A Body of Accents

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-51
Author(s):  
Ami Skånberg Dahlstedt
Keyword(s):  
Performing Arts ◽  
Dance Education ◽  
Cultural Exchange ◽  
Foreign Accent ◽  
Contemporary Dance ◽  
Cultural Roots ◽  
Professional Dance ◽  
Year 2000 ◽  
Exchange Programmes ◽  
Nihon Buyo

Abstract Dance practice is often hidden inside dance studios, where it is not available for dialogue or interdisciplinary critique. In this paper, I will look closer at one of the accents that my body has held since the year 2000. To Swedish dance academies, it is perhaps the most foreign accent I have in my dance practice. It has not been implemented as ‘professional dance’ in Western dance studios. This foreign accent is called Nihon Buyō, Japanese dance, also known as Kabuki dance. Nihon Buyō, Nō or Kabuki are local performing arts practices for professional performers in Japan. A few foreigners are familiar with these practices thanks to cultural exchange programmes, such as the yearly Traditional Theatre Training at Kyoto Art Centre. There is no religious spell cast over the technique or a contract written that it must be kept secret or that it must not leave the Japanese studio or the Japanese stage. I will compare how dance is being transmitted in the studio in Kyoto with my own vocational dance education of many years ago. Are there similarities to how the female dancer’s body is constructed? Might there be unmarked cultural roots and invisible originators of the movements we are doing today in contemporary dance?

”To allow oneself to dance….”

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-44
Author(s):  
Gunn Engelsrud
Keyword(s):  
Dance Education ◽  
Contemporary Dance ◽  
Relational Experiences ◽  
Professional Dance ◽  
In The Beginning ◽  
Individual Training

Abstract The purpose of the article is to illuminate the experiences of young dancers working with their own individual training in a context of contemporary dance education. Through a three-year programme, the students have kept logbooks and developed material based on the question: What were the essential experiences of individual training today? From having a focus on training strength, mobility, resilience, stamina and balance in the beginning, they often reoriented their training so as to give themselves the space to relate to and create confidence that their own subjective and relational experiences have validity in a professional dance context. As young, prospective professionals they learn gradually that what they experience is “not wrong”, but an expression of “where they are”. Their experiences contribute to the questioning of “narrow” definitions which a number of dance researchers also do today.

Uthoff, Ernst (1904–1993)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sydney Jane Norton
Keyword(s):  
South America ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
Contemporary Dance ◽  
Dance Theater ◽  
Dance Training ◽  
Big City ◽  
Professional Dance ◽  
Dance Companies ◽  
The University ◽  
A Company

Ernst Uthoff was a German-born dancer, choreographer, and company director who received his dance training from two pioneers of Tanztheater (dance-theater): Kurt Jooss and Sigurd Leeder. He was one of the original members of the Folkwang-Tanzbühne (Folkwang Dance Stage), a company that Jooss and Leeder co-founded in 1927, and Uthoff created and performed several important roles for Jooss. As a performer he is best known for his roles of the Standard Bearer in The Green Table (1932) and the Libertine in Big City (1932). In 1934 Uthoff fled Nazi Germany together with his wife, the Hungarian dancer Lola Botka, Jooss, and other company members. The troupe settled at Dartington Hall in England, where its dancers opened a Jooss–Leeder school and performed under the name Ballets Jooss. Ballets Jooss toured South America in 1941, during which time the Chilean government invited Uthoff, Botka, and solo dancer Rudolf Pescht to remain in Chile to establish a school of contemporary dance. The three settled in Santiago that same year, co-founding the Escuela de Danzas (School of Dance). Soon after, Uthoff, Botka, and Pescht established the Ballet Nacional Chileno (National Ballet of Chile), a state-financed company based at the University of Chile in Santiago. Ballet Nacional Chileno was one of Chile’s first nationally sponsored professional dance companies, and it is still flourishing today.

The Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Western Art

2013 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
Music Performance ◽  
Sound Art ◽  
Short Film ◽  
Contemporary Dance ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Experimental Theatre

This book examines different kinds of analogies, mutual influences, integrations, and collaborations of the audio and the visual in different art forms. The contributions, written by key theoreticians and practitioners, represent state-of-the-art case studies in contemporary art, integrating music, sound, and image with key figure of modern thinking constitute a foundation for the discussion. It thus emphasizes avant-garde and experimental tendencies, while analyzing them in historical, theoretical, and critical frameworks. The book is organized around three core subjects, each of which constitutes one section of the book. The first concentrates on the interaction between seeing and hearing. Examples of classic and digital animation, video art, choreography, and music performance, which are motivated by the issue of eye versus ear perception are examined in this section. The second section explores experimental forms emanating from the expansion of the concepts of music and space to include environmental sounds, vibrating frequencies, language, human habitats, the human body, and more. The reader will find here an analysis of different manifestations of this aesthetic shift in sound art, fine art, contemporary dance, multimedia theatre, and cinema. The last section shows how the new light shed by modernism on the performative aspect of music has led it—together with sound, voice, and text—to become active in new ways in postmodern and contemporary art creation. In addition to examples of real-time performing arts such as music theatre, experimental theatre, and dance, it includes case studies that demonstrate performativity in visual poetry, short film, and cinema.

Wellbeing and the Ageing Dancer

2017 ◽  
pp. 310-328
Author(s):  
Jan Bolwell
Keyword(s):  
Older Women ◽  
Exercise Programme ◽  
Ageing Population ◽  
Contemporary Dance ◽  
Aerobic Dance ◽  
Mature Women ◽  
Professional Dance ◽  
Self Discovery ◽  
Fitness And Health ◽  
The Impact

The fusion of dance aesthetics with exercise and safe practice can result in challenging and fulfilling dance experiences for the ageing dancer. This chapter charts the author’s own experience in New Zealand, teaching two different cohorts of older women, in a contemporary dance performance-based dance collective, and in an aerobic dance exercise programme. The impact on society of an ageing population is discussed. The author reflects on how ageism is present in community and professional dance, and how dancers in both contexts deal with the challenges, promoting an image of fitness and health, as exemplified by local ethnic groups. The author finishes with a profile of Crows Feet Dance Collective, the company of mature women whom she has directed and choreographed since 1999, highlighting the qualities which these dancers display, opportunities for self-discovery, and a new level of creativity in a body that encapsulates a ‘lived richness.’

scholarly journals Straight into the Eyes – Jacek Łumiński and the Silesian Dance Theatre(1991-2011)

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-46
Author(s):  
ALICJA IWANSKA
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Wide Spectrum ◽  
Educational Activity ◽  
Contemporary Dance ◽  
Educational Activities ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Professional Dance ◽  
In The Beginning

The fi nal decade of the 20th century was the turning-point for the development of Polish contemporary dance. In 1991 Jacek Łumiński established the Silesian Dance Theatre in Bytom. The theatre is said to be in the avant-garde of all activities related to contemporary dance development in Poland. It was J. Łumiński and his theatre who pioneered new trends in contemporary dance at the beginning of the nineties of the 20th century, at the same time they have conducted educational activity over the intervening twenty years.The aim of this article is to present the artistic and educational activity of the Silesian Dance Theatre of the recent twenty years. In the beginning the author presents a choreographic por-trait of J. Łumiński, the founder and choreographer of the Silesian Dance Theatre, and creator of the Polish contemporary dance technique. Then an analysis of J. Łumiński’s dance style is car-ried out, and the review of the Silesian Dance Theatre’s choreographic attainments is presented.The fi nal part of the article discusses the wide spectrum of educational activities under-taken in the fi eld of contemporary professional dance by theSilesian Dance Theatre, and the phenomenon of the theatre on the Polish stage.

scholarly journals Presença e morte: o carácter efémero das artes do corpo.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pedro Bessa ◽  
Mariana Assunção Quintes dos Santos
Keyword(s):  
Performance Art ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
Fine Arts ◽  
Classical System ◽  
Physical Object ◽  
The Body ◽  
Contemporary Dance ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Technical Reproducibility ◽  
And Performance

