Conservatism In Strictly Ballroom

Punch-drunk is a British company that performs a wide variety of theatrical performances and transforms them into the wild and the peculiar. It was founded in 2000 (En.wikipedia.org. (2017) by Artist and Director Felix Barrett, who was award an MBE on July 5th 2017 for his work in the theatre industry (Anon, (2017). The Company has been producing shows for 17 years, taking classical storytelling and adding their own twist on the story. The stories are then turned into real-life pieces that are not staged in a typical classical theatre, but in various locations that are well-suited to each part of the story for example, an old warehouse or an ancient asylum. This gives the audience a sensory perception of the world around them and presents them with a joyful experience of witnessing a story told in a way that’s not just the lifeless classical proscenium arch stage layout and more of a place where they can watch the action at different angles taking audience awareness out of the picture and applying the “Fourth wall technique” used by Dennis Diderot (En.wikipedia.org. (2017). This keeps the audience on edge and scares ordinary audiences away from Punch-drunk as the work that they produce is regarded as “out of the ordinary “by most classical theatre audiences. Some of the parts of the story contains physical theatre (Punch-drunk (2017). making the performance non-naturalistic and naturalistic, simultaneously.

The paradoxic realism that defines Jacques Demy’s film The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is evident even in the title sequence. Pastel umbrellas dance over the cold gray sidewalk, falling in and out of perfect symmetry. People walk to work, to school, no doubt grumbling that they are caught in the rain. Life goes on, but a mundanity of life suddenly becomes worthy of Michael Legrand’s sweeping orchestrations. In contrast, Hollywood musicals made it their job, their purpose to make people forget that the rain was there at all; to provide an idealistic escape from a harsh, weary world. Eventually, these addictive fantasy worlds and conventional narratives about love and the human experience became uninteresting—war, counterculture, and a growing desire for revolutionary art turned audiences away from such fuzzy comforts and towards radical cinema. The genre needed something new to shock it back to life, and this shock came in striking form with The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. By subverting classical Hollywood conventions by way of an unresolved ending, sung-through musical style, and taboo subject matter, Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg provided an escape from the never-ending formulaic cycle of musical films threatening to bulldoze the genre into delirious self-obsession, giving life to the form of musicals and restoring them to what they have always had the capacity to do: reveal the most vulnerable, intimate truths of what it is to be a human being, to fall in love, and to fall out

Satirical on every level, Bob Fosse's 1972 film Cabaret redefines the previously accepted genre of the musical. Using the songs and routines as cunning tools of social commentary the musical numbers both predict and interpret the world of Berlin in 1931.

In listening to John F. Kennedy’s remarks at Amherst College and reading Roger Scruton’s article, “Conservatism and the Conservatory,” one gets a few points of view on art and artists in today’s society, both of which are very powerful and interesting. Kennedy uses the example of poetry and how it can be used to keep power in check, saving it from itself, and reminding man of its limitation when power brings man to become arrogant. He speaks to the importance of a nation and a world where we demand respect because of power but also because of the way we handle power, and the place of the artist being to help us keep our perspective and to handle power well. He honors the poet Robert Frost in this speech, using his example for how artists ought

Feminism plays a large role in many dance styles in today's society. It is a key tool to use while teaching younger students as proved by the women showcased in the films provided as well as in the articles, “The lens in which I look through everything now is feminist theory and pedagogy” (Jennifer Bolt). Throughout the interview, Bolt touched on how she felt as if she had a loss of voice when it came to fighting for the dance program, it connects back to her learning about how women had to fight for their voice in society when she was just a girl. Claire Wooten explained how she tended to steer away from what she called “The F word” (Wooten) when directing her classes due to how announcing feminist theory right off the bat seemed to put people off. Wooten stated she directed her classes from an emancipatory standpoint, attempting to remove herself from the equation to heighten student experience and self-progression.

Mr. Dulane brings something to the students that they had never thought they could do, or that they wanted to know how to do. He initially gets students involved by allowing them to choice to listen to the extremely loud music or to dance, not by forcing them to take part. Of course, all but one student choose to dance instead of listening to the music. He starts rough but the students think that this style of dancing is just not cool. He decides that they only way to show the students just want this type of dancing is, would be to bring in one of his studio students to dance with. This got all the students ready to dance. He was able to demonstrate just how amazing dance could be. He encouraged the students, positively motivated them, and stressed that they should work as a team to dance together. The students began to take pride in their dancing and they created music that they felt was more relevant to their time to dance to as well. This showed pride and ownership in their dancing. Mr. Dulane explained it perfectly that dance, for these students, was teaching them to trust, respect, and care about oneself and others as well. He showed that he cared about the students by showing up, fighting for them, and also in paying for their way to partake in the competition. He truly cared and it shows din his efforts to reach the students on their level, make something relevant to them, and in giving the students

The first character we will be analysing is Barry Fife. This character is a very superficial, self-absorbed as well as overly obsessed with his appearance. During the course of strictly Ballroom we notice that Barry wears a lot of blue which helps portray his cold, uninvolved emotional state. He firmly believes that his way is the right way and shows us this by the video he makes which is aptly titled “only way to dance”. His arrogance is revealed when he makes a statement saying, “Dance any steps you want, but you won’t win.

