Category Archives: Dance

by | October 2, 2013 · 1:00 am

Pungmul and dance

pungmul

“Pungmul is played with your heel!” say many celebrated performers of this percussion genre, underscoring the inseparability of the music and the musicians’ dance moves.

Merely listening to the music of pungmul is not sufficient for differentiating between passages where the meter does not change but the instruments play cross-rhythmically and those where the meter does change and the instrumental parts reflect this change. Such passages can only be differentiated through a choreological analysis that demonstrates the relationships between the stepping patterns of the dancing musicians and the music that they are simultaneously playing.

This according to “‘Pungmul is played with your heel!’ Dance as a determinant of rhythmic construct in Korean percussion band music/dance” by Nathan Hesselink (Eum’ag gwa munhwa/Music and culture IV [2001] pp. 99–110). Below, a taste of pungmul from the Gungnip Minsok Bangmulgwan (National Folk Museum) in Seoul.

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by | September 30, 2013 · 1:00 am

Cholly Atkins and American vernacular dance

 

Charles “Cholly” Atkins was a tap dancing star before the bottom dropped out for the genre in the 1940s.

In 1953 he was hired to coach the Cadillacs on their stage presentation, and he was so successful that he was given a steady job at Motown Records in the early 1960s; he went on to coach and choreograph for their top groups, including The Supremes, The Temptations, and Gladys Knight and the Pips, almost single-handedly keeping much of American vernacular dance alive for a new generation.

This according to “‘Let the punishment fit the crime’: The vocal choreography of Cholly Atkins” by Jacqui Malone (Dance research journal XX/1 [summer 1988] pp. 11–18).

Today is Atkins’s 100th birthday! Below, rehearsing with The Temptations in 1986.

BONUS: The celebrated duo Coles & Atkins (Atkins is on the right).

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by | September 23, 2013 · 1:00 am

Isadora Duncan and nature

Isadora

Even as she evoked a utopian vision of classicism, Isadora Duncan was creating a new image of the stage dancer as a noble-spirited woman, bold yet pliant, freely using her imagination and her body as she wished.

Duncan emphasized nature and the connectedness of body and soul, countering the effects of the Industrial Revolution and Victorian prudery; she championed simplicity and organic design in the face of the public’s taste for elaboration in both design and decorum; and she made herself into an emblem of freedom from conventions, particularly those of dance and femininity.

This according to “Images of Isadora: The search for motion” by Deborah Jowitt (Dance research journal XVII–XVIII [fall–spring 1985–86] pp. 21–29. Below, a reconstruction of one of Duncan’s dances.

Related article: St. Denis and Radha

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by | September 5, 2013 · 1:00 am

Dance Your PhD

 

In 2008 Science magazine and the American Academy for the Advancement of Science hosted the first ever Dance Your PhD Contest in Vienna.

Calls for submission to subsequent annual Dance Your PhD contests followed suit, attracting hundreds of entries.

For these contests, practitioners transform their bodies into animating media and conduct body experiments to test their hypotheses. This body-work offers a medium through which they can communicate the nuanced details of their findings among students and colleagues. The Dance Your PhD contests expand and extend what it is possible for scientific researchers to see, say, imagine, and feel.

This according to “Dance Your PhD: Embodied animations, body experiments, and the affective entanglements of life science research” by Natasha Myers (Body & society XVIII/1 [2012] pp. 151–189). Above and below, the winning dance from 2017.

BONUS: John Bohannon, who started the contest, presents a TED talk about it here.

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by | August 23, 2013 · 1:00 am

St. Denis and Radha

isainyn001p1

Presenting a hyperbolization of categories of otherness through mapping markers of race, Orientalism, and sexuality onto the white middle-class female body, Ruth St. Denis’s Radha functions as a site of the condensation and displacement of desire.

In this work, St. Denis achieved a combination of Delsartism’s transcendent spirituality with the Oriental orgasmic in the spectacle of a goddess delirious with her own sexuality who chooses to renounce the powerful pleasure of her body for a chaste union with the transcendent.

