BURNNNN

HEY hey hEy! Wassup virtual classmates. We are so close to being done! Lets stop CLOWNING AROUND and finish this semester strong! Speaking of clowns... highly afraid but I def wouldn’t be afraid of Tommy the Clown who got this whole thing started as a ghetto celebrity clown who performed at children's birthday parties and since has taken many youths under his wing to keep them out of gangs and drugs. The clown element expanded into harder, more aggressive and personalized style of dancing. This eventually trickled down to the creation of KRUMP. 

FYI- my autocorrect keeps changing krump to trump. So if I ever say anything positive and it auto-corrected to trump... hope y'all would know me a little better than that haha!

So... the film Rize and the article we read about krumping closely correlated. I started by watching the film and then reading so I found that the reading was less appealing. I say this because reading about krump and seeing krump are two very different experiences. This film kept me intrigued from beginning to end. I felt my heart ache for some of these kids and I also felt so inspired to see how they take their situations and turn them around by finding this extremely creative and releasing dance. This is their therapy; truly inspiring. 

The article and the film both highlighted the competitive realm and spiritual realm that krumping. Not only is krump a style in which physical combat, interaction, and competitive contexts lie but also with a personal catharsis for these dancers. This could also be considered a spiritual practice (holy dance, religious trances, or even being taken over by a spirit) This duality/ doubleness lives through the roots and baseline of what krump is.

Another duality/. doubleness within krump is the use of the masks and play. Now clowning started krump and clowns have painted faces. But the video also highlighted how face painting dated back to the African tribal roots as well. The play itself is really about doubleness. Play masks the seriousness and the sacredness behind playfulness. These masks also hid the person’s identity so one could step into this new world of being seen. 

This Krump dancing resembles a physical release of pent up emotion and aggression. Krumping developed and flourished within this atmosphere of constraint, surveillance, and brutality. Additionally, when I watched the film first, I noticed how some of the soloists friends would kick, push, or even grab them and I admired how it really added to the energy level that was created. Then I read about it and it is used as a support and interaction system and can even be used to create this mood of submerging and awakening your aggression. 

Next, we read about house dancing. This was created back in the 1970s-1990s in NYC and Chicago nightclubs. It all starts with the VIBE!! (thazzuh vibe) The vibe is the building block of the underground house scene and works as a communal force of feelings and liberation. I CANNOT imagine how in shape I would be if I went to one of these clubs every night. Non stop music drives non stop dancing. Another thing that I found interesting is that they said that this music was meant to be DANCED to and not listened to. I found this really interesting because when I listen to house music, I wanna dance but I never just wanna sit and listen to it lolzzz....

Anywho, another thing I liked from this article was how the word “house” and “underground” were basically interchangeable. House meaning at home and that the club is a family. (in da clur we all fam- if you get that reference u a g) Underground meaning ‘after dark’, marginalized, and even signifies a way of life. 

ay fellow bloggers. this week has been a literal shit show for me. this online shit aint it my dude. should I dropout? I'm in too deep tho

Under all of this stress, I found the familiarity of sexism in hip hop comforting... JUST KIDDING I thought you were different hip hop? we were rooting for you, we were all rooting for you! (if u know that reference u a g)

any who... the reading I did with the partner was the one about masculinity (aka preferring males to females) Lets remember you can get bruises and scratches from hip hop. Therefore, women cannot participate. Women are the observers and the trophies. HAHHH! well to start,  break dancing was used to earn your respect (I don't get no respekt) and authority in ur hood. So, you would try to out perform your opponent, this may include things like faster/longer spins, riskier moves, trickier footwork, verbal threats or gestures, etc... 

Another important aspect of breaking was that one could get so emotionally invested in the competition that it actually turns into a violent fight. Women can't compete in that because we have hormones that make us do crazy shit. BUT guys can compete even if that means that they want to feel macho enough to beat up their opponent... TOXIC MASCULINITY AND DOUBLE STANDARDS

... fucking aye! whatever... all in all, masculinity plays a huge role in hip hop, so here are some aspects that incorporate this;

- sexual prowess: demonstrating the male libido, sexual dominance, fertility

- women: source of pseudo-power, sex objects, objectify women in movements, rap lyrics( sometimes super offensive to women), boasts and enactments

- props; the use of guns- not only cause of gang warfare, urban life, and poverty but also as a phallic symbol

- hero worship: get your name from your dance credibility/signature moves/ desire to live up to male stereotype of provider/ looking up to people who made it out of poverty

The one thing I really found interesting was the element of control. teens felt that they only had control over sexual life. Poverty and prejudice were some things that were out of their control.

next, we talked about Rennie Harris. He completely changed how hiphop was being shown in the concert area of dance. Rennie Harris Puremovement was the first American concert dance company to solely utilize vibrancy, virtuosity, and showmanship of hip hop. HIs choreographic works were a sort of give and take between actual choreo and the in-the-moment creation of his dancers. I appreciated this because it still kept the improvisational foundation of hip hop but also used his creativity to set a piece of work. Later in the article it continued on by stating that postmodern and Africanist aesthetic are inseparable. I never really even thought of it like that. 

