Carolena Nericcio

Belly.

An amazing interview with Carolena Nericcio, the inventor of synchronized group improvisation and the most important dance innovator of the early 21st century.  Carolena is the artistic director of Fat Chance Belly Dance, a professional belly dance troupe that has been performing for more than 25 years.  That Carolena chose belly dance for her innovations in dance making speaks to the modern resurgence of the folkloric form.     That modern concert dance still refuses to acknowledge this important and popular dance form mystifies me.  

Listen to Carolena discuss improvisation, call and response, and the making of a belly dancer.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=related&v=jvPAWwGq86A

Photograph Courtesy of:

http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/fat%20chance%20belly%20dance

Rinse and Repeat

Timing.

Some dances are their own beasts.  They stay somehow just barely out of reach or shift so as to make you lose the grasp of one phrase just as you master some other.  This is especially true if they push against tempo or cycle rather than repeat.  Sometimes even a dance that you yourself have created can elude you in its particulars of timing and execution.  

And sometimes you find it.  Sometimes you simply set yourself comfortably into the movement, listen, wait, and find the timing.  

Donna Mejia, Midnight in the Studio:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gr5FHDWVKw

Photograph Courtesy of:

http://www.artsbird.com/en/en_8/enwtyc_8/endance_8/

Work Hard

:

Class.

Merce Cunningham and John Cage are best known for their contribution the the modernization of dance as an interpretive and abstract form.  They were exacting artists, interested in investigation, process, and the creation of work.  They were doers and craftsmen, interested in new works, new themes, new ideas, and new ways of doing things.  Surprising then that they reveal themselves to be so staid and conservative in their practice.  Among their rules for dancers and teachers are these:

"The only rule is work."

"Find something that you trust."

"Always take class."

"There are no mistakes."

"Try to be happy."

I love this.  These are simple things that I find myself nudging upon my students, my colleagues, and myself.  There is something in this about the way we participate in things, the approach we take to our practice, and how that informs our behavior in the rest of our lives.

To Watch the Merce Cunningham Dance Company

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FwiMlDQ7rI

Cage and Cunninghams Rules for Students and Teachers:

Photo Courtesy of:

http://www.homo-centric.com/2012/08/there-is-no-win-or-fail-there-is-only.html

Step In Time

Repeat.

Studying dance is a repetitive and unruly thing.  Most of what is taught in class is technique and form, the rules of the movement.  Good dancers, dancers with drive, dancers that want to dance, spend hours in repetition, sometimes excruciatingly slowly, sometimes at near impossible tempos.  Dance is learned in repetition; is it the primary tool for teaching the body.  Repeat, critique, repeat again.  Repeat, measure progress, repeat again.  Ability is not stored, a dancer has to always practice, always fight to maintain or push forward.  For every piece we master there is a new movement to begin to study.  Repetition makes it easy to be a technician.  True artistry though, comes from finding release from those things and dancing from the inside out.  Using technique and form to support the movement rather than dictate it.  Some artists work from the ground up, building the dance from assembled bits and pieces. Others work in retrograde, deconstructing phrases, and movements into their most basic elements.  Some are motivated by imagery, or the need to communicate something.  Others are driven by the music.  Ultimately, like most things in life, it is all an improvisation, the following of one impulse, and then another, and another until with repetition, we come to know it as a dance.  

What dances are in your life today?  What kind of improvisation will you do?  What are you using to support it?

Photo Courtesy of:

http://balletclassroom.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/ballet-stretching-feet-with-pointe-shoes.jpg

It Ain't Over

I am in love with this Dutch artist's work.  Minimal and stark, Petra Vanderput's images speak to the present moment.  The image above, to me, says everything about dance and aging.  They say there is a sweet spot in dance a time in which you are young enough to have the virtuosity and mature enough to have artistry.  There is something ironic or even cruel to realize that just as one has the range of life experiences and strength of character to express true emotion in movement, you body begins to fail you.

But you still have now.  You have your body, today, just as it is.  And your dance, whatever it is, you should keep doing for as long as you can.  Because it feeds you.  Because it is your voice.  Because you love it.

To view more of Petra's images:

http://petravanderput.tumblr.com/

Dancing Girls

Soma.

In the beginning of the 20th century ballet ruled the world of dance.  But as the Western world embraced industrialism and modernity, so did artists.  Stifled by the strict technique, training, and codified movements of ballet, movers like Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis turned to other cultures and movement traditions to create new movement forms, new dances, new ways of moving.  This new aesthetic was rooted in expressionism and for the first time considered how the movement felt in the dancers body.  The first choreographer to popularize this new type of movement in European concert dance was Margaret Morris.  More than that, Morris championed a new kind of dance technique and training that emphasized grounding and fluidity over virtuosity and her movement theory and dance pedagogy might be one of the earliest examples of somatic study as dance training.  The result of her perspective can be seen in the freedom of movement in her dancers bodies and the innovation of shape and form prevalent in her works.  The ideas that she pioneered are now considered de facto parts of most dance classes.  

To Watch the Margaret Morris Girls Dance Outside:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqTUnVnQrrM

To See the Margaret Morris Girls Performing:

http://www.britishpathe.com/video/margaret-morris-movement

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIDrI_A-MaM