The Repertory Dance Company Fall Dance

The choreographic intention of “Emergence” was the exploration of merging diverse elements together to see what comes from it, like the emergence in relation to arrangements and structures made in nature. The choreographic intention expanded from the idea of concealment. This was clearly identified in the beginning trio where the female dancer is shown trying to escape from her hiding place. In appraisal, the choreographic intention of “Image” was a more simplistic interpretation, one that explored identity and how it is made up of personal experiences we endure and that along the way we are influenced and sometimes inveigled, which can make revealing who we really are at the core oppressive. In comparison to “Emergence”, the movement in “Image” was more vague and indefinite in relation to linking movement to the choreographic intention. Through manipulation of structural devices such as groupings, stillness, tempo and dynamics, the

On November 18, 2016, I attended an evening performance in Irmo, South Carolina by Parsons Dance Company at Harbison Theatre at 7:30 p.m. This New York City modern based dance company hosted six commissioning works at the Midland Technical College that were all choreographed by the artistic director David Parsons. The created six works were “Finding Center,” “Hand Dance,” Swing Shift,” Kind of Blue,” “Caught,” and “Nascimento.” Each of David Parsons works showed a distinction of athletic, energized, ensemble works that revealed the style of his choreography. Parsons Dance is renowned for creating and performing contemporary American dance that is accessible and enriching to diverse audiences.

In “Stripping the Emperor: The Africanist Presence in American Concert Dance”, Gottschild begins by introducing unique aspects of the Africanist aesthetic including how it embraces differences and instead of the traditional European idea of resolving conflict, Africanist aesthetic presents a question and demonstrates the beauty in accepting conflict. One way in which the Africanist aesthetic differs from European ballet is how they utilize polycentrism, having multiple centers of movement, and polyrhythm, when different body parts keep multiple rhythms. Other ways include the high-affect juxtaposition, changes in mood, movement, or tempo, to the drastically contrasting sharpness and intensity in the movements. Gottschild’s main point in her article is to describe how the Africanist aesthetic is much less strict

The melody sounds somber and serious and the energy of the dancers suddenly changes. A spoken word takes place and all of the dancer begin to tell their stories of pain and struggle through movements. The spoken word talks about the journey of men and women who overcame social injustice. In the dancer's movements you could clearly see how they correlated together. Movements were powerful and restraint at the same time giving the audience the idea of the women were pushing through something that was bearing them down. There was a lot of expansion in the chest, back, and arms followed by contractions in the body. As soon as the spoken word was finished the mood of the piece change again and the pianist began to play a upbeat tune that brought the dancers back in to a more positive and high spirit. A lot of polyrhythms take place as the dancers jump high and move their arms back and forth moving throughout the space. This happens in unison at first and then solos, trios, and duets happen in this section of the dance. The expression on their faces add charismatic charm to this piece. Their expressions continue to move them into different emotions and feelings that are relatable to everyday

Petipa’s production of Swan Lake is a beautiful example of the structure movements that dancers must perform; in the clip titled Odile entrance & Black Swan pas de deux, you see “The Black Swan” perfect posture and balance, dancing on en Pointe all the while managing to gracefully seduce the prince through her seductive movements and entrancing expressions. In contrast Modern dance focus is on the dancer expressing their inner most emotions and feelings through free flowing movements. The modern dancer uses their whole body more naturally and fluidly to convey what their current emotional state is, unlike classical ballet where the ballerina at all times keeps an upright posture, and performs with structured, angular lines. Martha Graham’s “Frontier” is a great example of the free movements of Modern dance; In this performance Martha Graham uses her whole body to move to the rhythmic sounds of the drums and music, you can clearly see that there is no confined structure in this performance, she is completely moving organically to how she is feeling and what she is trying to convey through her movements.

Watching a video of a dance piece called “The Moroccan Project,” choreographed by Alonzo King was quite impressive. Living in San Francisco and taking dance classes brought me to Lines Ballet which is King’s dance studio. I have seen a great deal of different types of dance at the studio waiting for my Ballet classes and there are some great dancers. It comes as no surprise that Alonzo would have such great dancers. It appears that Alonzo King is exploring different cultures in dance in Contemporary Ballet. His near-perfect choreography is articulate, passionate, and graceful- he brings diversity in dance to San Francisco and other parts of the world. This piece articulates the expression of the two dancers coming together yet dancing apart at times- it is a fusion of several different types of dances into one using video editing to create a story about the coming together of two individuals.