This paper aims to reflect on a hypothetical threshold-space between contemporary dance and performance art, questioning at the same time the prevalence of too strict a boundary between them. To this end, a range of works involving hybridization of artistic languages ​​were selected and analyzed, from Signals (1970) by American dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham to Café Müller (1978) by German choreographer Pina Bausch. Both dance and performance art are ephemeral arts or, according to the classical system, arts of time as opposed to the arts of space - painting, sculpture and architecture. They have also been called allographic arts, performative arts or, perhaps more specifically, arts of the body (Ribeiro, 1997). Unlike traditional fine arts, which materialize in a physical object other than the body, unlike video-art and cinema, arts without originals, mediated by the process of “technical reproducibility” (Benjamin, 1992), performative arts require the presence of a human body - and the duration of the present - as a fundamental instrument for their realization. In that sense, the paper also focuses on the ephemerality factor associated with dance and performing arts, and the consequent devaluation these have suffered vis-à-vis other artistic practices, considered to be academic and socially more significant.

scholarly journals Daring in dance–Bachelor Students in Dance Developing Life Skills for the 21st Century

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 30-40
Author(s):  
Irene Velten Rothmund
Keyword(s):  
Transformative Learning ◽  
Learning Process ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Life Skills ◽  
Dance Education ◽  
Fear Of Failure ◽  
Contemporary Dance ◽  
Embodied Experiences ◽  
Professional Dancer ◽  
Phd Thesis

Abstract This article investigates how to find connections between dance education and the development of life skills for the 21st century by interpreting students’ experiences of daring in dance. The article draws on a section of my PhD thesis that focuses on BA students’ lived experiences in modern and contemporary dance. The project is informed by hermeneutic phenomenology, and the material consists of eleven students log books and interviews. One of the main themes in the material is daring in dance, which is connected to a transformative learning process. In this article I dig more deeply into the embodied dimension of such learning process and discuss how the result of this process can be interpreted as developing life skills for the 21st century. The analysis shows that becoming a professional dancer is a vulnerable process, encompassing both fear of failure and learning to trust one’s own competencies. Several of these competencies point toward skills recognised as important to learning in the 21st century, such as flexibility, problem solving, self-direction and social skills. By focusing on everyday embodied experiences of daring in dance, this research provides one example of the development of life skills in higher education based in empirical research.

scholarly journals The Preventative and Healing Properties of Performing Arts in Female Genital Mutilation

2021 ◽  
pp. 34-62
Author(s):  
Alyssa Kardos
Keyword(s):  
Performing Arts ◽  
Female Genital Mutilation ◽  
Gender Violence ◽  
Extensive Literature ◽  
Web Searches ◽  
Treatment Interventions ◽  
Genital Mutilation ◽  
Cultural Roots ◽  
Arts And Health ◽  
Female Genital

Despite being outlawed in many of the countries where it is the most prevalent, female genital mutilation (FGM) still persists. It is critical that innovative interventions be adopted in order to better address the cultural roots of this gender violence epidemic. The aim of this study is to explore the use of performing arts to fill this gap in effective preventative and treatment interventions. Due to the lack of data in this field, this study comprises of an extensive literature review. Existing programs were evaluated through thorough web searches, interviews of program leads, and analyses of the results. After reviewing existing evidence, it has been concluded that performing arts interventions provide positive outcomes in the field of FGM due to their ability to engage with cultural assumptions, incite empathy, and cross educational boundaries, all through community-connected approaches. Local outcomes were connected to government intervention in the recommendations to conclude that all governments should ban FGM, allocate public funds to the field of arts and health, and increase the validity of performance-based interventions through increased and improved research.

Dream weaving: A conversation with Jennifer Irwin

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margot Anderson
Keyword(s):  
First Nations ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
Shared Knowledge ◽  
Contemporary Dance ◽  
Indigenous Culture ◽  
Story Telling ◽  
Early Stages ◽  
30Th Anniversary

In December 2019 as I made my way through Bangarra Dance Theatre’s exhibition Knowledge Ground, Australia was in the early stages of a devastating bushfire season and Sydney was shrouded in a cloud of smoke. It was Bangarra Dance Theatre’s 30th anniversary and I was fully immersed in a theatrical display of set pieces, soundscapes and costumes from landmark productions by Australia’s premier First Nations performing arts company. Bangarra’s body of work draws on over 65,000 years of Indigenous culture and fuses the language of traditional and contemporary dance to create a compelling narrative based on a shared knowledge of country. These works have served as markers of revelation in the development of my own understanding of Australia and have made Bangarra an internationally acclaimed source of powerful story telling. They have also fuelled a long-lasting appreciation of the costumes designed for the company by Jennifer Irwin with whom I shared a series of discussions.

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