Improvisation In My Artistic Life This semester, English 1 has taught me what improvisation is. Improvisation is the determination of improvising actions and improvised artistic practices like music and drama are being created without ready-made process. Through reading several articles and in-class practices with Hip-Hop artists and a guest dancer, I have understood this concept deeply. I was also inspired by what I learned and I used this concept in my own art practice such as my hip-hop dancing and comedy comic story writing. Having classes with Hip-Hop MC, rapper and choreography artist is a very important experience that helps me to understand improvisation practically. They asked us to interact with their live performance in the way of translating the objective condition like the sound we made into their own language of rap and dance movement. We were learning improvisation by viewing the process of improvisation as improvisers just like these artists. On March 11th, Hip Hop artists Cool Out Chris and Amina came to our class. I am a hip-hop dance lover so I absolutely like Hip Hop and I had a good time in that class. They introduced Hip Hop history, performed their …show more content…
The article I read, “Bodies on the Line: Contact Improvisation and Techniques of Nonviolent Protest” was written by Danielle Goldman. It aims to discuss the connections between the body techniques that freestyle riders use and the early creativity in contact improvisations that is about bodies respond to each other with examples of body practices and quotations from philosophers. The article shows contact improvisation is an exercise of making oneself ready for a variety of ever exchanging surprises and restrictions, which is the most important point of body improvisation. The reading gave me a basic understanding of body improvisation while dancer Rachel Damon let me understand the concept
Imagine a world where a government orders its people to follow their laws and everyone follows them. Would you stand by and allow this control to take place? In Thoreau’s essay “In defense of civil disobedience” and Jon Krakauer’s novel, Into the Wild they both saw themselves as people forced out by the immorality rampant in organized society. They make their connection through the views that Thoreau had leading to the development of Chris McCandless Philosophy, relationship with the government, and their journeys through life are to be considered rebellious to their social life. They wish to live on there own not wanting any support from those who are the government people.
“12 years a slave” is a book about the slavery in the pre-Civil War South. It was written based on a true story that happened to Solomon Northup who is also the author of the book. The story was a violent protestation, but also full of love without any hatred of Black people, who were being slaved for all their life. The Slavery was abolished in North America; however, it still existed in the South America at that time. Solomon Northup, a Black citizen of New York City, was kidnapped and sold into slavery in 1851. He was rescued at a Louisianan cotton plantation in 1853. After being freed, Solomon Northup wrote the book “12 years a slave” to recount the years of terrible abuses that he had been bearing under the Slavery. Northup’s story was regarded as a source of inspiration in Civil War which contributed in the democracy of United States as today. It was also a piece of art as well as a work of human insight which awaked the human love, conscious fight, dignity protection, and the freedom of man.
Alone at the start of “Pavement,” the choreographer Kyle Abraham establishes the distinctive movement language that’s gained him attention. It’s a style in which the body — and by implication, the psyche — is pulled in multiple directions, out of the ground and into it. Sourced in contemporary dance and the street, twisting together aggressive male posturing with the kind of hip-hop moves that summon comparisons to ballet, it expresses confusion with searching, eloquence.
Adriane Lentz-Smith wrote the book called the Freedom of Struggles, Who is an associate Professor of History at Duke University. Adriane had studied history and African American studies. She was successful in everything Adriane did, she had many goals to achieve. One of the goals were to get across one point about how war world 1 and African Americans goes to Europe with American expeditionary forces in World War 1. How the story was a critical movement in the book “freedom of struggles”. Adriane was an aggressive and powerful writer and wanted everyone to hear her story on African Americans going to war, how back in time it interferes with the Europe civilians an African troops she illustrates an mobilized generation.
“The Age of Protest” In this Op-Ed piece by Thomas L. Friedman, he believes that we are living in time where everyone is protesting. “In my view, this age of protest is driven, in part, by the fact that the three largest forces on the planet — globalization, Moore’s law and Mother Nature — are all in acceleration, creating an engine of disruption that is stressing strong countries and middle classes and blowing up weak ones, while super empowering individuals and transforming the nature of work, leadership and government all at once.”. This quote is his main idea of the article. In order for an author to become credible in the mind of the reader he has to create ethos.
We see brutality everywhere, we approach a problem with the easy way out, violence. That's the solution we all resort to when we see no change or when we feel that the injustices that have been done are too much to go unanswered for. Civil rights activist Cesar Chavez published an article claiming that nonviolent resistance has always been more beneficial than violent protest. Chavez’s purpose in this article is to advertise the negative effects of violence and provide a solution for it. In his article Chavez uses an inspirational and objective tone to illustrate how the effects of nonviolent resistance over time outweigh those of violent protest, he creates an appeal to emotion, logic, and authority to persuade followers of God, minorities, and people who have suffered injustices that have gone unanswered for. Chavez uses many rhetorical devices, the most prominent being: repetition, rhetorical questions and allusions to explain why nonviolence protest is better to accomplish their efforts.
