Dying.

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Last Bloggg, Let’s GO

One of the interesting things we learned this week that stood out the most to me was about how clowning was created by Thomas Johnson, also known as Tommy the Clown. He started going down a bad path in life and was in jail. When he got out this was his way of coming above that and starting something positive in the South Central community. He started dressing as a clown, doing all of the makeup and wig, and performing at kids parties. He would use street dance to entertain. He was seen as a role model to the kids of this neighborhood. The kids started dancing for him in result of this and developing their own clown crews which I thought was really neat. This hip hop style of dance is a combination of of the style G dance, stripper dancer, and ganger boogie. Now we know clowning as krumping which is a form that is harder, more aggressive, and more personal and allows dancers to confront their difficult emotions such as pain and anger. It is seen as this healing form of dance. Males and females both participated in krumping and clowning which is great! 

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I am over the internet ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ anyways, more hip hop

To specify, I am over online schooling but that involves the internet and frankly I have been on the internet too much since coming home. Yay. I did online schooling for 6 years, I never wanted to go back to that for a reason. Another yay. :) Anyways, off of that little side rant, I read the article “Global Breakingdancing and the intercultural body” for Tuesday. In that reading, I think the thing that stood out the most to me was when the article mentioned how Justin Alladin (TeN) went to Japan and saw two kids dancing. When they were dancing, one of the kids cut the other off, they started circling each other and then came together and started doing the Brooklyn Rock together. He described it as international communication and said that that was the difference between being from hip-hop and being from commercialized hip-hop. I think this exampled helped show how globalized hip-hop truly is. They could connect and communicate with each other physically even though they couldn’t do so verbally. I connected this back to all styles, but especially ballet. Ballet has a set language that is understood universally and I was able to connect these two subjects this way. 

The article we read for Thursday was on Rennie Harris and how he impacted the world of hip-hop. I am just going to quote this because I liked how it was worded in the article, “Harris has become an archeologist of sorts, digging up relics of the past that have proved to be persistent, remaining just below the surface: racism, misogyny, classism, and neocolonialism.” I liked how the author described him as archeologist of these topics, saying how he digs deep into the roots. It also brought up how the foundation of his works also had to do with his concerns of human condition and his own spiritual development. Along with that he was a concert hip-hop choreographer which was a new take to read about. He would sometimes incorporate b-boy circles in his choreography as well. It was nice to read about hip-hop being brought to a new perspective. Until next time :)

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Pop it, lock it, polka dot it... wait

Hip-hip time people. This week we read about three different styles which are popping, locking, and break dance. Before these styles were shown to the media, they were performed in public. This was done by being done in a battle towards each other, competing. These battles were never scheduled as well. They would just occur whenever the opportunity was presented to these dancers which is something that has been stripped from the hip-hop culture. A cool thing with these hip-hop battles is that they were all still a community even though it was ultimately a battle. I think that part we do still see today is hip hop battles. With the video we watched on Tuesday of the battle, it was really evident how supportive they were of each other. Another thing from interesting from the readings was how this style was boys ages 8 to 16. Girls didn’t really participate because of the bruises/cuts. 

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Who knows where this will go

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My dog didn’t like letting me type this

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Was love ever alive???

This week in class we have discussed many things, one of which being the three ballets Firebird, The Rite of Spring, and Les Noces. A little background on the three: In the ballet Firebird, the firebird is not a human, but she is also not a bird. This ballet broke some of the “rules” in a traditional ballet such as there was no pas de deux between the love interests, but there was between the man and firebird. Fokine, the choreographer, wanted to show how Russia was split and that is what the firebird represented. Then there is The Rite of Spring, choreographed by Nijinsky, Nijinska’s brother. This ballet was about sacrifice. Virgin sacrifice to be precise. The way this ballet was described was that is is very chaotic and overall just a lot. Lastly, we have Les Noces, also known as The Wedding, which is a piece discussing how women in Russia were currently trying to fight for their rights. The piece is from a women’s perspective, being choreographed by Nijinska. It shows how when a woman marries, it is like she is signing her death certificate. When she marries, she is signing away the current freedom she does have (like her body/individuality) and giving it to the groom. All of these three pieces broke away from the traditional ballet there was during the Classical and Romantic era and had some sort of point beyond love and mythical creatures like we have seen in other ballets. Overall, all three of these ballets, as I have said, broke away pretty vividly from the traditional ballets. They used music from Stravinsky, who was very abstract. Like at The Rite of Spring there was a riot and no one knows whether it was because of the music or the ballet. The movements were very different as well. In Firebird there is a lot of grounded movement, and in Les Noces they worked in parallel a lot, both of which wasn’t common for a ballet. I feel like they definitely paved the way for other artists to make controversial pieces and paved the way for us as new-coming artists to not be afraid to be true and create something even if it starts literal hell.

