Dance Concert Critique

At the end of the 19th century, ballet was the most prominent form of dance. However, to Isadora Duncan, "ballet was the old order that needed to be overthrown, an embodied symbol of all that was wrong with oversymbolized 19th century living" (Daly 26). Duncan believed that the over-technical, over-standardization of ballet was not what dance should be about. Her vision of dance was one of emotions, ideas, social betterment, and the complete involvement of the body, mind, and soul (26). With these ideas in mind, she began to create a new form of dance; what she referred to as the "new dance" (23), and what is now known as modern dance. In creating this new dance, she was inspired by composers such as

21st of May, California State University of Long Beach held the CSULB Dance In Concert at Martha B. Knoebel Dance Theater with the collaboration and choreography by the CSULB dance faculty such as Colleen Dunagan, Rebecca Lemme, Sophie Monat, Andrew Vaca, and featuring guest Laurel Jenkins and Doug Varone. From the show, the dances represented through various genre such as contemporary, contemporary ballet, and modern dance. The element of contemporary defines as a collaborative style that includes modern, jazz, ballet, and hip hop. All these styles of dances were shown by connections after each intermission. In particular, I will concentrate mostly about contemporary dance out of all the dances in the concert and talk about the effects on three out of six performances. The performances reflects mostly on how we describe life and nature and partially define life to every aspect of the emotion were being introduced by the dancers.

On April 14, 2017, my friend and I visited for the first time Salt Lake City Community College dance company’s annual performance. The show was presented at the Grand Theater at the South City Campus of the college. The performance’s name “Moving Words” imply what the audience was about to experience. “Moving Words” consists of 18 different dances and each of those dances brought a unique feeling to the overall performance. I thought that the dancers and choreographers have done an amazing job. However, after seeing all the different dances there were two that stuck together with me, because of the ideas and the morals these dances introduced.

Mrs. Farrell’s book is quite technical when it comes to the lengthy descriptions of the dances she rehearses and performs; from a dancer’s view these varied conclusions of the types of movements she was dancing is quite astonishing. In fact, it adds a whole new level to the imagination that can come alive in a person’s thoughts when they read an expressive book. Although the technical explanations will excited, astound, and reveal how much passion and deep meaning ballet had in Suzanne Farrell’s life, but a reader, who may not be involved in the arts will be unfamiliar with the ballet and musical terms in

Classical Ballet is the epitome of class and sophistication, it is known for its meticulous techniques

Dance is defined by Webster as “moving rhythmically to music, typically following a set sequence of steps”. However, it can also be used to sway an audience’s judgment or exhibit feelings and emotions that cannot be conveyed by the usage of verbal language. When watching a show, I would like to be able to get something out of it and with this it brought childhood memories and rung my old tomboy ways and made me realize not only is it okay to sometimes still have those tomboyish habits but also to see you don’t always have to be an adult and take everything in life seriously. During this performance two of my favorite pieces were 909 Lamentations and On the surface. I felt as if these were two of the strongest pieces throughout the whole performance.

Saturday, February 25, 2017 at the Oscar F. Brockett Theater, the UT Dance Repertory Theater presented a dance concert titled Momentum. The performance featured eleven unique pieces that were meant to “investigate and celebrate diversity in dance” with the community. These pieces presented, were a tribute to two important African American events in dance: The First Negro Dance Recital in America and Parallels. These two pieces are important to African American culture because they helped transform contemporary American dance.

As a beginner dancer at MHS, it is really important to go to dance concerts because it will help us improve our dancing. The concert I went to was known as SJDanceco, and this concert was located at Santana Row’s park. This event had started at 10 am and had ended around 5 pm. I had went at 10 am and left around 2pm because it was a really fun experience. I had seen many cool and different choreographies with different types of dances. On the other hand this concert has occurred on 4/23/2017, which is on a sunday. There were approximately 88 - 91 performance groups that had gathered and performed on this special day. This was SJDanceco’s 15th anniversary, so this could be a reason why there were so many groups. Even though there were too many choreographers to name, all of their choreographies were all amazing. Their choreos showed us how much work and effort they put in, and I believe all of them put in lots and lots of hard work and effort.