Stewart’s choreographic revolution began when he combined movement with rapid and fast rapid techno music which modern audiences relate to. ‘Birdbrian’ has been described by Katy Evans an author as a “heart stopping, eye popping, tempo changing, absorbing one hour and fifteen minutes of pure genius amazement, a truly theatrical and demanding performance that’s funky, fast and furious”. The use of chorographic techniques used, Stewart persuades the audience to not look away. The slow motion, stillness, turns and jumps, cannons, duet works, contractions, high releases, dynamics and zombie like movement all give into gravity and this was shown throw the something floor work. This piece was the first of Stewart’s as Artistic Director to tour internationally. The intensely physical and powerful work represents his trademark modern style, which involves jerking, glitching, abrupt and fast powerful movement making the performance intriguing to watch, the dancers appear to have a sense of power as they come across to be strong. The dull lighting creates suspense and excitement that combined with images projecting over the dancers. The shell of the choreography reveals balletic and classical duet work. The costuming of ‘Birdbrain’ are black legging and simple white T-shirts. In the section where a lady is walking across the stage with point shoes. Is symbolistic of it being a reconstruction of a classical ballet

The first piece was entitled “You, Me, & Us”. Due to having troubles catching the MARTA bus, I missed a good portion of this performance and had to view the rest of the performance on the teleprompter. The dancers were moving in a circle with a person in the center and all of the dancers were wearing earth tones. The music was very serene and at the conclusion of the performance, all of the dancers hugged each other. From what I saw, this performance represented how all humans are interconnected on this Earth, this can be seen by all of the dancers hugging in the end and also the title of the piece.

I liked the dance piece because the dancers were limited physically in their bodies, but their dancing was beyond limited and astounding. At first, I was a bit doubtful and sceptical before watching the dance because I thought the dancers were going to perform with very minimal and stiff movements. But to my surprise, the dancers moved gracefully on stage. The two dancers used quite a lot of space. The dancers used all levels of space from low to high. For example, the dancers executed amazing leaps, jumps and lifts in their performance that represented as high levels of space. The dancers movements were grand; however, they were also whimsical, sharp, circular, and clean. The dancers utilized most parts of the stage. The pattern of the space that performers used was more curved than linear. There were two dancers in this piece, the male dancer that had only one leg and the female dancer that had only one arm. The genre of dance that was performed was a ballet; though, in my observations the dance seemed to be more contemporary than ballet. For instance, the tempo of the dance was slower and had less rhythm than most classical ballets I’ve observed. Also, there were a couple of pauses and rests during the performance. The dance

In the third section Ms. Donna Wood looks like an African goddess and her body has an unexpected gracefulness. Even stage color was bright reddish, warm atmosphere around the dancer, like a sunrise in the morning. Stage would fill with colors. Music and performer are singing together. A sound of music tempo gets faster. She has the happiest face ever, no pain and no slavery. She jumps, she swings her leg and arms, and even she pulls her dress up and shows her leg an entire dance. Sound and lightening create the environment and good mood. She uses high level of dance than in previous two sections. She moves in between melody. I liked how she uses

The first piece, “Traveling Through Her,” used variation in time, space, repetitive movements and patterns throughout their piece. I enjoyed the way the dancers were evenly spaced out throughout the stage, using different levels and the upper space which is usually considered negative space. This piece used indirect and direct movements. For example, Misha was on a stepping box and she was doing indirect movements that affected the other dancers movement in time and space. I thought

I expected the show to be more upbeat and salsa based. However, the performers used salsa dancing in many different ways. Keeping the same quality of salsa in the torso, but changed up how they were using their arms and would transpose it to the floor and used it as floor work across the stage. They would also use salsa for slower movement. There were times the salsa that they used was very slow in contrast to how the upbeat salsa looked. The different movement that stood out to me more in this performance, was the choreography that we did during our master class. I noticed that flocking was used throughout the performance, but was not taking too far. They would use it to symbolize community as everyone would come together. During the flocking portions, a lot of the movement was upright in the vertical plane and was very sharp. What caught my eye as an audience member was during the flocking, there would be a soloist off to the side doing the complete opposite of movement quality than the group. For example, while the group was performing sharp angular movements, the soloist would be to the side performing flowy movement that used all three levels on the body. However, as I say that it caught my eye, there were times that I thought so much was happening on stage I caught myself not engaged in the performance. As the performance started to grow into the story that they were portraying, the movement quality became very flowy from all performers in a sense that they reminded me of water. The performers used a huge amount of spine articulation. As they used a lot of undulations in the body, the performers would make them big as if they were dancing for the whole audience. Their energy of their movement seemed bigger than what they were dancing. The movement seemed indirect and used a great amount of different stage space as most of

Dance is significant to our society; the aspects of Modern/Contemporary Dance have adjusted the viewpoint of the society to view it as a perpetual embryonic form of art. The evaluation exhibited in this document will contain concise interpretations of the pieces performed by the "Mark Morris Dance Group", followed by a comprehensive examination of the pieces "A Forest", "Pure Dance Items", "Serenade", and "Dancing Honeymoon."

The Robert Moses’ Kin company reinforced the idea that it is to learn from your mistakes and to make movement have its own originality. The dancers in the performance did two different pieces from their earlier works called Speaking Ill of the Dead and Never an End for Peace. These pieces displayed technique visuals that were being discussed in class and brought to the performance with the company. Overall, the way that they described their movements can give me a further understanding with how I can further my dance technique.

So, I had an overall feeling of the struggles within a relationship based off of the movements, and the way that the dancers interacted. I believe that the first function elements that were used worked well. I believe that if the chorographer was wanting to get the audience to think of or reflect upon relationships then all of the elements served their purpose.