“Father, it isn’t that bad. We can find another dancer, and if no one else is willing to try, I’ll do it myself.” She pleaded “The dance is difficult but I nearly have it mastered.” Aves peered over his fingers and narrowed his brow. “Gail, I strictly forbad you from practicing this! It’s too hard, too dangerous. This is a dance only a professional can perform.”

In examining the development of the German capital Berlin from the late 19th century to the mid-20th century, one could actually develop multiple perspectives of this cosmopolitan city. For instance one could look at the impact of the industrial revolution, the growing form of agriculture, transport, population and also entertainment. To say that these types of perspectives develop in isolation, would be a misunderstanding. A similar thought is expressed in Peter Lavich’s Book Berlin Cabaret, Lavich examines how cabaret forms of musical theatre, in particular, have developed and encapsulated the environment it surrounds its self in. Lavich claims that Berlin cabaret was a 'Metropolitan Montage’. Using Lavich main text and other supporting texts we can begin to understand how cabaret may be considered as a metropolitan montage and why the promotion of artifice and the employment of fragmentation in cabaret can relate to this.

The 1936 Soviet musical film--Circus--presents a vibrant, melodramatic production of Soviet propaganda that mainly promotes racial equality and international solidarity of people, both core concepts introduced by the Stalinist constitution (Salys 252). This paper will focus on the grand finale of the film, an event that visually enlightens the viewer with hope through bright lighting, a festive and patriotic musical number and close up shots of an excited and diverse cast. In the form of camerawork that focuses on intense facial expressions and movement, the scene targets the emotional turmoil of society at the time. Through mise-en-scène, Grigori Aleksandrov and Isidor Simkov evoke emotions emphasized by the high-key lighting, which in turn

In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play) brought its audience back in time to a late nineteenth century Victorian household, newly furnished with electric lamps and fully functioning vibrators for an at home gynecologist/ therapist. After viewing the show, I left the invited dress performance with some serious respect and admiration for the talented cast, the production team and designers that created the beautiful ambience of the next room, and the vision of Lisa Gaye Dixon. I’ve chosen to reflect on the human significance and the relation to theatre itself that “In the Next Room” made. As well as, focus of the impact that the set, lighting and sound, and costumes had on the delivery of the story, production, and entertainment value.

I slipped quietly in through the double doors, inwardly cringing as the moms observing the lesson from outside stared at me. The young kids bounced around like popping popcorn, babbling noisily as Mr. Eddie’s desperate attempts to get them to listen to him went nowhere. However, once Mr. Eddie noticed me, he introduced me to the children as an “older dancer who is one of the best dancers in the studio”, and the bright room went still as they stared, intrigued, like mice, up at me. As the class proceeded, I perched myself on a folding chair and contemplated the budding dancers having fun. They glanced over at me for approval every now and then, at times disregarding Mr. Eddie’s directions, much to his vexation. He tried giving them multiple exciting games to play, such as the “princess and the frog”, where they hopped across the room like frogs, twirled around like princesses on the other side, and then bounced heavily back across. Though it seemed like they

The film Shall We Dansu? (1995), directed by Masayuki Suo, is a heart-warming and a slice of life film that has touched the lives of everyday people. It is one of the films that has gained an exceptional popularity across the Japanese cinema along with great reviews given by prominent film critics across the globe. In this paper, I will focus on analyzing the cinematic techniques of one particular scene in the film and how they affect the development of the story. The scene that I will focus on is at the end of the film when Mai teaches dance sequences to Sugiyama and Toyoko to prepare them for the amateur dancing competition. There are multiple cinematic techniques used in this scene: medium and long shots, warm lighting, diegetic sounds of Mai’s voice overlapped by the non-diegetic sound of orchestra music, and complex camera work that follows along the dance sequences. These film techniques help understand Mai’s character in more depth, set colorful and buoyant atmosphere and put emphasis on the overall themes of the film.

Charles Baudelaire’s Paris Spleen largely revolves around the struggle between reality and idealism in terms of boredom and the way it pervades reality. In many of the poems, the speaker obsesses over his fear of time and – ultimately – his own mortality. Consequently, he explores many forms of escape throughout the collection: women, intoxication, writing, and other forms of pleasure. “Be Drunk” examines the need for these distractions, stating that being drunk on anything is necessary to ignore the “horrible burden of Time” (Baudelaire 74). In many ways, this need for an escape is an innate drive for the film industry in general, largely illustrated in the self-conscious works of Billy Wilder and Christopher Isherwood.

The dance had begun. A flurry of skirts, the turn of heels, faces hidden behind masks, the hunger of creatures rising above the violins. In a way it was majestic, but it was sinister and almost terrifying. A glance at the ball and it would be mundane and simple, yet one step into the ball and the music would draw you in, spinning you around and around with hands holding you upright, tender and gentle. Gold lace masks, feathery disguises, sequined costumes. It was the era of the forbidden. The waltz continued, in a constant spin of harmony.