Archive for education
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
March 29, 2008 at 4:20 am · Filed under studio, media, video, teaching, TONY, dance and technology, science, space, physics, apples, computer graphics, opengl, education, performance, school, pedagogy, astronomy, learning, hermes, arts, double feature, animation
Last month I wrote a guest post on Matt Gough’s blog quodlibet titled math skills. It addressed the question of what fundamentals of physics and mathematics should be included in the dance technology curriculum.
Since dance-tech is in its infancy and still forming as a field this is an open question. This issue is not simply about inserting math and science into an arts curriculum but more so about how these two worlds partner. The action is reciprocal, math and science inform the dance and dance-tech provides new ways of knowing math and physics.
Force is one of the central landmarks of physics pedagogy. Gravity is Newton’s force.
And to use the force you must learn the force.
Simulation is a great way to learn about forces.
So is dancing.
Recent Posts by tony schultz
January 23, 2008 at 4:36 pm · Filed under dance, guest, TONY, dance technology, interactive, research, sarah lawrence college, students, education, dance teacher, performance, project, choreography, discipline, pedagogy, process, learning, intelligence, fun, dance criticism, dance lesson, social network, improvisation, Julie Cruse, VICKI, choreobot
For the last meeting of my class last semester, 12-21-07, I had Julie Cruse of Ohio State’s EMMA Lab as a guest to share her research in developing Chorebot VICKI. VICKI stands for Virtual Improvisational Choreographer / Kinetic Instructor. She a virtual automaton who guides a dancer through a structured improvisation using randomly generated verbal cues. Upon initializing VICKI she describes her purpose.
She says:
Choreobot is designed to challenge a dancer’s movement skills, and asks the dancer to draw upon advanced improvisational interpretation. I am programmed to make dances using theme and variation as prescribed by my creator. I use textbook dance methods, but - I am unpredictable. The dancer will demonstrate as I begin my next new dance.
Read more of Julie’s description of the technology HERE at the project website.
Before the lecture demonstration Julie and I had to rebuild modules of the assembly so that we could get VICKI to talk off Intel-based Macs. Retooling software under time constraints can be terribly stressful but I am glad to report we patched things up in time for the class. Julie’s lecture/demonstration was wonderful. She took some time to explain her impetus for building the machine and gave the students a tour of VICKI’s inner workings. Next Julie fired up the choreobot and demonstrated how she danced under VICKI’s instruction. Next she invited the students to try. Watching the student’s improvisation was exciting.
The system forces the dancer to think on their toes and make quick decisions. With time I could see a dancer becoming expert at navigating in this environment. Julie has clearly taken the time to do this. For her it was the first time she was able to observe other people dancing inside her system. By the end of the class everyone was incredibly energized and immersed in conversation regarding future research using choreobot VICKI. Julie has left us with a copy of VICKI and has encouraged us to continue experimenting with and mutating the system.
Matt Gough has taken a good deal of time developing an analysis of this work. In particular Matt takes issue with the description of the work as an “artificial intelligence” simply seeing it as an automated version of Cunningham’s method of chance procedures. Julie has documented the critical discourse HERE.
I met Julie inside Sector 9 of the blogosphere. There she has made bold gestures regarding dance-technology as a field. Like Matt Gough, she has voiced discontent over the current state of dance-tech.
She writes:
When I hear dance and tech, I think - it better not be ANOTHER interactive audio/video environment. It better not be ANOTHER…
…dance contextualized by projected videos
…dancer controlled by robotics or sensors improvisation in real time that composes the score
…motion capture in real time translated to animated projections
…wearable technologies that do something with sound or video
…animated avatars in second life real time “telematic” improvising
I find such pugilistic remarks invigorating and am excited to see what trouble Julie stirs up in the future.
Recent Posts by tony schultz
January 9, 2008 at 12:53 am · Filed under dance, student, CATHY, brazil, education, sao paulo, performance, university
Carol doing her pas de deux with our teacher .
After a sort of long hiatus, I’m here once again!
I hope you all have had amazing holidays and am wishing you a wonderful 2008! 
Life’s a little bit crazy and many things happened the past weeks.
A not so nice thing happened: I didn’t enter the university I wanted to, because I hadn’t studied enough (therefore I was kind of aware that it would happen), so I’m spending this year studying by myself in order to enter it. I got close though, out of 90 points in the exam, I needed 62 - but I got 60.
So some dedication over the next months will most likely help me to enter. A year won’t make a difference, right? Good thing is that I have endless chances to try!
So bottom line is, school is over, and I have here a year with more time to dance. I don’t know exactly how my dance life will be, I am almost sure I am going to go to the other studio to train with Russian teachers that will provide me really good training, I hope. I still have to take some classes to see if I like it or not, but as soon as it happens I’ll be here again telling you how it went.
As promised in my previous post, some pictures from 2007’s performance in my other studio! It’s just a glance, because there are thousands of pictures and it was quite tough to pick up some
Us dancing a choreography with music by Piazolla - i’m in the front row, on the right.
Yolanda, her turn doing the same pas de deux, and her beautiful arabesque.
Dancing Help (by the Beatles), i’m the one with the hair down.
Myself, in a solo representing japan. it was a contemporary piece, I loved the experience!
