance of Dancing-On-View one is struck by great deal of thinking being done by the dancers. This recasts the dancing (female) body as no longer just an object to be studied but as the site of the production of knowledge. Sara Rudner’s work and creative approach invites one to see dance as a research practice very close to science. The knowledge produced from this work cannot be fully translated to the viewer. These physical insights are things that must be experienced. In this way Dancing-On-View is much more than a mere performance, it is an invitation to dance physical theory.
Recent Posts by tony schultz
May 8, 2007 at 4:21 pm · Filed under art, teaching, TONY, space, website, education, new york city, politics, choreographer, performance, community, america, black cherokee, otis houston
Sunday March 29th was a beautiful day. The sun was shining and Lisa and I took a drive north out of the city. On our way back to Manhattan we passed by my favorite spot on the FDR underneath the Triborough Bridge. Black Cherokee was out in full force and his message to me was still up.
As we passed Lisa screamed out the window, “We love you Black Cherokee!” He waived back.
Lisa and I think in very different ways about art and culture. Sometimes I don’t think she understands my fascination with Otis’s work. In that moment she did. “I am so proud of you baby!” Lisa teared up.
“Its beautiful right?”
“Yes” she answered.
After dropping off Lisa at home i made my way back uptown to see if Otis was still out. I parked my car and made my way over to his performance space. Black Cherokee was standing still with a broom in his right hand hand, a fold of cash in his left hand and an open book on his head. His mouth was taped shut with red duct tape. His nipples were covered and his pelvis was marked with a big X, using the same red tape. Behind him was a beautiful bouquet of daffodils arranged in the shell of a watermellon. As I approached I took a few pictures.
“Hey Otis. Thats me!” I said pointing to the sign.
“Are you Mr. Tony?” he said smiling. We shook hands.
“I like the way you write about me. Wanted to get in touch with you so I put up the sign.”
“What you are doing here is really important.” I told him. “We need this.”
“You get it man! I don’t know what you know and you don’t know what I know but together we have a whole lot of know.”
I recognized this as one of his poems he posted online. As the conversation continued I realized much of what Otis was saying was from his poetry. Black Cherokee is living art and this fact invades his speech. We talked to find what purpose we had together. We both agreed that we had to do something together. I want to help get Otis’s work out into the world.
Black Cherokee needs a website. I will need help doing this.
Before I left Otis gave me his CD. Its called America and it is pretty amazing. Hear some samples here on cdbaby.com. Listening to this music will make you happy and feel good. It will also give you insight into the performance work such as the use of books and the broom. He states his mission in The Children. He calls for a multimedia campaign to help empower and protect our youth, by any means necessary. “We must use video, rap music, pop sounds, every and anything all around.” My other two favorite songs are My Books I Read and I Like Where I Stay. Both have good music tracks and beautiful lyrics. I Like Where I Stay is definitely my favorite and give a window into Black Cherokee’s world.
Clearly Otis needs a few more beats to lay his tracks on and perhaps a better studio to record in, but the artistry and message are all there. I would like to ask anyone who is interested in promoting Black Cherokee through helping put together a website or with his music, doing video documentation, or through any other means, to contact me at tony [at] thewinger.com
This is important work and is an absolute joy participating in. So spread the word and help manifest this living art as a gift to the world.
Recent Posts by tony schultz
May 4, 2007 at 2:19 pm · Filed under books, TONY, education, performance, community, reading group, andre lepecki, dance studies, pedagogy
| | Posted by Tony Schultz
This week Maia Jordaan, a choreographer and graduate student from South Africa, found our reading group and injected a healthy dose of enthusiasm, intellect, and curiosity into the conversation. Yet another amazing person I have met through the internet. She seemed to have found us through Swan Lake Samba Girl.
Thanks Tonya and greetings Maia!
Maia is studying in the department of Contemporary Performance at Rhodes University. Her master’s thesis uses elements of Lepecki’s theoretical framework to analyze contemporary South African dance. Read what she has to say. Her comment on the original reading group post is provides great ideas and resources. The SARMA database is a great online resource for dance studies and criticism. Since Exhausting Dance deals with so many ideas Lepecki has developed in other writings it can be helpful to read some of his related work on the SARMA database. Maia points us toward http://www.sarma.be/text.asp?id=869 called: “Undoing the fantasy of the (dancing) subject: ‘Still acts’ in Jérôme Bel’s The Last Performance” and encourages us to follow the links.
The difficulty, or best part (depending on how you look at it), is that grappling with this scholarship forces you to do research in all the related scholarship. So as we might get lost in following the links of a web page we can also get lost in Lepecki’s references and footnotes.
Luckily we have a smart team and collectively have the intellectual resources to tackle this project. I found another rabbit hole that some might find helpful. The reading list for Lepecki’s course on Movement Theory can be downloaded here. You many of these texts referenced throughout Exhausting Dance. I read Randy Martin’s Critical Moves and Mark Franko’s The Work of Dance in order to get a better handle on what Lepecki is communicating.
It will be exciting to carve out this conversation and we should feel lucky to have found our friend Maia. I would love if Maia could join The Winger and we could collaborate in framing this discourse.
So please Kristin, pretty please, can we keep her? 
Maia suggested collecting online video links to works by the artists discussed in Exhausting Dance. This is a great idea and am looking forward to see what folks dig up.
Maia has also added a number of comments that relate to identifying some important questions and ideas. Lets add them to our laundry list of useful ideas.
1. dance=movement (John Martin)
2. modernity=movement (Sloterdijk)
kinetic excess of modern industrial capitalism
kinetic excess of modern political mobilization
3. dance=politics (Randy Martin)
dance is inherently political in its mobilization of bodies
4. the book title
what is ‘performance’?
what is ‘dance’?
how does the term ‘exhaustion’ play?
what is ‘the politics of movement’
how do all of these link?
Recent Posts by tony schultz
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