What is up my fellows! We finally got to move into the HIP HOP section of dance history! I said AyOOOO! 

To start off, NYC/East Coast and the West Coast are two huge contributors to the development of the many different styles of hip hop. The west coast had popping and locking( originated by Don Campbell)  and funk.NYC had breaking, bboying and up rocking! 

Throughout the readings, a common theme of media blurring the lines of these distinct styles kept occurring. For example, Popping started but then it lost its purity because the younger generations strayed from the original structure. Filming deprives the audience of transition, composition, and the full impact of hip hop. Additionally, making these dances commercialized, completely eliminated the spontaneity, individual improvisation and expression, and communication of this style. Also by taking away the format of a circle, these dances become frontal and creates  boundaries for the dancers. WHY does the media ruin most things?

Next, one of the articles talked about battling and I think that this element is also a bit lost within the media. Media often doesn’t care about the competition aspect that made b-boying what it is. The only care about the entertainment value. Battling provides a personal significance to the dance through conflict resolution, a work of art, teaching tool, and a personal catharsis. This all could be taken away with the element of the media added in. TV dance became homogenized and everyone was trying to copy other people’s styles instead of evolving the style more and having an original thought and coming with your own flare... SMH What I really liked in this article was how the judge was looking for the four elements;

Fire- intensity and heat 🔥 

Earth- grounded moves 🌏 

Air- Air moves 💨 

Water- flow 💦 

Ether- rhythm holding everything together. This makes me ask the question of how can we inform and integrate these elements into our other forms of dancing. 

The newest craze in the hip hop community is the style of breaking. Breaking really hit its peak popularity in the 1980s. What makes me mad is when I read how if the dancers who INVENTED this dance style came to perform in places other than the ghetto then they were banned because it caused disturbances and undesirable crowds (AKA they were racist as shit). BUT these white middle class housewives and executives from the suburbs could go learn all about this dance style in a class. This just proves that white America loves black and hispanic culture just not the people of that culture. Kinda opposing ideas because you can’t have one without the other. Well... white America loves to white wash cultures and appropriate so IDK anymore...

PS- If you wanna get in that hip hop mood and need new things to watch, here are my suggestions:

Hulu: Wu-Tang: An American Saga (this is my shit yal! based on the actual music group THE WU TANG CLAN!! If you need new, provocative music too, would highly recommend!)

Hulu: Snowfall (this is some gansta shit! Cocaine and rock cocaine boi! Super interesting and I think I was a gansta pimp in a past life)

Hey my newly virtual classmates! This sucks but it is for the good of the whole and we will forever cherish classes when we get back to them :)

To begin this exhausting week, we talked about dance notation. I feel like dance notation is something that is often forgotten about. When trying to come up with our own notation (NATIAtation) we stumbled on many many things. It just felt like it was hard to find broad enough, yet specific terms to embody our chosen movements. Labanotation made by Rudolph Laban is very complex my dude. This Language of Dance stuff got confusing. You have to be a tedious, genius to come up with this shit. 

Next, we talked about the Metatechnique made by Ohan Narin. Truly another genius in himself. Gaga dance is so great because even non-dancers can have a gaga class. I wonder what effect it would have if we implemented a non-dancer gaga class into curriculum within schools. This would give the general population a better sense of body awareness and body mind connection. I really like the aspect of creating your own approach in movement studies. I would love to take a GAGA class one day

PS When I first heard about gaga dance(in high school), I thought it was like a LADY GAGA class omgg.... still would be interested in taking one of those classes! HAH

HAH

Hola Hola Hola mi amigos! Lets burn some bridges on this lovely Friday

To begin, American ballet was on the rise! SUPER TRENDY! George Balanchine was in this bitchhhh! America thought that ballet was too high class for them at once point but these innovative choreographers made it accessible. Not only was the development of the NYC ballet and ABT a huge step in the right direction towards making ballet super popular, but also lead the way into new styles (America’s own style) Balanchine had hella changes of movement qualities that evoked relationships and moods. This was something people could relate to.

Additionally, Tudor extended the range of ballet. He used movement to explore psychological states. (something new that the audience could relate to) He also used smaller gestural movements that had equal importance to those bigger leaps and tricks ... my kinda dancing lmaooo... 