Abraços and see you next time!
Cathy
Recent Posts by cathy godeghesi
November 4, 2007 at 4:45 pm · Filed under SLOAN, dance, wingers, education, new york times, school, college, LEAP, gia kourlas
Dont be scared… you’re in good company! (Photo from JP)
I just wanted to write a quick post to direct your attention to a great article that the lovely Ms. Kourlas just wrote for the NY Times about dancers seeking college education while working full time, and even touring!
Much of the article describes the new-to-New-York LEAP program (Liberal Education for Arts Professionals) which was started in San Francisco in 1999 by Claire Sheridan, a former dancer. Two hundred and nine dancers are enrolled this year, including our very own Mr. Matthew Murphy and Ms. Sophie Flack. Also Mr. Justin Peck, Ms. Gwyneth Muller and Ms. Taylor Gordon, are three other Wingers (and maybe I’m missing a few) who are juggling scholastic ambitions and dance careers. Way to go guys!
Recent Posts by kristin sloan
October 8, 2007 at 1:05 pm · Filed under dance, artists, books, training, teaching, TONY, dance technology, sarah lawrence college, blog, education, michel foucault, discipline, pedagogy, thoinot arbeau, orchesographie
This fall I am back at Sarah Lawrence College teaching Dance and Technology. All of my students are smart, engaged and still unsure whether I am really crazy, or just pretending. We have set-up our own class blog where we discuss readings and communicate about building dance machines. The blog is appropriately located at http://dancemachines.blogspot.com. Come over for a visit. Other folks seem to be taking interest. Matt Gough wrote an incredibly encouraging post you can see here.
For readings we have started out with sections from Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish. Here is a part of that conversation.
Locating dance within Foucault’s framework of docility is both difficult and provocative. In attempting to pin dance to this trellis it becomes apparent that dance is slippery and cannot be easily categorized. It is clear however that discipline and dance are deeply entangled. Natasha spots this in the body of the soldier.
These men of the 17th-late 18th centuries were molded into figures with upright postures, programmed steps and structured attitudes; compare to ballet, especially, where all of these are instructed from an early age. Even the goals are similar - achieving honour and respect (of movement), grace, alertness, agility and strength. The quote on pg. 136: “A body that is docile that may be subjected, used, transformed and improved”, is applicable to any dance class or performance, even improvisational. We are constantly subjecting our bodies to our aspirations and limitations, using the body and our knowledge to further its abilities for the task at hand, transforming it (whether in attitude or structure) to execute movements and improving it for the short-term goals and the long-term benefits.
Foucault opens his section on docile bodies with a reading of Montgommery’s 1636 military manual La Milice francaise. It’s description of the dancerly pikeman, who ‘will have have to march in step in order to have as much grace and gravity as possible’ resonates with Thoinot Arbeau’s dance manual Orchesographie. Written less than 50 years earlier, it had illustrated the strong linkages between choreography in the court and on the battlefield.
Thinking that making a dancer is just another instance of creating a docile subject (be it a soldier, factory worker, school child, or mental patient) can be uncomfortable to say the least. Janet points out how subtle power mechanisms can operate to form the subject.
For example the idea of coercion - that the power structure is being so fully and well imposed because of the fact that it’s being slipped in the back door, so to speak. “Small acts of cunning endowed with a great power of diffusion, subtle arrangements, apparently innocent, but profoundly suspicious,” (p. 139). It’s not being beaten into people, it’s “proper” execution is being rewarded. It is being made convenient. I think that these ideas have a very great relationship to the more “open” versions of modern and contemporary dance technique. Even when we are not working from highly stylized and codified techniques, we are still being instructed by a teacher, being ordered into levels, being auditioned for placement and so on. Therefore if we are properly disciplined in WHATEVER is the “proper” kind of “technique” (even if that is merely a general body awareness?), we are being subject to a certain power structure based on WHO decided what is “proper”.
We are inside a discipline machine with all of the spatial and temporal markers Foucault describes. This class demonstrates that. A component of the dance {1,2}/3 or graduate study in the department of dance at Sarah Lawrence College. The class is physically located in a distinct place within a time table. The time and space within the class is also divided and in doing so controls the physical activities of the participant bodies. Some stand, some sit, some on the floor, some on chairs, some speak, some erase, some write and some read. We move inside the computer for a spell. Then there is time and space designated for dancing. Our bodies and activities are seem well placed within space, time and the structure of the academy.
But, Sarah Rosner pushes back with a contrarian maneuver.
I think the thing that hit me most about the idea of discipline via the control of movements is how much i DIDN’T feel like it applied to my experience of dance.
And Sarah Richison voices related discontent, but finds in it a contradiction.
say you revolt. are no longer docile. escape from prison. you find some way to do some other dance. so you move off and do your own thing and someone follows you. someone wants to do your dance. are you then the new discipline? yes. you have manipulated their body, right.
For those of you who were looking for straight answers I fear that we have none. Instead we are left with a set of contradictions and a general understanding that dance is slippery, at times obedient and located, at other times disobedient and dislocated. Here are one, two, three, four dances, two made inside the institution and two made outside. Dissect them with regards to this contradiction between dance’s discipline and disruption.
Recent Posts by tony schultz
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