Dance critic Théophile Gautier states, “Nothing resembles a dream more than a ballet...” (Anderson 77). The effortless technique of the ballerina paints most ballets as exactly this. Consequently, there is more to a ballet than technique and dancing. Different types of ballets and their structural components separate one ballet from the next. It is important to understand the difference between the two main types of ballets: Romantic Ballet and Classical Ballet. Romantic ballet in the 19th century differs from Classical ballet in the 20th century structurally, technically, and socially. The two dance forms also vary in costumes and narrative. However, with all of those differences, they both use ballet technique for a specific purpose.

We went to see this last evening (opening night for this program) and were blown away. Never having seen anything on the program before, I didn't know what to expect, but each piece was magnificent. Stanton Welch's "Tu Tu" seems to me to be a kind of personal love song to ballet. The opening and overall structure reminded me of Ashton's "Sinfonietta" with a very energetic first movement followed by a stunningly beautiful slow movement and then a fast and again more lighthearted finale. It was the second movement that amazed me the most. A solo ballerina slowly emerges from darkness and seems to reflect on her career as a ballerina with tenderness and sadness. The mood of this piece was masterfully created. It was beautifully and

To be sure, Bach is a titan of classical music; Robbins, a great choreographer; Joaquin De Luz, an outstanding dancer. And yet, A Suite of Dances--which followed next--made me pine for some more ... Dances of Isadora! There are, indeed, solos of exceptional beauty and power for men in ballet; however, their span is understandably limited. A 14-minute solo dance act (especially for a man) is a challenging proposition.

Leonard Bernstein stated, "Music can name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable" (Wandberg, 2001, p. 16). This means that music has the power to transmit, inspire passion and sensations that mere words will not do. As a part of the curriculum for the class Music Lecture (MLIT 1003), it was required to attend a classical music concert in order to perceive and analyze distinctive elements of the performance.

From Wednesday, March 1st, to Saturday, March 4th, I attended the American College Dance Association (ACDA) conference. About 20 difference colleges participated in the conference, which took place at Modesto Junior College. The conference was a 4 day event that consisted of 4 adjudication concerts and one final Gala performance. The Gala performance, which occurred on the last night of the conference, lasted a little over 2 hours and showcased the adjudicators’ top 11 pieces from the adjudicated concerts. The audience at the Gala concert was made up of mostly students and faculty from all of the colleges that attended. There were also some people in the audience who did not participate in the conference and had to pay to get

From these two dance performances I observed that the space and interactions they had with each other was an excellent one the dancers were secure, they knew what they were doing obviously, the counting’s were perfect, I can also tell the put a lot of effort to bringing this together in such a small time, and the energy and feeling they were putting was a big great one and that actually made me enjoy more the dances. Overall all the dance performances were amazing but what did dot worked for me were the slow ballet type dances because the music makes me bored but the dances were really good and they put a lot f effort and feelings to them that I actually felt them and it was weird but I liked it. There were a lot of dance moves that I was able

This fall dance concert was filled with joy, darkness, torture, culture, and women's rights, right when you sit down and observe through all 8 dance performances. It would have been 9 dance routines but the dancer who was suppose to perform Hart Broken had an injury, which made a putt off. Nevertheless the show must go on, it starts off with the first and second performance, Xtra Xtra and Scar Tissue. Revealing that both performances were different themes because Xtra Xtra had the dancers in radiant colors and seemed to be energetic, whereas the performers in Scar Tissue were clothed in black attire, such as tutus, dresses, and tights, yet still energetic. This brought to my attention that the whole dance performances were contrast to each other. Throughout the routines of the dance concert, the