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Can Women Catch a Break?

This week we dove more into the history of ballet. One of the big discussions we had in class was over the difference in training between men and women. Men are trained to be jumpers, they are trained to jump high and do multiple turns in the air while doing so. Why are women not taught the same techniques in jumping still to this day? I have noticed, depending on the teacher you may be learning the jumps and doing the same tempo as the men, but they still have more push put on them to get higher and do better in a way I would describe as these “masculine” movements. Along with this, we moved into classical ballet and how there “has” to be a male on stage with the female dancer to be her supporter. The audiences wanted to see the females on stage, which they were. They were on stage, dancing on pointe, and utilizing big movements and eye catching costumes. But the men were still there, on stage, to support the females because god forbid a women do something on her own right? 

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Yeeting through ballet history

Ballet wasn’t always the form that we have come to love today. And it was always looked at the same way either. We also have learned how there are four different ballet categories, the focus of this week being romanticism. And as always it seems, men were the controllers of ballet as they were in everything. But when pointe shoes started being utilized by women, the first one being Marie Taglioni, that is when women started to take over the stage, but even then it was in a misogynic way. Women, on pointe, were seen as light, delicate, needed saved, etc. And as always, the men were saving the “damsel in distress.” They still ran the show in every other aspect even though the women were doing most of the work. One of the most popular romantic ballets that still is known today is Giselle. Her movements are all very soft and light, and she dies, as do many of the leads in ballets. Why do women have to be soft, delicate, and light to be seen as “wanted” in these ballets, and why is there the concept of dying to find your “one true love?”

Ballet is my favorite technique, so learning the history behind the style has been really interesting. It’s really neat seeing how far ballet has come, especially when comparing now ballet like contemporary/modern ballet to court (baroque) ballet. How women went from not being as involved to being the main stage and on pointe. Along with the difference in the technique such as turn out. This make me wonder where ballet will go next. 

Weird fact, people ate pointe shoes of their favorite dancers? I don’t even want to know more on that, nastay. 

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I don’t know how to make a creative title? Bloggin bout ballet?

This week we started the discussion on ballet and greek dance. According to our reading Ballet and Modern Dance, dance is split into three categories, which are performed for the pleasing of the dancers, performed for the pleasing of the gods, and performing for the pleasing of others. 

When discussing and diving into ballet, we went back to the 1600s. For me it was interesting to look into how ballet was such a big thing back then, especially with how the arts are now looked down upon in a sense. Like how many times have any of us told people our major and they asked what our back up was or commented on how they didn’t know that was even a major in college? Also, it was interesting how much Louis XIV contributed to the arts. Like he founded the Academie Royale de Danse in 1661, which disbanded eventually, but in 1669 he then founded the Academie Royale de Musique which is known today as the Paris Opera. 

But on a side note, women had to be married to choreograph? Um? Excuse me? The more I dive into history, the more angry I get. Like, why weren’t women allowed to choreograph without being married? We discussed in class how it was a control thing obviously, if she was married, he could keep her in line. But it ties into how back then men didn’t want a woman’s name on anything, (I had something else but lost my thought oops) it just was a control thing. It was a source of “freedom” to women, men didn’t like it, so they added a big catch to it basically. 

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Blog # 1

Let’s go. 

Reading these articles, I realized how overall I just am not educated in foreign styles, so these discussions and readings brought a lot to light to me. Our in class discussions also brought up some topics such as is ballet an ethnic dance, should cultural dances be on a stage, and so forth. 

In article one, Dance In World Culture, it states that the most basic difference between concert, ritual, and folk dance is that folk dances are participatory and with the other isn't. The country we focused on these past two weeks was Japan and their dances Bugaku, Kabuki, Noh, and Butoh. Each dance has its own background and meaning to it, for example, Butoh literally means the dance of darkness, in Noh the dancers are trained from the beginning of their life (born into it and male.) I personally am more interesting in Butoh mainly because the name and the background behind the creators have sparked an interest in me to learn and see.

Even though all four of these are from the same country, they are so different and have such different upbringings and changes throughout history. This information is all new and exciting, but definitely something I see myself needing to learn more about before being able to do anymore with this information, but at the same time very important. 

- bye 

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Welcome to college

Week one of classes resulting in making a tumblr for dance history 2. What is college? #help #whatislife