Archive for teaching
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
February 10, 2008 at 10:05 pm · Filed under dance, teaching, TONY, Laurel Dugan, trisha brown
I wanted to give an update on our friend Laurel Dugan. It has been a big year. In September Laurel married Luis de Robles Tentindo and is now Laurel Tentindo. They are a great couple. Luis is a former Doug Elkins dancer and currently doing great work in providing new media design for various dance and performance companies. See here. He is also developing experimental puppet work as a member of the Puppet Lab at St. Ann’s Warehouse.
This fall Laurel also began dancing for Trisha Brown. Thats a big deal! Anytime a dedicated dancer finds good work I get a feeling of victory. Laurel is also teaching a dance workshop beginiing this week in Skinner Release Technique. The course description reads as folows.
SRT is the pioneering approach to dancing that has evolved from the simple principle that when we are releasing tension and habitual holding patterns we can move more freely, powerfully and articulately. In Releasing, spontaneous movement evoked by guided poetic imagery, music, and sound enables a creative exploration of technical principles such as multi-direction alignment, suppleness, suspension, economy and autonomy. In the practice of Releasing, engaging the imagination and involving the whole self integrates technical growth and creative process. Experienced dancers and beginners are welcome to participate in this three-day SRT introductory workshop.
The classes are this week at the Trisha Brown studios Feb 11, 13, 15 Mon, Wed, Fri, 10:00-12:00 p. m. and $20 per class. The studios are located at 625 W.55th St., between 11th and 12th Avenue, on the 2nd floor.
Hope to see you there! I will definitely keep you updating on any performances Luis or Laurel are having.
Recent Posts by tony schultz
February 3, 2008 at 5:07 pm · Filed under dance, new york city ballet, musicians, teaching, kyra nichols, kyra, ashley bathgate, carnegie hall
Dear Winger readers, since retiring from New York City Ballet I’ve been enjoying my home life, and coaching some young dancers. I’m thrilled to tell you that an artist that in some small way I may have helped inspire will be having a big performance this coming week. But she’s not a dancer!
In 1991, when I was in Saratoga Springs for New York City Ballet’s summer season, our neighbors in the condo we rented had a 6 year old daughter, Ashley. We got to know Ashley and her parents and later that summer when I was asked to present the trophy for the Ballerina Stakes Race I brought Ashley along. That’s her in the white hat in the photo.
Every summer we spent time with Ashley and her folks. Ashley developed a passion for softball but made an important decision about her lifestyle early on. She told her Dad that she wanted to “live like Kyra” which meant sleeping until 10 am, (this was before I had children) hanging out in the theater much of the day and having dinner at midnight. Ashley didn’t have any particular interest in dance, but she did like the lifestyle…
Somewhere during her childhood Ashley took up the cello. There was a difficult point when she had to make a choice between cello and softball… and cello won.
The picture below is Ashley today…
Ashley apparently made the right choice. 17 years later she is finishing the Yale School of Music graduate program and making her Carnegie Hall debut. Her concert is in Weill Recital Hall on February 9th at 8:30 pm.
I’d like to think that over the course of my career I might have inspired some people to take up dance, or become better dancers. I never expected that in some small way I might have inspired a cellist… and hopefully in ways other than her interest in sleeping late!
You can hear Ashley, or see her in performance video clips at her website, www.AshleyBathgate.net..
Thanks Wingers,
Kyra Nichols (aka Mrs. Gray)
February 3, 2008 at 4:47 pm · Filed under dance, new york city ballet, teaching, welcome, wingers, kyra
Hello Wingers,I am honored and thrilled to introduce Ms. Kyra Nichols as our newest member of the family. Kyra was always one of my biggest inspirations growing up at SAB… everything she does is so natural and musical… while also technically amazing.
This past summer I had the wonderful opportunity of shooting a sort of documentary-style piece on Kyra’s retirement from 33 years at New York City Ballet (that’s where the photo above is from). It was such a fun experience getting to shoot her dancing, and also getting to talk to her about her life and career. She is definitely an incredible role model for aspiring dancers, enjoying an amazing career and a wonderful family.
Kyra has taught quite a bit throughout her career I believe, but now that she has officially left the NYCB stage, she is also giving private dance lessons. I kind of wish I was still dancing just so I could work with her!
Welcome Kyra!
Recent Posts by kristin sloan
October 9, 2007 at 6:10 pm · Filed under ballet, dance, teaching, savannah, dancing, VERONICA, the STUDIO, youth america grand prix, performances, dance lesson
POSTING:
It’s been a long while since I’ve posted! Let me try to do a little catching up! Not that I ever really take a break, I tend to operate at a very hectic pace, but, I’ve gotten into the full swing of regular classes at the studio and have also been preparing for some major and minor events.
My schedule is a little tight this year. I decided to limit my children’s classes to 10 students. This is good and bad; good because I have created a very focused learning environment with a lot of individual attention—bad because I am feeling like I am outgrowing my space. I don’t have the time or space to open up new classes and I am seriously lacking in the beginner beginner class area. I do like this however– I wanted a smaller focused school full of kids who really want to dance and this is what I have-I just need about 20 or 30 more of them!
A couple of weeks ago, we were asked by the city to perform and give a class in Forsyth Park, to promote dance as a way of keeping fit. Well, I love dancing outside, but-they didn’t give us anything to perform on, so we danced in the grass. Fun, except it had been raining for days and it was very very wet!
We actually had a great time and also learned some belly-dancing with the Lotus Dance Company.
I have also started rehearsals for our December show “Swingin’ at Club Sweets’. This is my Nutcracker. Never allowing myself to get bored, I had to create a show that would challenge me and wanted to give the students and Savannah something ‘different’. I have live jazz musicians and the set is a speakeasy club. More on this in a future post…….
I have some talented students who will be going to the Youth America Grand Prix in February. It is an overall good learning experience for them. Well the learning starts now and we have been working on a few variations and I have chosen what I think shows them best. I also need to give them each a Contemporary piece, which, like last night-I stay up at all hours of the night listening to music, looking for that perfect fit for each personality.
Next week we perform outside again, at the Richmond Hill Seafood Festival. I look forward to this one. It is in a huge beautiful park, has incredible local seafood and amusement rides for the kids. AND we will actually get to dance on a stage!!!
Recent Posts by veronica moretti niebuhr
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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