This according to “Dancing out the difference: Cultural imperialism and Ruth St. Denis’s Radha of 1906” by Jane C. Desmond (Signs: Journal of women in culture and society XVII/1 [fall-winter 1991] pp. 28–49; reprinted in Moving history/dancing cultures: A dance history reader [Middletown: Wesleyan University press, 2001] pp. 256–270.

Above, St. Denis performing Radha in 1908; below, a documentary contextualizes the work in her career and influences.

Related post: Ted Shawn and Native American dance

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by | August 19, 2013 · 1:00 am

Primate dance

lemur

The only clear difference between human dance and primate dancelike behavior is that the former is culturally patterned; otherwise, attributes only vary in terms of their complexity.

Dance, therefore, is not a human invention—it is a human variation on a primate theme.

This according to “The origins of dance: The perspective of primate evolution” by Sandra T. Francis (Dance chronicle XIV/2–3 [1991] pp. 203–220). Above, a lemur trips the light fantastic; below, the story behind a popular YouTube video.

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by | August 12, 2013 · 1:00 am

Mallarmé and dance

Mallarmé_(Manet)

Although Stéphane Mallarmé’s writings on dance are few, he has come to be considered an important dance theorist who allied and underscored two aspects of dance that are seldom simultaneously emphasized: its ritual character and its function as a system of signs.

While Mallarmé linked dance with poetry, he noted that—unlike poetry—dance’s symbolism does not develop from a codified semiotic system; rather, dance signifiers are inherently open-ended, and the spectator completes the art work by supplying the signified.

This according to “Ephemeral signs: Apprehending the idea through poetry and dance” by Mary Lewis Shaw (Dance research journal XX/1 [summer 1988] pp. 3–9).

Above, Édouard Manet’s portrait of the poet; below, perhaps the ultimate meeting of Mallarmé and dance, as Rudolf Nureyev performs a reconstruction of Nijinsky’s choreography for Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, a work inspired by Mallarmé’s L’après-midi d’un faune.

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by | August 7, 2013 · 1:00 am

Tudor’s psychological exploration

 

Dark elegies marked the culmination of Antony Tudor’s exploration into an approach to ballet choreography in which the psychology of the characters is more important than external circumstances and events.

Although the classic idiom was the basis for his experimentation, his quest for new movement—often based on one-on-one work that illuminated the propensities of specific dancers—resulted in virtually no use of classical vocabulary. Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder functions as a partner to the choreography, not as a guide.

This according to “Dark elegies (1938): Antony Tudor” by Rachel S. Richardson, an essay included in Choreography: Principles and practice (Guildford: National Resource Centre for Dance, 1987, pp. 206–217).

An excerpt from the work is below; other excerpts are here. We would be grateful if anyone can share a link to a complete version!

Related article: Graham and Freud

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by | July 31, 2013 · 1:00 am

Fanny Elssler and desire

fanny elssler

When Fanny Elssler (1810–84) left the Paris Opéra to tour the U.S. between 1840 and 1842, adoring critics there were faced—apparently for the first time—with the dilemma of writing approvingly about a woman making herself an object of desire.

Recurring descriptions of her being a divinity or an enchantress evince the process of assuaging guilt over this desire, and assumptions that male dancers were homosexuals enabled the suspension of jealousy over her dancing partners.

This according to “The personification of desire: Fanny Elssler and American audiences” by Maureen Needham Costonis (Dance chronicle XII/1 [1990] pp. 47–67).

Above, an image used for her U.S. tour of Elssler performing her signature La cachucha; below, a recreation performed by Carla Fracci.

Related article: The postmodern ballerina

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by | July 24, 2013 · 1:00 am

Ted Shawn and Native American dance

ted shawn

Ted Shawn was the first choreographer to introduce carefully researched interpretations of Native American dance to audiences in North America, Europe, and Asia.

Beginning in the 1910s, when prominent dance critics were utterly dismissive of Native American dance, Shawn formed a high opinion of it—a view that was confirmed when he witnessed a complete Hopi ceremony in 1924.

This according to “The American Indian imagery of Ted Shawn” by Jane Sherman (Dance chronicle XII/3 [1989] pp. 366–382). Below, archival footage of some of Shawn’s work.

Related post: St. Denis and Radha

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