Dance Appreciation

2015-04-26

Hakseong Kim

Dance Appreciation, Sec-3

Final Paper

Prof. Stephen O’Connell

I attended the concert on Apr 26. I will be writing about Blood, which was the one of the dances presented in the concert.  The choreographer was Lee Sher and Saar Harai. The size of the cast was larger group like more than 10 people. The ethnicity of people who danced was black and white. I think the ethnicity was so important from this dance because I feel like all dancers were represented for good and evil, as dancers were black and white. Moreover, their costume was black and white. The style of dance was like modern style of dancing.

The dance was like good and evil. There were black and white dancers with wearing black and white costumes. I felt like they were expressing how human’s mind looks like and what things are in human’s mind.  Whether other people think it was about good and evil or not, I felt it was good and evil. This made me to choose this dance to write about because I never imagined that good and evil could be expressed through the dance, and to engage me visually and intellectually.

There were several choreographies that made me impressed. When black and white dancers came to middle of the stage and danced different choreography, I thought that was exactly human’s mind because I think that people always struggle between good and evil in their mind. That is why same person may do good things or bad things such as volunteer for community, or stealing somebody’s stuffs. In addition, the part that I also remembered was that when one white dancer was in the middle of the stage with clam dancing, black dancer slowly came to next to white dancer and danced with dynamic dancing. As soon as black dancer danced dynamically, white dancer also danced dynamically. It looked like they were connected in one place. After black and white dancer started to dance dynamically, all black and white dancers came to the middle of the stage and danced dynamically. The dancers performed same choreography and different choreography in a different part and same part. The virtuosity was not important.

In the performance, there were the things that supported the dancers to be able to more express what they were trying to express to the audiences such as music, light, and silence. The music was “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts” by Brian Eno and David Byme, “Textstar” by Farben. Why the music supported what the dancers’ expressed was that music was slow, fast, clam, and dynamic in a different situation, and it fit to the choreography with the dancers.  The light was also thing that supported them. In a different situation or same situation, the light was light or dark as it represented good and evil. Silence was also one of the things supported them. When the dancer danced in a silence with calm music, it looked like audience could be more able to interpret what the dancer was trying to express through the choreography.

I also observed choreographic elements such as space, energy, time, bodies, and relationships. First of all, the space that the stage was big enough for the dancers to dance in order to express what they want express to audiences. In addition, all the dancers looked like they used all the spaces that they could use for. Second, the energy of all the dancers was so dynamic as wave. I saw several dancers were vibrating their body with dynamical music. It seemed like they received an electric shock. Next, the time was like quick, moderate, and slow in a different or same part. When the dancers were dancing quickly, it looked like so dynamic. When the dancers were dancing moderately, it was like normal as people just dance with moderate music. In other hand, when the dancers were dancing slowly with slow music, it looked like so calm as something relaxed. Third, it is a body. Most of the dancers were normal, but some dancers were skinny or kind of fat. I think bodies are so important when the dancers dance because of expressing what they want to express with flexibility, responsiveness. Especially, black dancers were normal with muscles. I thought absolutely black people were good at flexibility and responsiveness. On the other hand, there were some white skinny or kind of fat dancers. When I saw the performance, I automatically saw their body because the skinny dancer looked like had no energy on their body and kind of fat dancer looked like moving slowly. I think if a dancer want to be a dancer as much as they want for a long time, the dancer must maintain their body as best as the dancer can. Last, the relationship between everything such as the dancers, music, light, and stage was oppositional. As I said above, I felt like the dancers were expressing about good and evil. All the elements on this performance looked like connected, but was oppositional.

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