The purpose of the “Creative Protest” speech was to inspire more African Americans to stand for their rights as Americans. The Royal Ice Cream sit-in was the first non-violent protest in North Carolina. This speech was a motivation to others that was scared to stand up for their, fearing that they will go to jail. After the positive reaction from the Sit- in, Dr.Marvin Blanks phone Dr. Marin Luther King on how he should help rally other to stop being scared in stand up for their rights.
While watching the performance of the company, I notice how their choreography is displayed into action. The improvisation class that Robert Moses taught gives me an opportunity to really be engaged and focus on my habits to try to find an escape. Even though the Robert Moses Kin dance company is strictly a choreographic work, there are some improvisational components included in the performance, such as mirroring and the use of physical contact. By observing this performance, I am trying to base and look at it from an improvisational perspective.
Nonviolent movements are widespread across America, but very little are effective enough to create monumental change or to have a lasting impact. In their article "Waging Nonviolence: What makes nonviolent movements explode", Mark and Paul Engler explore what makes nonviolent protests powerful enough to force change. Written in December 2014, the article uses modern and historic examples of protest movements, with the main focus on the Occupy Wall Street movement, to create the context as to what each of the methods discussed has accomplished. Using the main example of Occupy Wall Street, the article showcases two major points, disruption and sacrifice, that nonviolent protest movements utilize in order to have the greatest effect, as well as how those two points work together to create lasting impacts. Disruption relies on interrupting everyday life and preventing business from occurring, while sacrifice focuses on what people are willing to risk and give up in order to see the change they wish for. In their article, the Engler’s propose that while these two methods of protest can be effective, protests rarely become large enough to actually create any change, even if they are combined, simply because the major businesses, corporations, and organizations that are being protested hold incredible amounts of political power and therefore are able to very easily shut down protests with police forces. This argument, that protests are inevitably going to fail, is very realistic
In the letter from the eight Alabama clergymen, they felt as though those protesting should refrain from nonviolent protesting until the court system decides on their matter. The undersigned clergymen issued an "appeal for law and order and common sense," directing it towards the racial problems in Alabama. The clergymen made it clear that they felt, extreme measures in Birmingham will not be the resolution to the Negro community's problem, despite how peaceful they might be. The letter was meant to sound as considerate as possible, despite attempting to strip the Negro community of their first amendment god-given right. The clergymen feel as though it would be better to have have local leaders act on the matter, instead of gatherings
From the Boston Tea Party of 1773, the Civil Rights Movement and the Pro-Life Movement of the 1960s, to the Tea Party Movement and Occupy Wall Street Movement of current times, “those struggling against unjust laws have engaged in acts of deliberate, open disobedience to government power to uphold higher principles regarding human rights and social justice” (DeForrest, 1998, p. 653) through nonviolent protests. Perhaps the most well-known of the non-violent protests are those associated with the Civil Rights movement. The movement was felt across the south, yet Birmingham, Alabama was known for its unequal treatment of blacks and became the focus of the Civil Rights Movement. Under the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr., president of
Much of our exploration of dance improvisation involved delving into the eight movement “efforts” that Rudolf Laban developed, and these eight effort qualities can be categorized into four different groups: direction, weight, speed, and flow. For direction, movements can either be direct, which means there is intention and thought before every movement, or indirect, where the direction of one movement does not necessarily correspond to that of the next. For weight, movements can be either heavy, which can often be visible or the weight of the limbs and the awareness of gravity and the floor, or light, where a sensation of weightlessness or floating is often used. For speed, movements can either be quick, where movements rapidly progress from one to the next, or slow, where the urgency of time is neglected. For flow, movements can be either bound, where there is a sense of an imaginary outside force acting
Finally, the last element is the emphasis on improvisation: the ability to extemporaneously compose on an existing melody. This is often considered as a chance to show off for the performers. Through improvisations and ornaments which were both elaborated by the extemporaneously composition of performers added interest and differences between music and even the same piece of music might sound different.
A fascination with the human body, body were an experience that could somehow be held in common. The ways in which we might experience the body as connected or represent it as disconnected in a live performance. Shifting attention from traditional art object to the artist’s physical action further proposed that art existed in real space and real time. Marina Abramovic, a pioneer of performance art began using her own body as the subject, object, and medium in the early 1970s as she said, ‘In performance my body is object and subject.’ For the exhibition
It is true that life performances is a really good way to communicate with music. Many people fall in love with music because they can communicate anything with music, even sometimes without words. Communication is the most important thing in music, and performing really helps communicate the way you want. But knowing how to write electronic music will put you one or many steps ahead of the curve. This knowledge will increase the output points with which you could communicate your ideas. Because there is so much competition in the art world, it’s really good to be ahead of the curve. It’s really good if you can communicate with music better than your competitors.