These choreographers lead the way for people like Ratmansky, (lol rat man) Wheeldon, and Peck who created and established works in the USA

Next I wanna move onto the fact that people make such a huge deal if the color of your skin is not representative so places like Russia STILL take huge measures to do shit like blackface?!?! Uh NO! ThAt Is NoT cOrReCt! The fact of the matter is... a persons skin color should not interfere with the story itself... SUCK IT UP RUSSIA! UR WRONG

Lastly, HIPLET ohhhh yasss girl! I fricken love this idea of hiplet  because it makes ballet more “friendly” and appealing to minorities. Because ballet is only for white people? WRONG AGAIN! Hiplet is just as valid as any other dance style in my opinion. Just think... tap was a combination of two different dance styles and so was like all of jazz sooo...

AY ay Ay! Welcome back to burning those bridges. This week we continued with the development of ballet. Wow such a long history! 

To begin, a huge commonality this week was the very famous STRAVINSKY! He damn near was the main man for music. He was like the ballet worlds Drake or some shit. Woop Woop... Yanno who else had a their name everywhere... Diaghilev! He worked with damn near everyone; Fokines (ps in my notes I wrote his name FOLKINES) lmao, Nijinsky, Nijinska, Massine, Balanchine

 MOVING ON... we talked about 3 ballets: the first being firebird. The role of the woman was challenged here because she was seen as more of an unattainable foreign sex queen(aren't we all) 👑 the relationship between the man and bird is erotic and power hungry

THE RITE OF SPRING... the woman is a virgin who was acting as “self sacrificial” to the god to bring the rain for the spring... LOL its not self sacrifice if you and a bunch of your virgin friends are running in a circle and if you mess up the most you get sacrificed and if ur not sacrificed then you are mass raped by the men! WHY CANT THE VIRGIN BE A MAN VIRGIN!! WTF 

Last but certainly not least is LES NOCES! The role of the woman represented the women in Russia at this time and their sorrow and submission to the marriage laws. GUYSSSSS watching this ballet made me truly disturbed. I saw the fear in the woman eyes and I couldn't help but think of all of the women who are forced into marriages and abusive relationships and feel like they have no power or control over their lives. OKKK sorry bout that rant but seeing the work and how they moved really added to what they were standing for

Yo YO Yo! Welcome back. Lets burn the bridges today son!

First off, the SUPERBOWL... JLo and Shakira are strong independent women who rocked that stage and used their platform to enforce how our differences unite us not divide us! Also, I hope I look like that when I’m 40-50.... like shit girl. You wear that rhinestoned mesh suit. PS when JLO sang Jenny from the block it was a shoutout to Jenny Mack!

Next, the eternal feminine lives on through the romanticism era and women are even stepping into cross dressing as men. This developed the weird preferred body type for female dancers... so skinny, long, but not too long. Anywho... I found it interesting that the pas de deus gave the public a private fantasy of romance. Interesting how this partnering was even sexualized. 

Additionally, I found it refreshing that Balanchine used plotless ballets. now that the audience has shifted back to the elite, the dancing was once again reaching for the approval of the wealthy. Pointework also became more codified. Once again playing into the gender roles of dance. 

Lastly... WHAT IS TIME?!?! I got confused with this era switcheroo.... The Classical time period was accompanied with the Baroque and romantic ballet. Then the Neoclassical time was accompanied by post-romantic ballet and classical ballet. I was CONFUSION! 

Ay Ay AY! What is up today? Lets burn those bridges!

Anyways, this weeks topic was a not as entertaining as some of the topics that we covered; the history of ballet. In this post I will write about things that interested me;

1- For much of the beginning, ballet was under control of the nobility. The reasons for that is because at the start, most of the people in the audience were of high class. Ballet also needs money and an audience to survive and thrive. It is interesting to me because although artists were creating, they were creating within boundaries. How much freedom do you have when you feel the need to please your audience? Less risk taking and controversial topics were covered during the beginnings of ballet because the rich had full control over what was being put on stage.

2- When moving into the Romantic ballet era, the audience changed to new money and middle class. The audience used ballet as an escape from the changing political climate and succession. The tragic love stories provided a relatable, real display of the many issues as well as including more relatable characters and storylines. What I find interesting is that the more relatable the work was, the more distance they put between the stage and the audience. I wonder if this was because more people were coming to see these performances... did this eliminate the intimacy between performer and audience?

3- Pointe! First off, pointe hurts my bunions and my doctor said if I were to do pointe I would need bunion surgery...LMAOOOO 

Anyways, pointe set the women apart in ballet. Men took a back seat on stage because women had the most stage time. Although women had the most stage time, the narrative was always told from a man’s perspective and most of the creative/choreographic responsibilities were the role of a man. Pointe led way into making women have certain roles; the mythical creature, unattainable virgin, supernatural female, etc. I found it interesting that the main roles for women were typically given to attractive women of rank. This made the women a sex object to men. A “tease” because she is unattainable through her lightness. On the other hand, some saw the “lightness” as artist rebellion. Denying gravity. I still think that these roles were men’s way of putting women in their place. Women are meant to be seen, not heard! 

Hey Hey Hey! We all know that Izzy is Greek so she already knows all of this information obviously! This week we focused more on the European growth and development of art. Dance performances had three specific purposes; theatrical(pleasure of the onlookers), spiritual(dances to please the gods), and social dancing(dances to please dancers). Often Greeks used the purpose of spiritual or ceremonial to pay tribute to their many gods. The Greeks viewed the combination of dance, music, and poetry as a symbol of the harmony of mind, body, and civilization. As we discovered in class, today, Greek folk dances are used for celebratory purposes and social interaction. In today’s society, we rarely see new dances being used for the sole purpose of celebrating or worship. Social dancing nowadays has also slowed down on its development and now you see one or two dance moves in a social setting as opposed to a whole dance as an entirety. I wonder if that is because as a society with the development of new technology, we have less of an attention span than when we used to. Just a thought!

Next, we see the development of all art in the Renaissance inn Italy! This is where court dance was the thing to do! As the art of dance continued to thrive, we saw the development of the barre, horse ballet, and women as choreographers. Women were able to contribute to the art but they had to be married. Oh the patriarchy! Even when women were in positions of power, they were not in power. Women need to be puppeteer by their husbands or else their hormones will make them start a war!!!?! Isn’t that the fear? OH WELL Continuing on...The French looked to Italy as a source of what was the hot thing to do. Not very free thinking or original if you ask me. But, this is where ballet came to flourish and really develop into the codified technique that we all know and hate(maybe love idk you). Ballet’s popularity can be tribute to Louis XIV. Ballets also became more theatrical. Jean Baptiste Lully was to thank for that because he was known for his comedy that included singing, dancing, musical instruments, and acting. Lully was also homosexual which contributed to his taboo reputation. The story of his death was quite an interesting one... he fricken stabbed his foot with his counting stick... yuck!

YO YO YO what is up? Lets burn those bridges... These past two weeks we have been talking about folk dances and concert/ritual dances. One of the many concerns about this topic is whether or not these traditional dances should be put on stage. If it were to be put on stage, questions among the topics of accuracy, adjustments, and values within these cultures will be put to the test. We also talked about the audience’s expectations within viewing a performance of a culture that they are unfamiliar with. This brought attention to what can we do as artists to make sure all dance is valued and honored. I think one of many solutions to this issue could simply be informing others and pushing what they know to be true. 

The first form of Japanese traditional dance that our class investigated was Bugaku. This dance was viewed by nobility and important guests. It also included the unison of 2 - 4 dancers, dramatic aspects, specific characters, and storylines. This brings up the comparison of the relationship between artistic freedom and audience control. If rich and powerful people view and fund the art, then the could potentially have full control on what is being created and how. I think that the rich and powerful nobilities of Japan controlled women not being able to perform. So who is to say that they didn’t fully control these performances. 

The next traditional Japanese dance that was introduced was called noh. Noh combined dance, music and acting. This could be considered theatre dance. With the unique way that the play slowly unfolds and the use of symbolism, noh started to push the audience’s expectation of how things could be told. Noh eventually became entertainment for the elite samurai. This then brings up the topic of artistic creation and innovation. The higher ranked people didn’t want to see the system to be questioned which then cuts off a certain inspiration for artists during this time. 

Next, Kabuki was introduced. Kabuki started as a rebellious and irreverent theatrical form that was for the merchant class. This opened up the possibilities of being able to question and innovate and be able to put that in front of an audience that would most likely agree with that line of questioning. This art form is very detail oriented and encourages the audience to pay close attention and creates a sense of intimacy. 

Last but CERTAINLY not the least is Butoh. Butoh is a subversive dance genre that occurred in reaction to postwar Japan in the 1950s. Butoh is deals with many things including; nudity, grotesque imagery, taboo, and other heavy topics. This clearly shakes the audience and challenges the audience’s views on increasingly heavy topics. This art form breaks boundaries in radical and innovative ways. Not only does this challenge the audience but also the artists. The artists can find new and interesting ways to present an idea in an abstract way.